Is Indonesia a Nation State

Indonesia has a dark secret. For over 400 years, the people of this nation suffered under colonial oppression. Freedom fighters kicked the colonial oppressors out in a bloody independence war.

They united different cultures on their one flag in a new nation. But not everyone wants to be part of this nation. The people of West Papua have no strong ethnic or historic ties to Indonesia, but their land is filled with valuable resources.

Resources that Indonesia wants, and so they are oppressed in their own lands. Did colonialism ever leave Indonesia? Just when I finished this video, Indonesia's president expressed regret over human rights violations in the past.

He talked about atrocities against many groups, against communists, against whole regions like Aceh and West Papua. And I think to understand this present, we have to look at the past. We have to look at how Indonesia came to be a nation state.

And for that we have to look at the colonial rule under the Dutch. So it's the early 1900s and the Dutch have been in parts of Indonesia for almost 300 years. They came for spices but stayed to start a plantation economy.

It was quite successful for them, but that included this whole European colonialists exploiting the local populace for profit bit. Well, you know how it goes. Just 40 years later, that communications would kick the Dutch out in a bloody independence war.

But that's not something you would really say in the early 1900s, because the Dutch are actually expanding their colony at a breakneck speed. In a matter of decades they double the land that they have in Indonesia. And at the start of the First World War, the Dutch Indies seems set.

It seems finished, it has all the borders that we recognize modern Indonesia by, from Aceh in the west to Papua in the east. But these places are really only part of the Dutch empire since the early 1900s. It's not as if the Dutch had been there for ages, and the fact that they've been there for just a short time will be important for the story.

So just as the colony seems finished, the wish for independence starts to brew. You can see this when the Dutch want to host a party. They want to celebrate 100 years of independence from French occupation under Napoleon.

They celebrate this also in the Indies, and they ask the Indonesians for money. You know, to help celebrate freedom from foreign occupation. Really.

You can't make this stuff up. In response to this request one Indonesian writes an article where he states; If I were a Dutchman, I would never celebrate an anniversary in a country that we ruled the first gives the subjugated people their freedom. Then we can commemorate our own freedom.

Ouch. This is already in 1913 and the wish for freedom is only getting bigger. In the following decades, political movements emerge, and the idea of an Indonesian nation state starts to set the scene.

The Dutch, they don't really get this independence vibe at all really. Just before the Second World War, the Dutch government says, We've been here for 300 years, we'll be here for 300 more years, and then we can talk. You want to know a secret?

It's going to be a lot less than that. And then south into Malaysia and the East Indies with its fabulous empire of tin. Foil and rubber.

The Second World War actually gives Indonesians a flicker of hope. The Japanese conquered Indonesia and they entered the country with a slogan, Asia for the Asians. Maybe they can get independence to the Indonesians.

Well, no. They are exploited and subjugated to new aggressions. The Indonesians are going to have to fight for it.

When it's 1945 and the Second World War is over. The war for Indonesian independence is just beginning. You have men like Sukarno Sjahrir and Hatta that proclaim independence.

They want to build a new state that follows the borders of the Dutch colonial states. But they have a problem. I know have been talking about Indonesians this, Indonesians that, it's to make it easier to follow this story.

But the idea of a unified Indonesia with all different peoples, there was actually a really young idea. It didn't have really deep roots. This colony, it's not a unified nation.

It's a mess of islands, former kingdoms and peoples that only have one thing in common: that they were ruled by the Dutch. And as I just mentioned before, some of these places had only been part of the colonial empire for a few decades. So how are they going to take all these different peoples and make them into a nation state?

They do have one thing. They have a language. For centuries, the Malay language has been used by traders to speak to each other in the region.

And so when the Dutch come, they use this lingua franca to communicate with the people and they use it to administer the empire. They even prohibited it, the native people, to learn Dutch. And this is why a Brit can travel to India and order a curry.

Where for for me. If I want to go get a gado gado in Indonesia. Well, Dutch won't really help me.

No one really speaks this Malay language as a first language. But these upstart revolutionaries adopt it as a new one. Bahasa Indonesia.

If you look at their national emblem, you can see these new leaders have to consider the fact Indonesia is such a diverse country. And here you can see the text, which is. Bhinekka Tungall Ika Bhinekka Tungall Ika.

It means something like unity in diversity. They Dutch see this happening and they're like, no way, you are going to be independent. Don't you see what we've been through?

This has been a Second World War. We've been occupied by the Germans. We need resources to rebuild the Netherlands.

Don't you see that we're the victims here? There's a Dutch saying that shows how they think about giving independence to Indonesians. It says Indonesia verloren, rampsoed geboren.

This translates into something like losing Indonesia is the birth of disaster. The Dutch start a war to get their calling back and there's all kinds of atrocities. Indonesian youth start a revolution and kill thousands of people they associate with the colonial system.

Dutch, Europeans, Moroccans, the Chinese and the aristocracy. There's literally just 14 year olds with bamboo sticks going on a rampage. And in the war, Dutch commit all kind of war crimes, for which the Dutch king just recently apologized.

In line with earlier statements by my governments where I would like to express my and repeated regrets and. Apologies. Quite The apology eh?

During this war the Americans step in because they feel like colonies are stupid and they are afraid communism might take over in this young country. So the Dutch leave, but not before asking Indonesians to take up the bill for their own independence war. The total tally more than €2 billion in modern day money.

We really have a way of making other people pay for our shit. But hey, Indonesia's independence is finally recognized. Everyone is happy to join this shiny new nationstate, right?

Well, not exactly. There are revolts over here. Over here and over here.

This is a new nation, and it's a fragile nation. I don't think that's super surprising. I mean, it took hundreds of years, wars and revolutions in Europe to get to our present day nation states.

In the end, there's one part of the old Dutch colony that didn't make it into this new nation state of Indonesia. It's a place far away from the big population centers with untouched nature, tropical forests, huge mountains and hidden resources. This is a place that has a lot of different names and every name has a lot of political weight.

But for this video, I'm just going to call it West Papua. The Dutch stay put here. At first, I think it's a bit of a desperate attempt to cling to the status of big colonial power.

They just weren't ready to let it go, I guess. And before this time, they really weren't interested in this place. But now they build schools and roads and they educate the people.

They make some vague promises about helping Papuans achieve self-government and independence. What happens next is a pivotal moment in the history of West Papua totally shaped the trajectory of this part of the world. And it shows how the quest for resources and Cold War geopolitics influence people on the ground.

We see the same mechanisms, the need for resources that we've seen with the Dutch, because the Indonesian government wants this place to be part of the nation. They say they want to free it from colonial oppression and now comes a succession of two leaders. They have almost identical names, so pay attention.

The first one is Sukarno is a guy who has been the leader of the rise of Indonesia all the way back in the Second World War. And then we have Suharto. He's an upstart and he's a really strong anti-communist.

So Sukarno wants to annex Papua and he gets support from the Soviet Union. And when the Russian leader attacks America and her colonial cronies, Sukarno leads the applause. And that's something the US really doesn't want in this time.

So as communism grows in Indonesia, the CIA interferes and Sukarno is replaced by the dictator Suharto. And here you thought the CIA was only organizing coups and propping up dictators in South America, right? Well, if you look at the time, they're already getting wired in Vietnam and they want to do everything to stop communism from spreading.

We will persist in the defense of freedom, he says. And our continuing actions will be those which are made necessary by the continuing aggression of others. The Suharto is not a nice dude at all.

In just one year he kills a million suspected communist and left wing people to enforce his grip on power. A USA diplomat that gave Indonesians intel on potential communists later says they probably killed a lot of people. And I probably have a lot of blood on my hands.

But that's not all bad. For Suharto, the goal is clear. He wants a centralized state unity for all Indonesians and for the Americans.

It's great. He is anti communist. This is not a video about the U.

S. and foreign influence, but it is important for what happens next. The U.

S. pressured the Dutch to really let go of West Papua. And when the international community says they are going to let Papuans decide their fate.

Well, you know what's coming. In the UN supervised act of free choice a group of thousand tribal leaders get to decide if they want to join Indonesian Republic. But the event is a sham.

Suharto puts a lot of stress on the leaders to folks to join. And what about the leaders of the free world? Well, they turn a blind eye.

In a message to Washington, the U. S. ambassador estimates up to 90% of Papuans support independence.

They're not going to achieve it. So now Papua is part of Indonesia. The Papuans have seen the past few decade as a bad dream.

They don't feel part of the nation. They have almost no representation in government. They feel discriminated against.

Transmigration of Indonesians from other islands into Papua have almost made Papuans a minority in their own land. Decades of indiscriminate killings and the domination of economic positions by Indonesians from other islands have fueled the tension. An estimated 100000 to 500000 people have been killed in the past decades.

An incident where Papuan students were attacked for supposedly not being patriotic fueled protests both outside and inside of West Papua protests. This leads to some understanding by other Indonesians. From the Indian government's perspective?

It's not all bad this region is now receiving more money from their resources. There is infrastructural development and for the first time a ministry is run by a man from Papuan descent. Transmigration was stopped in 2015.

The Indonesian government is conducting research on the behavior of Indonesian military and Papuanresistance fighters have killed and torture people. Why does the Indonesian government do everything to keep this as part of their republic? For one, I think they really believe in a unified Indonesia based on these Dutch colonial borders.

They have been extremely successful in bringing all these different peoples together in one nation states, rallying around a national language and national philosophy. But these borders are still a problematic holdover from the colonial times. So has everything changed since the Dutch left?

Is this modern day colonialism? I'll let you decide, even if you think it's not. It still has to do with a legacy of colonialism.

As so many other things in our present day. Like why so many African flags used green, yellow and red. For the answer we have to look at history.

What was the situation before all this? Colonialism. European powers had carved up the whole of Africa in a matter of decades, and the flag design was decided by the colonial powers.

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