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Indonesia has a dark secret.
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For over 400 years,
the people of this nation
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suffered under colonial oppression.
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Freedom fighters
kicked the colonial oppressors out
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in a bloody independence war.
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They united different cultures
on their one flag in a new nation.
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But not everyone wants to be part
of this nation.
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The people of West Papua have no strong
ethnic or historic ties to Indonesia,
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but their land is filled
with valuable resources.
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Resources that Indonesia wants, and
so they are oppressed in their own lands.
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Did colonialism ever leave Indonesia?
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Just when I finished this video,
Indonesia's president expressed regret
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over human rights violations in the past.
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He talked about atrocities
against many groups,
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against communists, against whole regions
like Aceh and West Papua.
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And I think to understand this present,
we have to look at the past.
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We have to look at how Indonesia
came to be a nation state.
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And for that we have to look
at the colonial rule under the Dutch.
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So it's the early 1900s and
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the Dutch have been in parts of Indonesia
for almost 300 years.
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They came for spices
but stayed to start a plantation economy.
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It was quite successful for them,
but that included this whole European
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colonialists exploiting the local populace
for profit bit.
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Well, you know how it goes.
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Just 40 years later, that communications
would kick the Dutch out
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in a bloody independence war.
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But that's not something
you would really say in the early 1900s,
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because the Dutch are actually expanding
their colony at a breakneck speed.
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In a matter of decades they double
the land that they have in Indonesia.
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And at the start of the First World War,
the Dutch Indies seems set.
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It seems finished, it has all the borders
that we recognize modern Indonesia by,
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from Aceh in the west
to Papua in the east.
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But these places are really only part
of the Dutch empire since the early 1900s.
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It's not as if the Dutch
had been there for ages, and the fact that
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they've been there for just a short
time will be important for the story.
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So just as the colony seems finished,
the wish for independence starts to brew.
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You can see this
when the Dutch want to host a party.
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They want to celebrate 100 years
of independence from French occupation
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under Napoleon.
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They celebrate this also in the Indies,
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and they ask the Indonesians for money.
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You know, to help celebrate freedom
from foreign occupation.
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Really. You can't make this stuff up.
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In response to this request
one Indonesian writes an article
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where he states; If I were a Dutchman,
I would never celebrate an anniversary
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in a country that we ruled the first gives
the subjugated people their freedom.
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Then we can commemorate our own freedom.
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Ouch.
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This is already in 1913 and the wish
for freedom is only getting bigger.
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In the following decades,
political movements emerge, and the idea
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of an Indonesian nation
state starts to set the scene.
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The Dutch, they don't really get this
independence vibe at all really.
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Just before the Second World War,
the Dutch government says, We've been here
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for 300 years,
we'll be here for 300 more years,
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and then we can talk.
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You want to know a secret?
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It's going to be a lot less than that.
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And then south into Malaysia and the East
Indies with its fabulous empire of tin.
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Foil and rubber.
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The Second World War actually
gives Indonesians a flicker of hope.
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The Japanese conquered Indonesia
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and they entered the country
with a slogan, Asia for the Asians.
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Maybe they can get independence
to the Indonesians.
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Well, no.
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They are exploited
and subjugated to new aggressions.
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The Indonesians
are going to have to fight for it.
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When it's 1945
and the Second World War is over.
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The war for Indonesian
independence is just beginning.
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You have men like Sukarno Sjahrir
and Hatta that proclaim independence.
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They want to build a new state
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that follows the borders
of the Dutch colonial states.
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But they have a problem.
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I know have been talking about
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Indonesians this, Indonesians that, it's
to make it easier to follow this story.
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But the idea of a unified Indonesia
with all different
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peoples,
there was actually a really young idea.
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It didn't have really deep roots.
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This colony, it's not a unified nation.
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It's a mess of islands,
former kingdoms and peoples
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that only have one thing in common:
that they were ruled by the Dutch.
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And as I just mentioned before,
some of these places had only been part
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of the colonial empire for a few decades.
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So how are they going to take
all these different peoples
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and make them into a nation state?
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They do have one thing.
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They have a language.
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For centuries, the Malay language
has been used by traders
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to speak to each other in the region.
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And so when the Dutch come,
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they use this lingua franca
to communicate with the people
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and they use it to administer the empire.
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They even prohibited it,
the native people, to learn Dutch.
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And this is why a Brit can travel to India
and order a curry.
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Where for for me. If I want to go
get a gado gado in Indonesia.
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Well, Dutch won't really help me.
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No one really
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speaks this Malay language
as a first language.
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But these upstart revolutionaries
adopt it as a new one.
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Bahasa Indonesia.
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If you look at their national emblem,
you can see these new leaders
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have to consider the fact
Indonesia is such a diverse country.
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And here you can see the text, which is.
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Bhinekka Tungall Ika
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Bhinekka Tungall Ika.
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It means something
like unity in diversity.
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They Dutch see this happening
and they're like,
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no way, you are going to be independent.
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Don't you see what we've been through?
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This has been a Second World War.
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We've been occupied by the Germans.
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We need resources
to rebuild the Netherlands.
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Don't you see that we're the victims here?
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There's a Dutch saying that shows
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how they think about giving independence
to Indonesians.
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It says Indonesia
verloren, rampsoed geboren.
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This translates into something like losing
Indonesia is the birth of disaster.
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The Dutch start
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a war to get their calling back
and there's all kinds of atrocities.
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Indonesian youth start
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a revolution and kill thousands of people
they associate with the colonial system.
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Dutch, Europeans, Moroccans,
the Chinese and the aristocracy.
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There's literally just 14 year olds
with bamboo sticks going on a rampage.
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And in the war, Dutch commit
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all kind of war crimes, for which
the Dutch king just recently apologized.
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In line
with earlier statements by my governments
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where I would like
to express my and repeated
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regrets and.
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Apologies.
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Quite The apology eh?
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During this war the Americans step in
because they feel like colonies are stupid
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and they are afraid communism
might take over in this young country.
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So the Dutch leave, but not before
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asking Indonesians to take up the bill
for their own independence war.
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The total tally more than €2 billion
in modern day money.
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We really have a way
of making other people pay for our shit.
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But hey, Indonesia's
independence is finally recognized.
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Everyone is happy to join this shiny
new nationstate, right?
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Well, not exactly.
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There are revolts
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over here.
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Over here and over here.
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This is a new nation,
and it's a fragile nation.
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I don't think that's super surprising.
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I mean, it took hundreds of years, wars
and revolutions
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in Europe to get to our present day
nation states.
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In the end,
there's one part of the old Dutch colony
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that didn't make it into this new nation
state of Indonesia.
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It's a place far away
from the big population centers
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with untouched nature, tropical forests,
huge mountains and hidden resources.
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This is a place
that has a lot of different names
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and every name has
a lot of political weight.
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But for this video, I'm just going to call
it West Papua.
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The Dutch stay put here.
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At first,
I think it's a bit of a desperate attempt
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to cling to the status
of big colonial power.
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They just weren't ready to let it
go, I guess.
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And before this time, they really weren't
interested in this place.
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But now they build schools and roads
and they educate the people.
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They make some vague promises
about helping Papuans
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achieve self-government and independence.
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What happens next is a pivotal moment
in the history of West
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Papua totally shaped the trajectory
of this part of the world.
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And it shows how the quest for resources
and Cold War geopolitics
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influence people on the ground.
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We see the same mechanisms, the need for
resources that we've seen with the Dutch,
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because the Indonesian government
wants this place to be part of the nation.
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They say they want to free it
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from colonial oppression
and now comes a succession of two leaders.
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They have almost identical names,
so pay attention.
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The first one is
Sukarno is a guy who has been the leader
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of the rise of Indonesia
all the way back in the Second World War.
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And then we have Suharto.
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He's an upstart
and he's a really strong anti-communist.
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So Sukarno wants to annex Papua
and he gets support from the Soviet Union.
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And when the Russian leader attacks
America and her colonial cronies,
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Sukarno leads the applause.
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And that's something the US really doesn't
want in this time.
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So as communism grows in Indonesia,
the CIA interferes
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and Sukarno is replaced
by the dictator Suharto.
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And here you thought
the CIA was only organizing coups
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and propping up dictators
in South America, right?
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Well, if you look at the time,
they're already getting wired in Vietnam
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and they want to do everything
to stop communism from spreading.
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We will persist in the defense of freedom,
he says.
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And our continuing actions will be those
which are made necessary
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by the continuing aggression of others.
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The Suharto is not a nice dude at all.
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In just one year
he kills a million suspected
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communist and left wing people
to enforce his grip on power.
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A USA diplomat that gave Indonesians
intel on potential communists
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later
says they probably killed a lot of people.
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And I probably have
a lot of blood on my hands.
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But that's not all bad.
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For Suharto, the goal is clear.
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He wants a centralized state unity
for all Indonesians and for the Americans.
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It's great.
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He is anti communist.
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This is not a video about the U.S.
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and foreign influence,
but it is important for what happens next.
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The U.S.
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pressured
the Dutch to really let go of West Papua.
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And when the international community
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says they are going to let Papuans
decide their fate.
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Well, you know what's coming.
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In the
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UN supervised act of free choice
a group of thousand
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tribal leaders get to decide
if they want to join Indonesian Republic.
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But the event is a sham.
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Suharto puts a lot of stress
on the leaders to folks to join.
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And what about the leaders
of the free world?
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Well, they turn a blind eye.
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In a message to Washington, the U.S.
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ambassador estimates up to 90% of Papuans
support independence.
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They're not going to achieve it.
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So now Papua is part of Indonesia.
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The Papuans have seen the past
few decade as a bad dream.
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They don't feel part of the nation.
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They have almost
no representation in government.
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They feel discriminated against.
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Transmigration of Indonesians
from other islands into Papua
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have almost made Papuans
a minority in their own land.
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Decades of indiscriminate killings
and the domination of economic positions
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by Indonesians from other islands
have fueled the tension.
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An estimated 100000 to 500000 people
have been killed in the past decades.
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An incident where Papuan students
were attacked for supposedly
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not being patriotic fueled protests both
outside and inside of West Papua protests.
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This leads to some understanding
by other Indonesians.
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From the Indian government's perspective?
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It's not all bad this region is now
receiving more money from their resources.
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There is infrastructural development
and for the first time
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a ministry is run
by a man from Papuan descent.
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Transmigration was stopped in 2015.
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The Indonesian government is conducting
research on the behavior of Indonesian
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military and Papuanresistance
fighters have killed and torture people.
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Why does the Indonesian government
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do everything to keep this
as part of their republic?
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For one, I think they really believe
in a unified Indonesia
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based on these Dutch colonial borders.
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They have been extremely successful
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in bringing all these different peoples
together in one nation states,
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rallying around a national language
and national philosophy.
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But these borders are still a problematic
holdover from the colonial times.
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So has everything changed
since the Dutch left?
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Is this modern day colonialism?
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I'll let you decide,
even if you think it's not.
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It still has to do
with a legacy of colonialism.
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As so many other things
in our present day.
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Like why so many African flags
used green, yellow and red.
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For the answer we have to look at history.
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What was the situation before all this?
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Colonialism.
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European powers had carved up the whole
of Africa in a matter of decades,
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and the flag design was decided
by the colonial powers.
00:13:32
This is a video I made and that will be
out on YouTube in a few weeks.
00:13:36
But you can actually check it out
right now on Nebula.
00:13:39
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00:13:42
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00:13:49
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00:13:54
It's built by me
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