[2] In 1928, he was exiled along with thousands of Communist Party of Indonesia members to the Dutch internment camp for political prisoners at Boven Digoel near Merauke, New Guinea.
[1] Despite not being charged with a crime, he was interned there for another fifteen years until the Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies.
[5][6][7] The former prime minister Willem Schermerhorn introduced the book at its launch in The Hague and called it "the most important contribution from the Indonesian side about our colonial history.
"[8] Schermerhorn noted it was better addressed it to a Dutch audience who knew very little about the history of the Digoel camp rather than Indonesians who would be generally familiar with it.
[9] Reviews in papers like the Leeuwarder Courant and Het Vrije Volk noted that, after his life experience the book could have had a bitter tone, but it didn't.