Now abandoned, Krui seaport tells of glorious past

Now abandoned, Krui seaport tells of glorious past

The Jakarta Post, Krui, West Lampung

Once a busy seaport in West Lampung, Krui is nothing more than
a pale shadow of a glorious past.

An old, abandoned customs and excise building, a berth,
several old and empty warehouses and a fortress stand witness to
its bustling past.

The building, on which is written the Dutch word Douane
meaning customs, the berth and the warehouses were all built
during Dutch colonial times.

Big ships from outside Hindia (the old name of Indonesia)
visited the port to carry pepper, coffee and resin from villages
in West Lampung and North Lampung to be sold abroad.

Export activities started to decline during the struggle for
independence from 1945 to 1949. They stopped completely in the
early 1960s when the government, under President Sukarno, started
to build roads to connect isolated areas to provincial capital
Bandar Lampung.

Nuri, a 70-year-old fisherman who arrived in Krui from his
hometown of Tegal, Central Java in the 1950s on a wooden boat,
remembers the old times well.

"It used to be a lively seaport visited by big ships from
other islands and abroad," Nuri, the father of four children and
five grandchildren, told The Jakarta Post.

Life was also very interesting in Krui at the time. There were
lots of migrants, including hundreds of Chinese families. Most of
the Chinese settlers then become traders in a traditional market
near the port which faces the Indian Ocean. Some of them married
local residents.

The number of Chinese in Krui, as in other places across the
country, decreased after the issuance of government regulation
No. 10/1959, which banned Chinese traders from operating in
villages.

According to Melly G. Tan's book, titled Golongan Etnis
Tionghoa di Indonesia, Suatu Masalah Pembinaan Kesatuan Bangsa
(Ethic Chinese in Indonesia, A Problem in United Nation-
Building), at least 96,000 Chinese moved to mainland China
following the issuance of the regulation.

Backed by the military, the regulation, which was originally
aimed at enabling local traders to become established, became a
racist policy and was used to rid the country of the Chinese.

According to Brawi, a Krui native, many Chinese living in the
area have still not obtained Indonesian citizenship.

"Only a few Chinese managed to obtain their citizenship. They
live at the market," 67-year-old Brawi told the Post.

Nowadays, Krui is full of small wooden boats belonging to
local fishermen. A small building in the corner of the port is
used as an auction house for the catch.

The government built a larger auction venue two years ago but
it has remained unused since it is far from the berth. The
fishermen have continued to use the old building.

In a hill near the seaport, there is a fortress built by the
Dutch.

Rumors have it that during the independence war, Dutch and
other foreign ships were afraid to enter the seaport because they
saw many canons in the fortress and along the seaport. However,
the Krui people said there were no canons at the fortress and the
Dutch were seeing apparitions.