Indonesia in Peril
TAS, SAL
Communist-controlled secret police stages anti-Dutch trials in preparation for a drive to rig elections against non-Communists Indonesia in Peril Indonesia today is in the position of...
...The police terror in Djakarta is so powerful that not a single member of parliament has dared interpolate the Government about the secret police...
...For three centuries, Indonesia was a Dutch colony...
...What is behind this campaign...
...The present Indonesian Government, headed by Ali Sastroamidjojo, is based on a parliamentary majority in which the Communists form the most dynamic component...
...there were other such false details, reminiscent of the Moscow Trials...
...Amid this chaos, all that remains is the prestige of a few outstanding names...
...others have become invalids...
...Both the Communist party and the Communist parliamentary group continued undisturbed...
...One Dutchman had to be sent to a mental institution after his "interrogation...
...One man named Smit was tortured in the place of another suspect of the same name—who, it later developed, had been in Europe at the time of his alleged crimes...
...Indonesian Communists played an important role right from the start...
...Vice President Hatta...
...Occupied by the Japanese during World War II, it refused to submit to Dutch rule again after V-J Day...
...But, as the state sank further and further into trouble, many members of parliament began to concentrate on one goal: enriching themselves...
...In opposing elections now, the Communists have an ally in President Soekarno, who fears losing power after an election...
...They confessed that they were members of the Netherlands Indies Guerrilla Organization —non-existent...
...It had left a terrible legacy of banditry which the young state was too weak to destroy...
...Young, ambitious, often half-educated Indonesians, anxious to corner the key jobs for themselves, exploited the situation and fostered xenophobia...
...Meanwhile, the Communists are using the few remaining Dutchmen in Indonesia in a vast, complicated propaganda offensive...
...an aroused world public opinion can lend valuable support to freedom-loving Indonesians and encourage resistance to the police terror...
...The Government's next step will be to turn the Dutch "confessions" against Hatta, Sjahrir and their friends...
...And both the anti-Communist leaders and Western diplomats in Djakarta are standing by virtually paralyzed...
...But meanwhile living standards sank to 60 per cent of prewar, poverty spread, parts of the country rebelled...
...The Dutch High Commissioner in Djakarta has established that these confessions were extracted under torture by the Indonesian GPU...
...Undercover maneuvering forced the dismissal of the Sultan of Djokga, the energetic Minister of War who had made a serious effort to destroy the Communist guerrillas...
...One of them is Soekarno, Indonesia's President, a nationalist leader and agitator since his youth, a "martyr" who had been repeatedly jailed by the Dutch...
...A Dutch military mission, invited by the Government, went to Djakarta and did an excellent job huilding up the Indonesian Army...
...But, because this conference represents an intermediary stage, the Indonesian fellow-travelers must keep the Communist conspiracy secret during the Bandung sessions...
...The poor victims were forced to give the names of their accomplices (at state-police dictation), and a few of these turned out to be unbelievably ludicrous...
...A guerrilla war ended in victory for the nationalists', Indonesia won her sovereignty...
...Obviously, the Indonesian Communists are highly vulnerable in the next few weeks...
...who refused to collaborate with the Japanese after they freed him from the Dutch and who led the Indonesian revolutionaries to their first political victories...
...Bouman, by accusing him of bribing witnesses, hut they had to retract this charge...
...some of the prisoners refused to sign confessions even after the worst torture...
...As corruption increased, the parliament increasingly lost contact with the masses...
...The press is silent because editors fear destruction of their property and arrest of their staffs...
...The present Indonesian regime aims to lead the Asian peoples, through neutralism, in stages into the Communist camp...
...The current proceeding against Dutch businessmen is therefore something like the Reichstag fire trial, which Goering used to paralyze the anti-Nazi forces, and the Shakhty trial in Moscow, when British engineers were used to produce "confessions" of sabotage which laid the groundwork for the Soviet purges of 1936-38...
...After the expulsion of the Dutch, the nationalist leaders had named a temporary Parliament: it was not the By Sal Tas time for real elections...
...But they revolted prematurely and suffered a considerable defeat...
...With this apparatus in hand, the Communists can prepare "safe" elections...
...Some of these prisoners have signed "confessions" which say that they are plotting with the parliamentary opposition to overthrow the Government...
...A group of Indonesians and Chinese were also forced to confess that they had collaborated with the Dutch "subversives...
...Most of these Dutchmen work in enterprises which remain Dutch property, and are regulated under the Dutch-Indonesian Treaty...
...Since then, they have been concentrating their energies on parliament...
...Preparations for a Communist coup are gathering momentum...
...The Justice Department thus acknowledged the supremacy of the secret police...
...If their parties are broken up and deprived of leadership, the Government can then start to organize "free elections...
...As a result, their influence has been felt in many ways...
...That the state has survived has been due to the efforts of a handful of genuine idealists who have worked themselves to death...
...it planned to deport them to China—a barely disguised form of murder—but pressure from public opinion abroad stopped them...
...Unfortunately, the Indonesian nationalist chiefs did not follow up this victory with energetic measures...
...This "state police" is not responsible INDONESIA to the Department of Justice...
...Communist-controlled secret police stages anti-Dutch trials in preparation for a drive to rig elections against non-Communists Indonesia in Peril Indonesia today is in the position of Czechoslovakia six months before Jan Masaryk's suicide...
...Witnesses for the defense have disappeared...
...In fact, it is probable that the Masjumi and the Socialists would be able to form a stable majority if free elections were held...
...There was a pathetically small intelligentsia, for education had been quite neglected under Dutch rule...
...The defense lawyer was practically powerless...
...Soekarno is a sort of oriental Aneurin Bevan, a gifted orator, very vain, rather unscrupulous, with a strong will to power...
...The young state needed administrative, commercial and technical help...
...When he sought documents on his client from the Department of Justice, he was told that the secret police refused to deliver them...
...The Netherlands was the logical source of such help, but the war had left bitter anti-Dutch sentiment...
...Both the American and British embassies have been implicated in the trials of the Dutchmen...
...In the last few weeks, several Dutchmen have been arrested by the new state police...
...Now the stakes are much higher...
...The party waged a successful campaign against the Socialists in the labor movement and succeeded in capturing the trade unions...
...Next month, Indonesia will play host to the Afro-Asian conference in Bandung...
...First, the Government wants to discredit Dutch business firms, so that it can expropriate their properties without compensation in violation of the treaties...
...The Communists took the fore in postponing elections, because they knew that the Moslem party, the Masjumi, would undoubtedly emerge as the strongest single block...
...The Dutch Military Mission was dismissed after much intrigue...
...These enterprises have suffered Indonesian persecution for some time...
...They are attacked and plundered by bandits, forced to pay exorbitant sums which no Indonesian firms face, harried by extravagant wage demands...
...Soon Communist power began to revive...
...he was succeeded as Minister of War by a fellow-traveler...
...the tortured prisoners have been deprived of their passports and otherwise intimidated...
...Elections have been promised to the Indonesian people for several years, but the present parliament has constantly delayed such elections...
...Soekarno has also overshadowed the Socialist leader Sjahrir...
...The civil war had undermined Indonesian society...
...Many confessions were retracted as soon as the torture ceased...
...When the case came to public trial, the defense lawyer was able to prove that the confessions were pure nonsense and were dictated by agents provocateurs...
...One capable observer calls Soekarno a "gambler," but the fact is that his theatrical personality has overshadowed that of a far more realistic and able leader...
...Communists and fellow-travelers have infiltrated the army and police...
...the very freedom of Indonesia's millions hangs in the balance...
...Holland did everything it could to restore its reputation in Indonesia...
...Sjahrir became discouraged early, and stood aside when Soekarno took the spotlight...
...Finally, a new special secret police has been organized, modeled on the Gestapo and CPU...
...The prisoners had to confess that arms for the alleged Dutch guerrilla warfare had been supplied by Britain and America...
...it is responsible only to a Communist state official who, in turn, is responsible to no other minister...
...Some time ago, the secret police arrested two Chinese journalists, both Indonesian citizens, who had criticized the Peking regime...
...The Indonesian people in 1945 were 90 per cent illiterate...
...Despite this, both embassies continue to produce favorable reports on the Indonesian situation...
...The police even tried to eliminate the defense lawyer, Mr...
...A certain Colonel Thompson was not even in Indonesia at the time of his alleged subversion...
...At the same time, leaders of the opposition are being involved in the alleged "conspiracy...
Vol. 38 • March 1955 • No. 13
