Censorship in the Dutch East Indies

In the early twentieth century, with the rise of Indonesian nationalism, censorship also encompassed materials printed in local languages such as Malay and Javanese, and enacted a repressive system of arrests, surveillance and deportations to combat anti-colonial sentiment.

Although the Dutch started to establish a presence in Southeast Asia at the turn of the seventeenth century, there was no functioning European printing press in their settlements there for several decades, and the first government bulletins were handwritten circulars.

[4] However, as the Dutch East India Company became afraid that such a paper would reveal trade secrets to other European powers in Asia, its three-year contract was not renewed in 1746 and it was forced to close.

[4] That publication had a very different tone from the Dutch ones that had preceded it; it included commentary about politics, Indies folklore, and humour on top of the usual business news.

[8] This rise in the number and complexity of newspapers and the printing industry in the Indies led to the development of a more codified set of press censorship regulations in the early 1850s.

[9] They worried that an aggressive press in the colony could undermine the government with criticism of the Aceh War, the opium monopoly, or defamation of local officials (which could include mere reporting on abuses or corruption); the interests of public order and the state were considered to be above free speech.

[1][13][9] In the Netherlands, which generally enjoyed freedom of the press guaranteed by the Constitution of the Netherlands, some critics saw the strict censorship in the Indies as regressive and contrary to liberal ideals; opposition leader Johan Rudolph Thorbecke, who had lost his campaign to extend press freedom to the Indies, called it "the work of darkness" (het gewrocht der duisternis).

[1][7] Nonetheless, by the 1870s and 1880s, the editors most of the major Dutch-language newspapers in Java had faced criminal charges, with some being imprisoned for as long as a year, had their offices closed by force, or were deported; in lesser cases many spent a month in prison or paid fines.

[18] In other cases journalists were also arrested over penal code violations that predated the censorship regulations; the Governor General also made use of his "extraordinary rights" (exorbitante rechten) to deport disruptive individuals from the colony.

[16] As a result of the modernization of the economy in the early twentieth century, and social trends such as the Dutch Ethical Policy, printing press regulations were also updated by royal decree in 1906.

[14] In the revised regulations, some of the more onerous provisions were removed, including the need to give a copy of any printed material to censors before it was distributed; it was amended to say it must be given to authorities within 24 hours of publication.

[9][11] This was generally interpreted by Dutch liberals as an extension of freedom of the press to the Indies, although in fact arrests and detentions of journalists continued with the introduction of new government strategies and subsequent laws.

[22] Balai Pustaka did gain quite a large market share, although Malay-language works published by independent Chinese Indonesian presses still outsold them overall.

[24] The number of newspapers published in Malay by Chinese Indonesians grew rapidly as well, from only one in Java in 1905 to fifteen in 1911; these included Sin Po in Batavia and Tjahaja Timoer in Malang.

[21] Parada Harahap, a journalist who would later be a tycoon of Indonesian journalism, published a Malay translation and guidebook of Press Offense laws and the hate-sowing articles in 1924.

[30] In his analysis he lamented the arbitrary nature of the statutes, and the fact that they relied on the subjective interpretation of the sitting judge or prosecutor as to what printed materials were incendiary or hateful.

[30] He also noted that the punishments sometimes came after a number of mild infractions had been printed, meaning that editors could not necessarily predict whether a given piece of writing would cause legal troubles or not.

Every new political party and mass organization launched its own newspaper, and these became the focus of extreme scrutiny by colonial authorities, who regularly jailed their editors over press offenses for printing materials critical of the state or its representatives.

[2] The outbreak of the war also severely disrupted the Indies administration, as it became quite isolated from Europe and was forced to work hard to maintain its neutrality between England and Germany.

[39] These native journalists would often be marched through town in shackles, unlike Dutch editors who would be transported by carriage; complaints by Mas Marco and others led to the abandonment of this practice in 1917.

[38] Radical editors learned how to publish articles which criticized the system without technically breaking the law; and when they were arrested and brought before the court they used it as a stage to rally others to their cause.

[35] However, repression of journalists, nationalists and labour activists continued to intensify; the use of press offenses was often applied in conjunction with the arrests of strike leaders or the banning of freedom of assembly in major cities.

[46] The next Governor General, Andries Cornelis Dirk de Graeff, took office in March 1926 and was considered a liberal who might ease tensions with the nationalist movement.

[35] However, the communist uprisings in Java that happened that same year caused him to continue the policy of repression and confrontation, and in 1928 he submitted plans for harsher treatment of radical journalists and newspapers.

[35] In the 1930s, censorship and political repression, especially of Indonesians, escalated to the point of operating essentially as a police state, with regular intimidation, extralegal detention, and exile of journalists and intellectuals.

[35] A new Press Curbing Ordinance (Persbreidelordonnatie) was passed in September 1931 which followed de Graeff's 1928 suggestions and once again gave the Governor General extreme powers to detain, blacklist, censor or imprison editors.

[49] Even Dutch- and Japanese-owned newspapers were eventually punished under this law, such as Nieuws van den Dag voor Nederlandsch-Indië which was temporarily closed in 1933 for reporting on a mutiny on a Dutch warship, the Zeven Provienciën.

[16][14] In the 1930s the government gazette De Javasche Courant regularly published lists of books and pamphlets which were banned from the Indies and which were to be turned back by the postal service.

[50] After the Netherlands was invaded by Nazi Germany in May 1940, in June the Indies put in place new wartime regulations for control and surveillance based on a 1932 statute on censorship for national security reasons.

[51] In other cases it used the 1931 Persbreidel statutes to forbid the printing of anti-French, anti-English or anti-Jewish articles; some pro-German political parties such as the Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging were also banned.