Maria Hertogh riots

The Maria Hertogh riots began on 11 December 1950 in Singapore after a court decided that a child who had been raised by Muslims should be returned to her Catholic biological parents. A protest by outraged Muslims escalated into a riot when images were published showing 13-year-old Maria Hertogh (or Bertha Hertogh) kneeling before a statue of the Virgin Mary. Riots in Singapore lasted until noon on 13 December 1950. Eighteen people were killed and 173 injured. Many properties were also damaged

Hertogh (also known as Nadrah) had been in the care of Che Aminah binte Mohamed before being returned to her Dutch Catholic biological parents.

Maria Hertogh was born on 24 March 1937 to a Dutch Catholic family living in Tjimahi, near Bandung, Java, then a part of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Her father, Adrianus Petrus Hertogh, came to Java in the 1920s as a sergeant in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army. In the early 1930s, He married Adeline Hunter, a Eurasian of Scottish-Javanese descent brought up in Java. Maria was baptised in the Roman Catholic Church of Saint Ignatius at Tjimahi on 10 April by a Catholic priest.

When World War II broke out, Adrianus Hertogh, as a sergeant in the Dutch Army, was captured by the Imperial Japanese Army and sent to a POW camp in Japan, where he was kept until 1945. Meanwhile, Adeline Hertogh stayed with her mother, Nor Louise, and her five children, among whom Maria was the third and youngest daughter. On 29 December 1942, Mrs. Hertogh gave birth to her sixth child, a boy. Three days later, Maria went to stay with Aminah binte Mohammad, a 42-year-old Malay woman from Kemaman, Terengganu, Malaya (now Malaysia) and a close friend of Nor Louise.

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