[lbo-talk] Tan Malaka

[geert lovink]

> 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
>
>
>