[lbo-talk] Tan Malaka

geert lovink geert at desk.nl
Sat Jul 7 08:50:43 PDT 2007



> From: Geert Lovink <geert at xs4all.nl>
> Date: 7 July 2007 5:41:57 PM
> To: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages at gmail.com>
> Cc: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: Tan Malaka
>
> This is the wikipedia entry about Tan Malaka's death:
>
> Imprisonment, release, and death
>
> In response to the Persatuan Perjuangan's continued opposition, the
> Sukarno government arrested most of the coalition's leadership,
> including Tan Malaka, in March 1946. He remained in jail until
> September 1948.
> During his detention, the PKI emerged as the strongest critic of the
> government's diplomatic stance. The translator of his autobiography,
> Helen Jarvis, has argued that Tan Malaka and the rest of the Persatuan
> Perjuangan leaders were released to provide a less threatening
> opposition than the PKI.[8] By now, Tan Malaka and the PKI were
> thoroughly estranged; he was hated within the party for his harsh
> criticisms of the 1920s, and he distrusted the strategic judgement of
> the current PKI leaders.
>
> Upon his release, he spent late 1948 in Yogyakarta, working to form a
> new political party, called the Partai Murba (Proletarian Party), but
> was unable to repeat his previous success at attracting a popular
> following. When the Dutch captured the national government in December
> 1948, he fled the city for rural East Java, where he hoped he would be
> protected by anti-republican guerrilla forces. He established his head
> quarter in Blimbing, a village surrounded by rice fields. He connected
> himself to major Sabarudin, leader of the Bataljon 38. In Malaka's
> opinion Sabarudin's was the only armed group that was really fighting
> the Dutch. Sabarudin however was in conflict with all other armed
> groups. On February 17, the TNI leaders in East Java decided that
> Sabarudin and his companions were to be captured and convicted
> following military law. On the 19th they captured Tan Malaka in
> Blimbing. On February 20 the infamous Dutch Korps Speciale Troepen
> (KST) happened to start the so called 'operation Tiger' from the East
> Javanese town of Nganjuk. They advanced quickly and brutally. Poeze
> (2007) describes in detail how the TNI soldiers fled into the moutains
> an how Tan Malaka, already injured, walked into a TNI-post and was
> promptly executed on February 21, 1949. No report was made and Malaka
> was buried in the woods[9].
>
> ---
>
> Note that a study of a certain Harry Poeze is mentioned here. It came
> out earlier this year, here in the Netherlands. It is a three-volume
> study, in Dutch, which claims to have found the real circumstances
> under which Tan Malaka died.
>
> Poeze, Harry A. (2007). Verguisd en vergeten; Tan Malaka, de linkse
> beweging en de Indonesische Revolutie, 1945-1949. 'KITLV, 3 parts,
> 2200 pages, ISBN 978-90-6718-258-4.
>
> Best, Geert
>
>
>



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