Boven-Digoel, often simply called Digoel, was a Dutch concentration camp for political detainees operated in the Dutch East Indies from 1927 to 1947. The Dutch used it to detain thousands of Indonesians, most of whom were members of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), Indonesian nationalists, and their families. It was located in a remote area on the banks of the river Digul, in what is now Boven Digoel Regency in South Papua, Indonesia. The camp was originally opened to intern communists after the failed 1926 uprisings in Java and Sumatra; at its largest extent in 1930 it held around 1,300 internees and 700 family members.
History For hundreds of years, the Dutch authorities in the Indies exiled politically unwanted figures in a variety of places, including what is now Eastern Indonesia, as well as deportation outside the colony to Europe or the Dutch Cape Colony. An early example of exile as punishment took place during the French and British interregnum in the Dutch East Indies, when Stamford Raffles exiled convicts to Karimunjawa. Starting in 1854, the Governor-general of the Dutch East Indies was entitled to exile any resident of the colony without charge or explanation per his "Extraordinary rights" () to preserve peace and order.
De Graeff era (1926–31) This tactic of exiling politically unwanted Indonesians was generally used on a one-off basis until the late 1920s. Following the start of a communist uprising in West Java on 12 November 1926, there was an emergency meeting of the Council of the Dutch East Indies where Governor General Andries Cornelis Dirk de Graeff insisted that a large number of communist leaders across the Indies had to be rounded up as soon as possible.
Soon, thousands of Indonesians were targeted by the Dutch in reaction to the uprisings. Roughly 4,500 were accused of participating directly in the uprising and were imprisoned or sentenced to death. At first this included Communist leaders with documented involvement, but was expanded to include to almost anyone who had taken an identifiable leadership role in the PKI, and then to potential new leaders who could conceivably take the place of those who were detained.
Another 8,500 who had not committed any specific crime also came under scrutiny, and in many cases were also detained. These were low-level Communist party members, journalists, and other associates who had no provable involvement in the events. Out of this 8,500, around a thousand were identified as troublesome. In the period following the uprising, in order to support the mass repression, the political police force was greatly expanded.
With thousands of Indonesians in custody, De Graeff thought that a formal trial would give them a platform to spread their message, and decided that they should be exiled, ideally all to the same place. By early December, a site at Boven-Digoel in an isolated part of Papua was identified as an ideal place for the mass exile by Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) Captain Theo Becking, who had led the repression of the uprising in Java. This location was 450 kilometres up the Digul river and was a barren, sparsely populated area with endemic Malaria. Becking later admitted that the location was chosen hastily to be able to intern the communists as quickly as possible, and that the extent of malaria was not understood at first. It was originally thought to be suitable for rice cultivation and agriculture. Papuan people who lived in the area were initially hostile to the establishment of the camp. Captain Becking was sent to the Tanah Merah site with KNIL soldiers and convict laborers to prepare the camp. They arrived in January 1927 and built a dock on the river, barracks, a hospital, a radio station and post office, and other infrastructure. The first group of fifty internees arrived in March, accompanied by thirty family members, and Becking became the first camp administrator. The Danish travel writer Aage Krarup Nielsen was allowed to sail on the monthlong trip with this first group of exiles.
More boatloads of internees and their families continued to arrive throughout the year, and M. A. Monsjou, a civil servant who had been Controller at Fakfak replaced Becking as administrator at the end of October. Internees were allowed to bring personal items with them from Java and Sumatra. Forced labour was used at first, but quickly abandoned when camp authorities decided that internees were willing to work hard voluntarily to improve their living situation. Captain Becking had been in favour of military discipline and forced labour and was overruled by the government in Batavia. After that, internees who were willing to work for the public good were paid a regular wage instead. Although the internees were managed and surveilled, the camp was not known for strict discipline by guards or prison-like conditions; internees were allowed to work and live "normally" in this place of exile. It was certainly never intended to be an extermination camp like Auschwitz concentration camp; the historian Rudolf Mrázek compared it instead to Theresienstadt Ghetto. There were no fences around the camp, but the surrounding terrain was so difficult that escape was almost impossible. The only part of the camp that was surrounded with barbed wire was the military camp where the 100 KNIL soldiers and administrators lived. This was explicitly done to separate its residents from the internees and to keep them away from political propaganda.
A subset of internees, including many of the most ideological communists, refused to work and were considered "irreconcilables" () by the Dutch. These even sabotaged the crops and efforts of the cooperative detainees. Therefore, a second, more remote camp site called Tanah Tinggi was created for them at Becking's suggestion, 50 kilometres or five hours' motorboat trip upriver from Tanah Merah. Internees in that separate camp, who were also called "naturalists," were mostly isolated from the economy and life in the Tanah Merah camp and only received limited monthly rations of food, which they supplemented with gardening and fishing.
Meanwhile, the main camp at Tanah Merah continued to be built up. A Chinese Indonesian shopkeeper from Ambon was permitted to open two shops, one on the administrative side and one for the internees. By February 1928 the camps contained 666 internees and 437 family members. A handful of the exiles were female activists; these included Soetitah who was chair of the women's section of the Communist party. As Digoel grew, it started to attract the attention of the press. The liberal Dutch journalist Marcus van Blankenstein was allowed to visit the camp; his scathing articles in the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant in the fall of 1928 suggested that innocent people had been imprisoned there without charge, and that sanitary conditions were so poor (especially in the Tanah Tinggi camp) that people were dying "like rats during a plague". After that, the government promised to release detainees who were well-behaved and did not pose a threat to peace and order. By 1929 the detainees in Tanah Merah were living in six "hamlets" made up of shacks with tin roofs; the original barracks were dismantled. Internees generally settled along ethnic lines, with Sumatrans, Javanese, Madurese, and people from Banten (where the 1926 revolt had been centered) living in their own sections. A mosque, Protestant and Catholic churches, and shops were built. Sports and theatre groups and musical ensembles were also established, including a jazz band led by Abdoe'lxarim MS and a kroncong band. The detainees also had gardens, but the poor soil made their yield limited. Despite those activities which give the impression of a normal life, morale was quite low and living conditions remained difficult. Even the administrator Monsjou contracted malaria and left the region for Surabaya for several months in early 1929.
While internees were generally kept isolated from news of the outside world, they were allowed to write letters, although these could be censored. So, many complained to newspapers; one former journalist, Lie Eng Hok, wrote a letter to his former paper Sin Po in 1929 about worsening conditions, which was translated and reprinted in the Dutch press. In it, he noted that the camp authorities had reduced the prisoners' stipend by one quarter and that by the following year, they would no longer receive any at all, and that the prisoners were becoming so poor that they could no longer afford to spend money on each other's "businesses". Another issue was that the tree cover had been so thoroughly cleared to make space for the camp that there was no shade from the sun in most of the camps. Food was also substandard a lot of the time, although there was always some available. The fact that their imprisonment was indefinite and that there was no way to appeal it also contributed to the general sense of misery among detainees.
A member of the Council of the Netherland Indies, W. P. Hillen, was sent to inspect the camp in April 1930. At that point the camp was at its largest, with 1,308 internees and around 700 family members. He interviewed hundreds of internees and decided that the local officials had been too optimistic in their reports to the colonial government, noting that many of the internees were unwilling to work for the government on principle and were living in poor conditions. In his final report he said that roughly two thirds of the 600 internees he interviewed should be released, and he expressed his doubts that Tanah Merah was a suitable place for long-term settlement, due to the poor soil and prevalence of malaria. He thought authorities should gradually release all but the most recalcitrant detainees and that they should eventually be relocated to populated areas. Governor General de Graeff was convinced, and released 219 internees in December 1930. This emptied out several of the "districts" of the Tanah Merah camp, and many of those released stayed away from politics after returning to Java and Sumatra.
De Jonge era (1931–36) Bonifacius Cornelis de Jonge, a conservative aristocrat, became Governor General in September 1931. He disagreed with the idea of gradually reducing the camp's population until it could be closed; fear of exile among Indonesian nationalists in Java and Sumatra was considered to be an added benefit. Since it would not be closed, doses of quinine were prescribed to internees to reduce cases of malaria. It helped somewhat, but a number of high-profile prisoners died, including Marco Kartodikromo who died of malaria in 1932, and Aliarcham who died of tuberculosis in 1933.
De Jonge renovated and further developed the camp, despite the Indies' financial difficulties as a result of the Great Depression. In the first two years of his term it was still communists and other leftists who were being exiled to Digoel, including those who had finished prison terms for participating in the 1926 uprising. Members of new groups, such as Tan Malaka's Pari party started to be exiled as well. Civil administration of the camp, which had existed since late 1927, was abolished in mid-1934 with the reintroduction of military rule over the camp. It was in 1933 and 1934 that the government turned its attention to non-communist nationalists. Members of the Persatuan Muslim Indonesia, the Partai Sarekat Islam Indonesia, Partindo, and other groups were targeted. Eventually even high-profile intellectuals such as Mohammad Hatta, who would become the first vice president of Indonesia, and Sutan Sjahrir, future first Indonesian Prime Minister were both exiled in 1935. However, they were relocated to the Banda Islands a few months later, as Digoel was considered too harsh a destination for them. This set a precedent and from then on university-educated intellectuals were generally exiled there and not to Digoel.
Van Starkenborgh era (1936–42)