Neratja (newspaper)

Although originally founded with government support to be a Malay voice for the Dutch Ethical Policy, before long it became associated with the Sarekat Islam and the Indonesian National Awakening.

It was originally funded partly by the Dutch colonial government (under the direction of Governor General Johan Paul van Limburg Stirum) which hoped to support a Malay-language forum for perspectives sympathetic to the Dutch Ethical Policy,[7] a paternalistic policy aimed at selectively improving the lives of some elite Indonesians through education and government posts.

The first issue of Neratja was put out with this statement:[8] ...as a newspaper, [...] everything that can benefit the progress of the Indies and its people will be supported, but this evolution is not imagined hastily, but along lines of gradualism, whereby many can benefit from it, while all actions, both of it government as the population itself, will be discussed without prejudice and in a proper manner.People in the leftist faction of the Sarekat Islam, such as Darsono and Semaoen, believed Neratja to be in the pocket of the colonial government for years after the original funding had disappeared.

[7] Their ally, the Dutch communist Henk Sneevliet accused Neratja editor Abdul Muis of having advocated for his expulsion from the Indies in 1917.

[7] Therefore, by 1918 Neratja became a harsh critic of the colonial government, regularly printing reports of mistreatment of Muslims in remote regions of the Indies.

[14] However, this printing house soon collapsed as it was persecuted by the Dutch authorities and many members of the communist movement were deported to concentration camps in Boven Digoel.

[16] By 1929, early Neratja editor Abdul Muis, who had worked for Kaoem Moeda in the years in between, became head of the Bintang Timoer, the paper which had leveled the most serious accusations of espionage against Agus Salim.