The_Times__6_March_2020

the times | Friday March 6 2020 2GM 33

Wo r l d

The Netherlands has given back a gold-
inlaid dagger that was surrendered by a
rebel prince after his failed 1830 inde-
pendence uprising against Dutch rule
in Indonesia.
More than five decades after the
Dutch first promised to return the kris,
with its traditional wavy blade, it was
handed over in a ceremony at the Indo-
nesian embassy this week.
Prince Diponegoro is a national hero

for Indonesians for his five-year strug-

gle against colonial forces known as the

Java war. It ended with his humiliating

handover of the dagger to the lieuten-

ant governor-general of what was then

the Dutch East Indies.

“The kris is very important for

Indonesia. This attribute of the prince

expressed his status,” Fery Iswandy, an

Indonesian spokesman, said.

Diponegoro, a prince on the island of

Java, which is now part of Indonesia,

was exiled to Makassar, the capital of

the Indonesian province of South

Sulawesi, at the age of 69. The dagger,

the prince’s saddle and spear were pre-

sented as a trophy to William I, the first

monarch of the formerly republican

Netherlands. The Dutch killed 200,000

Indonesians in securing their rule over

colony.

A 1968 treaty between the Nether-

lands and Indonesia promised to return

Diponegoro’s possessions but in 1975,

when the other items were repatriated,

the dagger had disappeared. It was only

after secret government memos by Jos

van Beurden, an art historian, suggest-

The European parliament has accused
the Czech prime minister of hate
speech after he described a committee
of MEPs investigating him for corrup-
tion as “insane” and “traitors”.
The row erupted after the assembly’s
budgetary controls committee sent a
mission to the Czech Republic to inves-
tigate alleged conflicts of interest over

EU investigators accuse Czech prime minister of hate speech

European funding of a company owned

by Andrej Babis. The prime minister

was so angry that he denounced the in-

vestigators on television last week.

Monika Hohlmeier, a German Christ-

ian Democrat, led the team along with

two Czech MEPs. He described his

countrymen as traitors and said that

Mrs Hohlmeier was insane.

The German MEP wrote in a letter to

David-Maria Sassoli, the parliament’s

president: “The delegation considers

the language used by the Czech prime

minister to be a serious incident. It can

only be characterised as hate speech

and is a blatant attempt to intimidate

MEPs. The unacceptable language may

have contributed to death threats

expressed during the mission.

“One MEP and his family have been

placed under police protection. The

other MEP contacted the police

because of the growing number of

death threats. This unbearable degra-

dation of the style of political discourse

requires a clear reply.”

In 2018 the EU cut off funds to Agro-

fert, a farming and chemicals conglom-

erate based in Prague whose sole share-

holder is Mr Babis. A conflict of interest

was cited.

Local campaigners say that Agrofert

takes £100 million a year in state aid,

including EU subsidies. Last year a

leaked EU report found that Mr Babis

had influenced the allocation of the

money so that it would be funnelled in-

to sectors where he had business inter-

ests. Prosecutors say that this may have

breached laws banning the payment of

subsidies to people in public office.

Mr Babis has yet to respond to the

claim that he made £32 million a year in

EU farm payments. He denies the alle-

gations of subsidy fraud relating to his

estate and has insisted that no laws

were broken in his government’s allo-

cation of EU state aid.

Czech Republic
Bruno Waterfield Brussels

Tens of thousands of koalas had burnt
to death in the fires that tore through
Kangaroo Island, in the south of Aus-
tralia, when Kailas Wild, a Sydney tree
surgeon and accomplished climber,
decided that he had to act.
He drove 1,000 miles to reach Aus-
tralia’s third-largest island 19 hours
later. He had one objective — to save
koalas. He believed that his ability to
climb trees would enable him to pluck
the injured marsupials from the black-
ened tree tops.
Last week, after more than a month
on the island, he returned to his Sydney

home having saved 74 koalas. Some of
them were very seriously injured, with
burnt fur and paws and suffering the
effects of smoke inhalation.
He also amassed more than 8,000
Instagram followers of his frequent, sad
posts about the 35,000 koalas that are
believed to have died out of the island’s
population of 50,000.
Over a perilous summer when many
Australians felt helpless as hundreds of
fires raged and an estimated one billion
wild animals died in New South Wales
alone, Mr Wild’s daily 60ft climbs to
rescue frightened, injured koalas has
been a model of courage and compas-
sion. Often he could be heard apologis-
ing to the animals as his mounted

IA

Melbourne

200 miles

Adelaide

Koala habitat

Canberra

Kangaroo

Island

their intact forest

habitats. As I con-

template returning

to Kangaroo Is-

land, where I have

added burns and

starvation to my list of

reasons why I’ve seen koalas requiring

care, I can’t help but be reminded that

to truly rescue wildlife, we must rescue

Dutch finally return dagger of Indonesia’s hero prince

Netherlands
Bruno Waterfield

ing it had been hidden, were published,

that it was found in a museum base-

ment.

It will now go on display in an exhibi-

tion at Indonesia’s National Museum in

Jakarta. The Bronbeek Museum of

colonial history in Arnhem believes it

may also have one of Diponegoro’s

belongings, a bridle paired with the sad-

dle already returned to Indonesia. The

museum’s director, Pauljac Verhoeven,

said the item had an archive number

attached to it that was linked with the

saddle. Archivists are investigating.

‘Paedophile

author’ was

shielded by

French elite

France

Adam Sage Paris

Several of France’s leading postwar

figures are facing scrutiny over claims

that they helped an alleged paedophile

to escape prosecution in the 1980s.

Yves Saint Laurent, the fashion de-

signer who died in 2008, and François

Mitterrand, the late Socialist president,

are among those accused of supporting

Gabriel Matzneff, an author who wrote

about his attraction to teenagers.

The allegations came to light after

the publication of Consent by Vanessa

Springora, 47, the head of a Parisian

publishing house, which recounted

being groomed and abused by Matzneff

at the age of 14.

Springora has forced the French elite

to review its stance on a writer who was

hailed as a master. Critics conceded

that they might have been wrong to

treat Matzneff as an intellectual propo-

nent of sexual freedom while overlook-

ing his alleged victims.

Prosecutors opened a preliminary

inquiry into accusations that he com-

mitted statutory rape during liaisons

with adolescents, including Springora,

who were below the age of consent, 15

in France.

Matzneff, 83, admits that he had rela-

tionships with teenagers but denies

having committed criminal offences.

The investigation has led to a deep-

ening scandal that hit Paris’s Socialist

council this week when Christophe

Girard, 64, the deputy mayor, was sum-

moned for questioning over claims that

he paid for the hotel room where Matz-

neff took the young Springora.

Mr Girard told Le Parisien newspaper

that he was acting on the orders of Saint

Laurent, his employer, and Pierre

Bergé, the designer’s business partner.

Mr Girard said he was told that Matz-

neff needed a room in which to write

and had no idea that he was accompa-

nied by an adolescent.

Springora writes of the event in her

book, published in January, but fails to

name Saint Laurent. She says that

police opened an inquiry after

receiving anonymous letters accusing

Matzneff. She writes that Matzneff

nevertheless moved out of his Parisian

flat and into a hotel.

“A generous patron... financed this

investment,” Springora writes. Mr

Girard said that Saint Laurent was the

patron. “We didn’t support him because

he was a paedophile but because he was

a writer in difficulty,” he said.

Springora claims that Matzneff was

also protected by Mr Mitterrand and

kept a letter that “in the event of an

arrest he thinks... will have the power

to save him”. In 1986, Mr Mitterrand

described the journals in which Matz-

neff recounted his attraction for teen-

agers as “a hedonist inspiration”.

Australia hails

tree surgeon who

rescued koalas

Australia
Bernard Lagan Sydney

camera recorded difficult rescues.

Sometimes he wept as he visited them

in treatment centres, wondering if they

would survive their ordeal.

Now Mr Wild, 29, has left Sydney

again to make the long trip back, unable

to forget about the injured and starving

koalas still wandering the island, which

is more than ten times the size of the

Isle of Wight. His weeks there, he told

his Instagram followers, had over-

whelmed him emotionally.

Kangaroo Island has been likened to

Noah’s Ark for its array of native wild-

life including rare species of goanna, or

monitor lizards, and the distinctive

glossy black cockatoo. Mr Wild has

made a passionate plea not only for the

koalas but also for the world’s dis-

appearing wildernesses.

He recounted his first experiences

with koalas a

decade ago

after he had

completed a

native animal

rehabilitation

course and

began to help

out part-time in

a koala hospital.

“I will never

forget the first

time I was in the

personal space of

a koala because it

made me cry,” he

said. “Every

single koala that I

met over that six-

month period had

either been

attacked by a dog,

hit by a car or had

painful urinary

infections.

“Very quickly it hit me hard that the

root cause of this problem isn’t the dogs,

the cars or infections but the loss of

the ecosystems that form the natural

habitats that allow our wildlife to exist

in relative safety. If we don’t, we will

have no wildlife,” he told his followers

on Tuesday, World Wildlife Day.

Inspired by his updates, hundreds of

Australians have donated funds for

another koala rescue climber as well as

GPS devices, radios, first-aid kits and

the hire of a four-wheel drive vehicle.

Hundreds of Australians have donated money to help Kailas

Wild’s efforts to save the injured koalas of Kangaroo Island

KAI WILD/INSTAGRAM

t h t t l a

starvati

t h

Kailas Wild, from

Sydney, comforts

one of the 74

koalas he has

saved from

bushfires over the

past month on

Kangaroo Island,

off South

Australia