Word: sumatra
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...army commanders of the outlying provinces met to muster their forces and concert their plans at the Central Sumatran capital of Padang. The conferences began some three weeks ago in deepest secrecy. Summoned by shrewd, stocky Colonel Maludin Simbolon, the dissident commanders flew in from the Celebes and South Sumatra. The officers are mostly young colonels, and all are anti-Communists who run their areas with cool efficiency and a minimum of corruption. Soon the colonels were joined, uninvited, by some of Indonesia's top anti-Communist politicians. Among them: Masjumi Party Chairman Mohammed Natsir; Sjafruddin Prawiranegara, governor...
Separate Channels. Already the outlying areas are operating almost like separate countries. Djakarta customs officers inspect the luggage of Sumatra-bound passengers as if they were flying to a hostile country. In contrast to Djakarta, Colonel Simbolon's Padang was remarkably peaceful, secure, and spotlessly clean. It was also much healthier economically. Padang's cost-of-living index has risen 77 points in the last five years against 144 for Djakarta; bartering its rubber with Singapore produces an estimated $1,500,000 a month in profits. When Djakarta seized eight South Sumatran ships in an effort to halt...
...East Java nearly 4,000 Dutchmen and their dependents have given up hope, plan to leave as soon as possible. Last week there were reports that Dutch in North Sumatra, who had hitherto not been directly threatened with expulsion, were also about to depart on their own. Most tragic were Eurasians with Dutch citizenship. Most of them, born in Indonesia of Dutch fathers, had never seen the homeland to which they were being shipped. By week's end some 9,000 Dutch had left...
Indonesia's new ruling triumvirate had other problems. In Sumatra, Borneo and the Celebes, anti-Sukarno army colonels have long been conducting their own barter trade direct with foreign countries. The military commanders have been levying their own taxes, building their own roads and schools for nearly two years. In Singapore the colonels dealt through a foreign trade mission they had appointed themselves, over the head of the central government in Djakarta...
...Premier Djuanda sharply toned down Sukarno's "hate-the-Dutch" campaign, said that Dutch citizens and Dutch properties would receive full government protection. SOBSI agitators were told by army and government officials to keep hands off. One summary Djakarta pronouncement put all Dutch enterprises in east Java, central Sumatra and the southern Celebes under direct army control. "This was done," said a central Sumatra Command spokesman crisply, "because the Communists might have tried to create confusion...