Den vaderland getrouwe. Uit het dagboek van een journalist

Appendix IV

The Washington Post, 7 maart 1958

Blunders in Indonesia

I should like to make a few observations in regard to the report from Tokyo by Keyes Beech as it appeared in your paper on Feb. 17: ‘u.s. Backing Seen for Indonesian Rebels.’ I consider it most unfortunate that such articles do appear in the United States press, as they can only futher widen the rift between Asia and the West.

When United States paratroopers were sent to Little Rock to call a rebellious governor to order - and this country is not a democracy which was founded (completely unprepared) a bare 12 yaers ago - no articles appeared in the Indonesian press expressing veiled hope that the United States would fall apart, although naturally the sympathy of Indonesia, as the rest of the world, lay with the Negroes in the South.

You know how through ignorance of outsiders the Little Rock clash was misinterpreted abroad. Now you are doing exactly in this country the same thing as far as Asian-African nationalism is concerned, which is the main reason you are so rapidly losing friends all over the world. There could not be any more shortsighted policy followed by the State Department, as your Mr. Beech reports, namely ‘unspoken United States support for the rebel regime now set up in Padang on Sumatra.’

If I understand right, your paper recently reversed its editorial policy in the dispute between my country and Indonesia over New Guinea. A courageous and commendable example of fair treatment and objective decency is rarely given in journalism and one can only find such a thing in the United States. However, in the interest of both your paper and your readers, I might suggest you reconsider the conduct of the United States Government in regard to Indonesia as put forward by Mr. Beech.

An unfriendly attitude by Washington toward Djakarta and President Sukarno can only be of disadvantage to the United States. Asian-African former colonial powers are naturally suspicious toward the West, except maybe for the United States, although most of the classical colonial nations like England, France, Portugal and last, but not least, the Netherlands, are among America's closest friends.

As you editorialized yourself: ‘It will do the free world little service if New Guinea is saved (I would say “saved”), while Java is engulfed by communism.’ The failure to find a solution for the New Guinea dispute between my country and Indonesia, by either United Nations or United States good offices (the latter the Indonesians had hoped for) has resulted in an exodus of Dutchmen from Indonesia and a low point in Western prestige in Indonesia. United States neutrality was

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observed in Djakarta as unfriendly and pro-colonialist. Washington hesitated and failed to support this young nation, beset with a multitude of problems, derived from a complete lack of ‘education’ not supplied for by former colonial regimes. The United States policy toward Djakarta lately has been solely and totally negative.

This is exactly the issue over which Ambassador John M. Allison resigned. Over and over again Indonesians have turned toward Washington for understanding and moral support. It is not sufficiently realized in this country that the Malay people are basically friendly toward the West. ‘Wasn't the United States once the most popular Western power, or rather nation in Indonesia?’ wrote another United States reporter a couple of weeks ago.

Ambassador Allison, a State Department Far East specialist, understood Indonesians and he was liked and respected for it in Djakarta; now he is gone, too. Nobody can foresee what the result of our shortcomings toward Indonesia - and its 84 million people - will be. It's my opinion that through lack of understanding, but what is even more shameful, through lack of a serious, objective effort to appraise the Indonesian policy, we are slowly but surely losing another valuable friend the West cannot afford to lose in this most densely populated area of the world.

I have still to come across the first American who does not automatically associate Sukarno's ‘guided democracy’ concept with communism. In Europe we have a saying: ‘Blessed be the ignorant!’

WILLEM L. OLTMANS

New York

(Mr. Oltmans is a United Nations correspondent for the Amsterdam Vrij Nederland.)