The Phantom World of Digul Policing as Politics in Colonial Indonesia 1926-1941

364 Pages·2021·2.25 MB·English

KYOTO-CSEAS SERIES ON ASIAN STUDIES 23
Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University
THE PHANTOM WORLD
OF DIGUL
KYOTO-CSEAS SERIES ON ASIAN STUDIES 23
Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University
THE PHANTOM WORLD
OF DIGUL
Policing as Politics in
Colonial Indonesia, 1926–1941
Takashi Shiraishi
NUS PRESS
Singapore
in association with
KYOTO UNIVERSITY PRESS
Japan
© 2021 Takashi Shiraishi
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher.
NUS Press
National University of Singapore
AS3-01-02, 3 Arts Link
Singapore 117569
http://nuspress.nus.edu.sg
ISBN 978-981-325-141-0 (Paper)
Kyoto University Press
Yoshida-South Campus, Kyoto University
69 Yoshida-Konoe-Cho, Sakyo-ku
Kyoto 606-8315
Japan
www.kyoto-up.or.jp
ISBN 978-4-8140-0362-4 (Paper)
National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data
Names: Shiraishi, Takashi, 1950–
Title: The phantom world of Digul : policing as politics in colonial Indonesia,
1926–1941 / Takashi Shiraishi.
Other title(s): Kyoto-CSEAS series on Asian studies ; 23.
Description: Singapore : NUS Press ; Kyoto : in association with Kyoto
University Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographic references and index.
Identifiers: OCN 1241242997 | ISBN 978-981-325-141-0
Subjects: LCSH: Boven Digoel (Concentration camp)--History. | Indonesia--
Politics and government--History--20th century. | Political participation--
Indonesia--History--20th century.
Classification: DDC 959.802--dc23
Cover: An inmate being examined for physical anthropological studies at
the Wilhelmina Hospital at the Tanah Merah camp, this photo from
Boven-Digoel: het land van communisten en kannibalen (Amsterdam:
G. Kolff & Co., 1940), written by the former camp doctor, L.J.A.
Schoonheyt. KITLV 19036, CC-BY license.
Printed by: Markono Print Media Pte Ltd
To
Ben, Jim and Ruth
CONTENTS
List of Images ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1. The Phantom World of Digul 29
2. A New Regime of Order 63
3. Policing the Phantom Underground 99
4. Managing Nationalist Politics 162
5. Politics=Police 199
6. Politics in a Time of Normalcy 242
7. Epilogue 290
Bibliography 306
Index 320
vii
LIST OF IMAGES
(between pp. 98 and 99)
1. The Digul River, with Tanah Merah and Tanah Tinggi both shown.
2. Two boats on the Digul River, c. 1928. The kapal putih is the
government ship Fomalhout, c. 1928.
3. The internment camp at Tanah Merah, shortly after its initial
construction in 1927–28.
4. The military encampment at Tanah Merah, built between the
designated areas for internees and staff.
5. Louis Johan Alexander Schoonheyt on the front porch of the
doctor’s house in the internment camp in Tanah Merah, with a
political internee as a houseboy (rear) and two Papuans (front).
6. Children at the school of the Digul internment camp, January
1929. It was typical for soldiers to bring their families with them,
even on such remote postings.
7. The Wilhelmina Hospital at the Tanah Merah camp conducted
physical anthropological studies of inmates.
8. The Tanah Tinggi camp for the recalcitrant, the Digul within Digul,
40 kilometers and 5 hours by motorboat upriver from Tanah Merah.
9. Tanah Tinggi internees, around 1929. Aside from the regular food
rations the government provided, detainees in Tanah Tinggi were
left largely to themselves.
ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book, which I had long thought would never be finished, was com-
pleted thanks to the encouragement and support of Caroline Sy Hau,
my partner, and Onimaru Takeshi, who invited me to join his project
on comparative states and surveillance, which led me to revisit the issue
of political policing in the Dutch East Indies. John Ingleson, Audrey
Kahin, and Yamamoto Nobuto read the manuscript, entirely or in part,
and offered many helpful and insightful suggestions that saved me from
making elementary mistakes. I would like to thank Peter Schoppert and
the editorial team of NUS Press for making this book a reality.
In many ways this book is a product of my years at Cornell Uni-
versity, particularly the intellectual stimulation and succor provided
by the Southeast Asia Program and the wonderful Wason and Echols
library collections. Portions of this book first appeared as articles and
book chapter in the following publications: “The Phantom World of
Digoel,” Indonesia, no. 61 (1996): 93–118; “Policing the Phantom
Underground,” Indonesia, no. 63 (1997): 1–46; and “A New Regime
of Order: The Origin of Modern Surveillance Politics in Indonesia,”
in Southeast Asia over Three Generations: Essays Presented to Benedict
R. O’G. Anderson, ed. James T. Siegel and Audrey R. Kahin, 47–74
(Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 2003). I thank the
Cornell Southeast Asia Program and Cornell University Press for per-
mission to reprint these articles and book chapter.
I am fortunate to have come to know, and worked with, Benedict
R. O’G. Anderson, Ruth McVey, and James Siegel, from whom I
learned a great deal not only about Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia,
but also about area studies. To these three people I would like to dedi-
cate this book in friendship and gratitude.
xi
INTRODUCTION
The waxing and waning of Indonesian anticolonial activity is the subject
of Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s 1950 short story “Kemudian Lahirlah Dia”
(And then he was born). A nameless first-person narrator, “I” (aku),
recounts his experiences of the so-called “movement” (pergerakan) as a
child growing up in the small town of Blora:
Mother said brother Hurip had joined a political party. How sur-
prised I was to hear that he meddled in politics. In my under-
standing, politics is police, and everyone in our house was disgusted
with anything that had to do with the police.
“Is father not angry because he has joined the police?” I asked.
Mother smiled sweetly, hearing my question. Then, with simple
words [she] explained what politics meant, which was:
“Those who join political parties are the enemy of the police.”
And I understood a little.
Ibu bilang, kak Hurip sudah masuk partai politik. Bukan main
kagetku mendengar dia campur tangan dalam politik. Menurut
pengertianku politik adalah polisi, dan seisi rumah kami jijik pada
apa saja yang berhubungan dengan polisi.
“Tidak marahkah bapak karena dia masuk polisi?” tanyaku.
Ibu tersenyum manis mendengar pertanyaanku itu. Kemudian dengan
kata-kata sederhana menjelaskan apa artinya politik: “Mereka yang
masuk partai politik adalah musuh polisi.”
Dan aku mengerti sedikit.1
1 Pramoedya Ananta Toer, “Kemudian Lahirlah Dia,” in Cerita dari Blora: kumpulan
cerita pendek (Kuala Lumpur: Wira Karya, 1994), 49. Translation is mine.
1
2 The Phantom World of Digul
The story most likely takes place in the years 1932–33, when the
nationalist movement led by Soekarno’s Partindo (Partai Indonesia,
Party of Indonesia) gains momentum, only to fall flat under the weight
of colonial government intervention. The setting is a small town in
which life has changed suddenly with the arrival of the movement,
which establishes art, sports, ketoprak (theater), wayang (shadow play),
dance, and gamelan music associations. Residents become interested
in swadesi, based on India’s Swadeshi movement, which calls for the
boycotting of foreign products and the revival of domestic production
processes, and Japan’s Asian Awakening. Soekarno himself comes to the
town to deliver a speech. People join the scout movement and express
hopes of a better future, of having their own national government,
and of “easterners” (orang timur) no longer being looked down on by
“westerners” (orang barat). People wear lurik, a locally produced coarse
cloth. The narrator’s father, together with his assistant, Hurip, runs his
own private school and heads some of the associations. Father and his
friends talk about swadesi, cooperatives, a people’s bank, education, and
fighting illiteracy. He offers party cadre courses. Many young people
enroll in his school. He buys two stencil duplicators and five typewriters,
producing thousands of copies of textbooks. The family’s house becomes
an office, a hive of intellectual and political activity.
Yet all the while, police officers are watching, and the government
soon hires more police officers. One day, Father is banned from teaching.
Textbooks are confiscated. School enrollment drops. People stop talking
about swadesi and stop buying lurik. The ideals that have hitherto ener-
gized people’s collective action and animated the movement are slowly
dissipated. Individuals resort to different outlets: Hurip is gone, likely
underground, while Father spends days, maybe months, gambling.
In the meantime, the narrator’s baby brother grows in their mother’s
womb and one day he is born. “Eventually, all went back as before.
Our quiet and peaceful small town of Blora.” (Akhirnya: Semua kembali
berjalan seperti tadinya. Tenang dan damai kota kecil kami Blora.)2
2 Ibid., 66. Pramoedya says elsewhere that his house was the center of activity for the
PPPKI (Permoefakatan Perhimpoenan-perhimpoenan Politiek Kebangsaan Indonesia,
Association of Indonesian National Political Associations) in Blora when he was
small. Toer, ed., Cerita dari Digul, vii. See also John Ingleson, Workers, Unions and
Politics: Indonesia in the 1920s and 1930s (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 184–90 about swadesi
and its influence in the Indies.
Introduction 3
One need not tax one’s imagination to see that the phrase “quiet
and peaceful (tenang dan damai)” is a play on the infamous Dutch
mantra “rust en orde” (peace and order, or law and order) that the
Dutch Indies government prized above all and tried to impose on the
Indonesian people. Under specific circumstances that will be the subject
of this study, the idea of politics came to be equated with its suppres-
sion by the police. As the nameless narrator in Pramoedya’s story puts
it, “politics is police,” politics=police.
As Pramoedya tells us, the movement manifested itself in the form
of associations, schools, publications, rallies, and language that expressed
the hopes and dreams of the people. The rise of the movement marked
the arrival of modern popular politics in the Indies in the early years
of the twentieth century. Its activities were manifold, ranging from the
founding of newspapers and journals to organizing rallies, meetings and
strikes; from the establishment of trade unions and political parties to
the composition of novels and songs and the staging of theatrical pro-
ductions and revolts. The movement signified the arrival of something
new, exciting, hopeful, and revolutionary, because the new forms and
languages that the movement introduced enabled people to say what
they could not previously say.3
The movement began in the early twentieth century when Tirto-
adisoerjo (1880–1918), an OSVIA (Opleidingschool voor Inlandsche
Ambtenaren, Training School for Native Officials) graduate who left
government service to become a journalist, published Soenda Berita
(Sunda News), the first Malay-language weekly established, funded, and
run by natives. He also founded a commercial cooperative, the Sarekat
Dagang Islamijah (Islamic Trade Association). Medical students from
the STOVIA (School tot Opleiding van Inlandsche Artsen, School for
Training Native Doctors) went on to establish the Boedi Oetomo (BO,
Noble Endeavor) in 1908.
Another cooperative, the Sarekat Islam (SI, Islamic Association),
was established by Javanese batik traders in Surakarta in 1911 to boycott
the business of Chinese traders. In 1912–13 the SI expanded rapidly
and enormously under the leadership of Oemar Said Tjokroaminoto
(1882–1934) who learned the art and power of the rally from the first
such rally organized by the Indische Partij (Indies Party), which was
established by E.F.E. Douwes Dekker (1879–1950) and joined by Tjipto
3 Takashi Shiraishi, An Age in Motion: Popular Radicalism in Java 1912–1926 (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1990).