Next Sunday, March 16, a mass will be celebrated in the Metropolitan Cathedral of San Salvador in remembrance of Jan Kuiper, Koos Koster, Hans ter Laag and Johannes Willemsen, members of a team of the Interkerkelijke Omroep Nederland (IKON), a Dutch television and radio station.
Their crime was to denounce to the world the massacre of the people by military forces with the complicity and armament provided by the United States, which in those years was injecting a million dollars a day into the conflict between the military government and the popular forces.
Prior to the mass, in honor of the communicators on the 43rd anniversary of their death, there will be a press conference where there will be a denunciation that yesterday’s impunity is today’s impunity and, for sure, there will be updated information on the extradition request from the United States of one of the culprits.
A few days ago, the Attorney General’s Office of El Salvador instructed to demand from Washington the extradition of Colonel Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena, for his role in the planning and execution of the four Dutch “tulips”, as the communicators are known in this country.
The murder is, according to the United Nations Truth Commission, one of the most emblematic cases of serious human rights violations of El Salvador’s civil war (1980-1992).
The four journalists arrived in the country at the end of February 1982 and their actions are recorded until their death in the book ‘La Emboscada, Asesinato y Memoria de Cuatro Periodistas Holandeses en El Salvador’ (The ambush, murder and memory of four Dutch journalists in El Salvador), a vivid account of truth, justice and reparation.
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