British intervention Indonesia

British intervention Indonesia

David Jardine, Carlisle, UK

Sixty years ago on Aug. 17 Indonesia's Founding Fathers
President Sukarno and Vice-President Mohamad Hatta issued the
Proclamation of Independence or Proklomasi as it is known. An
historic event. The national leaders, under great pressure from
militant nationalist youth, had seized the hour.

Unknown to the leaders and their enthusiastic followers,
forces were soon to move against them. Over the horizon were the
British, whose brief was to secure the terms of the Japanese
surrender that had brought the Asia-Pacific War to an end. These
terms included the demobilization of the Japanese forces and the
eventual repatriation of the soldiers, sailors and airmen to
Japan.

Of more pressing concern to the British Supreme Commander for
South East Asia Lord Louis Mountbatten in the light of the many
stories of Japanese wartime atrocities that had already emerged
was the fate of the tens of thousands of Allied POW and other
internees, principally the Dutch women and children, held in
Japanese camps in Java, Sumatra and elsewhere.

Allied SEAC HQ in Kandy, Ceylon issued "instructions" over the
radio to these unfortunates, who had suffered grievously in the
camps for more than three years, to stay put until Allied troops
arrived to free them. The Japanese were under strict orders to
secure the camps and to maintain law and order. All of this,
needless to say, was going on over the heads of the Indonesian
Republican leaders.

A collision course was set for which the Indonesians should
take no responsibility; their justifiable aim was complete
independence from the Netherlands after more than three centuries
of colonial rule and exploitation. The Dutch, whose homeland had
been smashed by the Nazi occupation and war and also by the
Famine Winter of 1944-1945, were intent on re-conquest of the
colony once known as the Dutch East Indies.

When Mountbatten dispatched British and Indian troops to
Indonesia in September 1945 no attempt had been made by him to
establish contact with the Republican government. Indeed, on the
contrary, these forces would land with no prior intelligence
whatsoever, as Mountbatten himself would famously lament. The
British, whatever the rightfulness of their intentions towards
the POW and internees, were simply blundering into the unknown.
The Dutch, meanwhile, broadcast from Australia to denounce
Sukarno and Hatta as "quislings".

Younger Indonesian readers might now be mystified by this
reference. For their reference, Vidkun Quisling was the Norwegian
leader who threw in his lot with the Nazi occupation of his
country when the vast majority of his people either silently or
actively resisted it. To call Sukarno and Hatta "quislings" is
historically inaccurate. Neither man preached the virtues of the
Japanese occupation of the Indies, nor did they lead a puppet
government; both simply had an eye on the future and whatever
room for maneuver their nationalist cause might have.

The British force that arrived in Batavia in September 1945
was led by Gen. Sir Philip Christison and included men of the
Seaforth Highlanders, a Scottish regiment whose forebears had,
interestingly, seen service in Java under Raffles in 1811-1816,
and Indian regiments such as the Gurkha Rifles and the Mahrattas.
For the humanitarian purposes mentioned earlier teams called
RAPWI or Repatriation of Allied Prisoners of War and Internees
had been formed and these fanned out, where they could in order
to locate their targets.

Many of the Dutch, meanwhile, were in no mood to obey
Mountbatten's instructions to stay put, even, that is, if they
had had access to a radio, an offense liable to cruel punishment
by the Japanese. They were intent on returning to their pre-war
homes in the cities and plantations, believing that they could
restore the "status quo ante". Critically, the British were slow
to realize that this ambition was both futile and highly
provocative to the Indonesians.

The newly proclaimed Republic was now on a collision course
with battle-hardened if war-weary British and Indian troops, some
of them fresh from the privations of the Burma campaign. If the
British would not recognize the republic and negotiate with it,
where to next?

The author is a freelance writer.