The increased traffic which resulted from the opening of the Suez Canal contributed to these plans, but the rationale centered on eliminating the need for trans-loading.

The effect would be that commodities produced in the Dutch East Indies could be brought to the Batavia warehouses more cheaply.

In turn, scale effects, i.e. regular supply of cargo, would further redress the balance for Dutch shipping.

Tanjung Priok was the site of a widely publicized incident on September 12, 1984, when army forces fired on a group of Muslim protesters.

The protesters were demonstrating against proposed government regulations that would require all formal organisations in the country to adopt Pancasila as their ideology.

[2] After the fall of Suharto the case was taken up again, and in 2003 fourteen people, among them a former commander of the Kopassus special forces unit, were named as suspects in the 1984 killings.