Survival Obligates

March 17,1982, four Dutch journalists--Koos Koster, Jan Kuiper, Joop Willemse, and Hans Terlaag--were shot and killed in El Salvador. The four were on assignment for the Dutch Interchurch Television Network (IKON) to produce filmed portraits of two Salvadoran families; one a middle-class family residing in San Salvador, the other a campesino family residing in Chalatenango province.

The first portrait had been filmed and edited. At 5 p.m. on March 17, the journalists were dropped off at a prearranged spot where they would meet Salvadoran contacts from the resistance who would escort them to the second family. Minutes later the four Dutch journalists and four of the Salvadorans lay dead on a mountain path in Chalatenango, the victims of gunshot wounds.

When the news broke in the Netherlands, newspaper headlines read "El Salvador Army Kills Dutchmen," and articles described how Koos Koster, five days before his death, had been awakened by San Salvador police, taken to police headquarters, and detained for several hours of questioning. The police contended that Koster's name had been found on the body of a slain guerrilla soldier.

The day after his release, a photograph of the Dutch journalists and their names appeared in the Salvadoran press along with an article about Koster's alleged contacts with guerrilla members. The journalists then received several threatening phone calls at their hotel. residence, and the man who chauffeured the journalists to Chalatenango reported later that they may have been followed for a portion of their journey by a jeep resembling the vehicles driven by the dreaded death squads.

One of the Salvadoran contacts who met the journalists on March 17 escaped death. This lone survivor--"Martin"--came to the Netherlands in early May to give his eyewitness account of the day. He testified that government troops opened fire on their party. Those not immediately felled by the bullets, said Martin, sought cover, and the Salvadoran guerrillas in the group (who were armed) answered fire. Martin told Dutch investigators that he was convinced the army patrol had arranged an ambush and that there had been a purposeful killing of the Dutch journalists.

Dutch investigators in El Salvador had difficulty obtaining the cooperation of the Salvadoran army in carrying out their investigation. Repeatedly they requested to interview the sergeant in charge of the army patrol that fired the fatal shots. When at last the sergeant agreed to meet with the investigators, his account was at odds with Martin's. The sergeant testified that gunfire was begun by the guerrillas, and he denied any prior knowledge of the presence of four foreign journalists.

When the Dutch investigation was completed and submitted to the Dutch government in early June, the report included these conflicting testimonies and concluded that while the journalists were killed by the army patrol, there was no "irrefutable evidence" to prove or disprove that the killings had been staged as an intentional ambush. According to the leader of the investigating team, the testimonies from Martin and the sergeant "produced more facts, but just as many question marks...there is no conclusion to give about the actual occurrences."

From the first, official statements of the Reagan administration steered clear of any public reproach of the Salvadoran army, although the United States did finally lend support to the Dutch request to interview the sergeant. Within one day of the killings, without time for investigation, the representative of the Reagan administration declared there was no reason to doubt the Salvadoran army's explanation of how the men died.

One month after the killings, Queen Beatrix and Prince Claus of the Netherlands travelled to the United States for an official state visit celebrating 200 years of "friendship and cooperation" between the Netherlands and the United States. Dutch Foreign Minister Max Van der Stoel accompanied the royal couple on their trip, and on April 20 he met with Undersecretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger. Van der Stoel asked for United States cooperation in the investigation of the death of the Dutch citizens. He emerged from those talks to tell reporters that Eagleburger could not promise U.S. support.

What follows is a portrait of the life and work of one of these slain Dutch journalists--Koos Koster.

He was one of those impossible human beings: uncompromising and demanding. When you saw him coming you drew your breath. His energy was a whirlwind tearing through the carefully constructed order of your office, your home, your life.

He came accompanied on either side by the ghosts of victims. He lived with them. He was haunted by their tortured deaths. You could not meet him without meeting them--the victims of violence in Chile, in Guatemala, in El Salvador. And when he left again, as suddenly as he had come, he left something of their pain behind lest you forget. He never let you forget.

Even when he was gone from the Netherlands, the phone might ring in the middle of the night. He was calling from El Salvador. He needed to talk with you, with a friend; he had to share the excruciating suffering he had witnessed that day. And his letters, his articles, his films kept coming: interviews with guerrillas, government officials, orphaned children, grieving parents, farmers who saw a village destroyed by government troops. In every portrait, every interview, every letter he sent, his relentless cry for help could be heard.

Koos Koster was not an easy man to live with. He was a friend who asked hard questions, a colleague who loathed compromise. Yet his intensity was invigorating and his humor infectious. "It is strange," says one of Roster's acquaintances, "I think of Koos as a Latin American not a Dutchman. His affection was so expansive and his passion so vivid. He could be so expressive in the way he talked and moved."

Although Koos Koster lived in Latin America long enough to imbibe some recognizable cultural mannerisms, his candor and hard-nosed pragmatism were probably inherited from his Dutch Calvinist family. As his professors and fellow students from the Dutch Reformed Seminary in Kampen will testify, Koster was asking critical questions as a theological student in the early '60s. "Pure theology" was a discipline Koster considered both vacuous and dangerous. He always sought the connections. He could grow angry when professors talked about the "freedom of God" in a way he thought was disembodied and abstract. What does that freedom have to do with the struggle for political freedom of oppressed people? he would ask. Does it breathe hope into the lungs of the poor? Does it rouse us from complacency?

A man possessed of this temperament and these questions was not well suited for pastoral ministry in a quiet Dutch village, but at the Ecumenical Hendrik Kraemerhuis in West Berlin, Koster found a community where his unorthodox ministry could take root. When Koster went to the Kraemerhuis in 1963, it was a center for dialogue between Christians and Marxists. Koster travelled between East and West Berlin establishing friendships and contacts on both sides of the Wall. Yet even in the midst of that turbulent, divided city, Roster's attention was drawn to the tremors rumbling through another continent. He eagerly consumed the writings of Colombian priest Camilio Torres and Brazilian Bishop Helder Camara. As Aldert Schipper, religion editor for the Dutch newspaper Trouw, described it: "Koos always said, 'If you want to see Christ in the world, you must go to Latin America.' And so he went."

Koster was intrigued by the Chilean experiment of "democratic Marxism" under Allende, and he wanted to experience it firsthand. He took up residence in Chile, sustaining himself by combining church and social work. On September 20, 1973, nine days after the assassination of Allende, Koos Koster was arrested at his home by military police and taken, with thousands of others suspected of being Allende sympathizers, to the soccer stadium in Santiago.

Those days of confinement in the stadium permanently changed Koos Koster. "Koos saw what hell is there in that stadium," recalls Schipper. "It was still possible to laugh with Koos while drinking a good glass of beer, but he could suddenly fall silent and then he would talk about those days and the friends he had lost. In that stadium, he heard the names of his friends and colleagues called out by Pinochet's officers. They were taken downstairs and interrogated. Koos heard their cries for help as they were tortured. He heard the shots, but no one dared to move."

In that stadium, Koos scribbled his own cries for help in terse, poetic verses written on crushed cigarette packages, toilet paper, and scraps of newspaper he later smuggled out of the stadium. These poems were published in the Netherlands under the title People Without Guns. As introduction to these poems Koster wrote:

Some have thought that after Auschwitz no more poems would be written. When we sat locked up in the dressing rooms of that macabre stadium, we knew for certainty that if we ever escaped alive we would open our mouths and make known the crimes of this fascist military. These scraps of paper from the soccer stadium of a people without guns have no other pretense than to form a contribution to the struggle against old and new forms of fascist dictatorship to which, among others, the Chilean people are presently subjected.

Those poems were not the last attempt of Koos Koster to open his mouth and describe the crimes he witnessed. One could say that the rest of his life--nine years thereafter--had "no other pretense" than this: to open his mouth, to refuse to keep silent, and thus to honor the dead. Koster walked out of that stadium a haunted man not only because he would never forget the terrible screams, the brutality of the executioners, or the death of his friends. He would also never forget that he had survived. As he was later to write, "The fact of survival obligates."

It was out of that sense of obligation that Koster chose to remain in Latin America and devote himself to full-time journalism. It was not a career he sought but a medium through which to convey to Europeans the suffering of Central America. This vocational choice was not far removed from his theological training, for journalists and preachers have this common task: to make reality more transparent through the medium of words.

Koos Koster was never ordained to the ministry of word and sacrament in the church, but Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero "ordained" Koster to an analogous mission. Shortly before Romero's death, he said to Koster: "You have a holy calling. You must make the truth known to the people."

Romero was an inspiration for Koster. Through articles for Trouw and a film for IKON, Koster introduced the archbishop to the people of the Netherlands. Both men knew that to open your mouth and "make the truth known" in El Salvador--be you nun, farmer, professor, journalist, or bishop--was surely to invite the wrath of the authorities. While celebrating the Eucharist in the Cathedral of San Salvador on March 24, 1980, Archbishop Romero was assassinated, almost two years to the day before Koos Koster fell victim to the same violence.

Nothing except the experience in the Santiago stadium so deeply affected Koster as the loss of this friend. Koster expressed his grief in a letter to Wim Koole, director for IKON:

Of all the friends I have lost in Latin America, Monsignor Romero was the most mourned for. Jesus did what he said, and Romero was cut from the same cloth. Two weeks before his death, I heard him talking in the Cathedral about the politics of the Kingdom. This has completely worn me out in this dark hour.... It seems as though the God of history has removed his hands from El Salvador... over us hangs a kind of darkness of God which from time to time throws me into the abyss.

After Santiago, after Romero's murder, and during the succeeding years of bloodshed he was to witness in El Salvador, Koster battled against bitterness and despair. Perhaps it was his anger that saved him. Had he not stoked the fire of his rage, he might have frozen in the rigid posture of helplessness he was forced to assume in those stadium bleachers. Had he not kept moving, his limbs might have succumbed to paralysis. And so Koos Koster moved and worked and was angry with an intensity that some of his friends have described as "drivenness."

"Koos was an angry man," says Wim Koole, "and his anger was fed by what he saw all around him. He made films in El Salvador since the end of 1977. In that time, he lost thirty or forty people he knew personally. Every time Koos returned to El Salvador he discovered that someone he had known had been killed. He once did a portrait of a twelve-year-old boy. The next time Koos returned to this village and asked, 'How is Juan?' the answer came back, 'Dead.' And so his sadness and his anger grew. Koos once wrote me saying that 'in El Salvador you saw Auschwitz along the side of the streets.'"

There is a norm accepted by many journalists that the "truth" of a situation can be discerned and accurately reported only if one remains "objective." In other words, the journalist must retain some distance from the conflicting parties in order to bring a discriminating eye to their disparate claims. Implicit in this norm of objective journalism is the conviction that the journalist must rise above partisanship. Koos Koster violated this norm with intention. He believed in, and practiced, what has come to be called "engaged journalism." He was clearly, and unapologetically, identified with the poor in El Salvador and those whom he believed represented them.

Every time Koster returned to the Netherlands, he travelled to church groups, development agencies, and individuals seeking monetary support for, among other things, the Salvadoran Human Rights Committee, Chilean refugee assistance, Amnesty International, and tire Argentine mothers of the "missing." He even once approached a Dutch labor union with the idea that they donate a thousand bicycles for officials in Managua, Nicaragua.

Such partisanship raised the ire of Salvadoran government officials. It also provoked criticism from other journalists who believed Koster had surrendered the responsibility of objective reporting by his identification with the resistance. In the wake of his death, the Netherlands has seen a flurry of journal, radio, and television debates about engaged journalism.

To those who would fault him for partisanship, I suspect Koster would respond that a journalist is no more exempt from personal bias than any other individual. To assume that one can rise above bias is probably to deceive oneself. Koster believed that what passes for objectivity in El Salvador often functions as tacit support for the authorities.

Koster was critical of a style of "disengaged journalism" he saw practiced by European and North American journalists who flew into El Salvador, filmed the violence, stuck their cameras in the faces of crying women, and after three weeks were gone again. In Koster's view, this was exploitation of the worst order. Koster's engagement was more than journalistic bias; he wanted to live with and in some way share the fate of the people he filmed.

As Wim Koole describes it, "Koos made his home in Cuernavaca, Mexico, with his wife Anna, but he travelled extensively through Latin America. He continually sought out people. He was very trusted because of his involvement, and he always had a sense of where hopeful things were springing up.

"He wasn't interested in money. After the stadium, possessions were unimportant to him; he was too aware of how tentative life is. Koos had two pairs of levis, one to be washed in the hotel and one to wear. He had no personal wealth, no belongings. That was simply a fact; he never spoke about it. He wasn't heroic about it because he was also keenly aware that he had the privilege of returning to Europe, a privilege others didn't have."

Koster wanted to give those who were denied a voice in the political process access to the press. He did not stand at the side of a guerrilla camp or Salvadoran village and talk about the inhabitants. He believed they could speak for themselves. "Koos knew the people were far more eloquent about their situation than he could be," explains Koole. "He once made a film of some laborers coming in on a boat in Guatemala. He put one question to them, 'What is the power of the poor?' Then he stepped aside and let them talk. It was very moving, their eloquence, their deep sense of reality. One laborer said, 'Our power is that we have nothing to lose.' "

There are risks inherent in this kind of journalism, risks not only for the journalist but for those who are filmed. Koster made a film in 1979 of a Salvadoran farming community whose inhabitants spoke out against the government. Soon after, Salvadoran newspapers reported that farmers who had talked with Dutch journalists had been arrested by the army. Aware of such risks, Koster was scrupulous about warning people of the dangers, and if they ever requested it, he destroyed footage they didn't want shown. The IKON network routinely notified the Dutch consulate, Amnesty International, and others with names of people who had been interviewed, lest they be arrested.

"This is one of the most difficult aspects of modern journalism," explains Koole, who as program director for IKON had final responsibility for what was aired. "It is so difficult to weigh the risks. People in El Salvador tell us that they always live in danger, and to have the possibility of a European audience is a danger they willingly choose because it, at least, is a danger that helps.

"Sometimes here at IKON we decided that we could not show a portion of Koos' material because of the danger. Then Koos was very angry. He asked us, 'Who are you to decide for others, who are fully conscious of the risks, that they may not be heard?' "

To let the people speak for themselves and be heard in Europe was only one part of the "obligation" that drove Koos Koster. He also filmed the human beings who sat in the governmental palaces and who commanded armies. With the privilege and protection of a European journalist, Koster sought to bring the questions of the powerless to the powerful, asking on their behalf what they could not ask directly.

Koster will not be remembered for his tact. His questions to those in power were blunt, insinuating, and insistent. Koster took questions about political prisoners and the "missing" to the Minister of Justice in Chile; questions about the indiscriminate killing of civilians by government troops to Salvadoran military officials; and questions about whether the government was earnestly seeking Romero's murderers to former President Duarte. He made a film about a Salvadoran bishop who blessed government troops and their military hardware. Among other questions that Koster threw at the bishop, he asked: "May the church now, just two years after the death of Monsignor Romero, bless the monuments of the army?"

One could say that Koos Koster strove for "subjectivity" in journalism, not only in the sense of personal identification, but by making the human subjects behind the statistics accessible and real to Europeans. Through Koster's camera, Salvadoran people told their stories of anguish and hope to Dutch viewers. Those unforgettable portraits transmitted the faces and voices of human beings who might otherwise have remained anonymous, masked by the crossfire of political rhetoric and the impersonal statistics of body counts. The five years Koos Koster worked in El Salvador, he was always searching out the stories of real people. It was just such a search that led to his death.

Melanie Morrison was a minister in the United Church of Christ, a contributing editor for Sojourners and studying theology at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands when this article appeared.