'Digoel’ Disbands

End of Communists’ Camp

FORMED about five years ago as a concentration camp for Dutch East Indies natives possessing communistic tendencies, the settlement at Diogel, Southern Dutch New Guinea, is being broken up, as it is extremely unhealthy. Hundreds of the prisoners, it is reported, are being pardoned and paroled, and sent back to Java, but others are to be interned elsewhere.

When the camp was first established the communists were deported to New Guinea with their wives and families.

By the end of 1928 there were 3,000

inhabitants. Being political prisoners, a certain monetary allowance was made to them each year. This was spent with an enterprising Chinese trader, who attached himself to the settlement.

The camp was situated only four days’ walk from the Fly River, close to the boundary of Dutch and British territory. The lo-

cation was considered ideal because of its isolation, but the low-lying, mosquito-infested swamps surround ing it caused much sickness.

Only one party was successful in escaping from the camp, which was guarded by Dutch soldiers. The prisoners reached the Suki country in

Papua, and, no doubt, had a trying experience there. With the Suki tribe headhunting is a pastime and “the survival of the fittest” still reigns. Two years ago a few of them [came] 200 miles down the Fly River in their war canoes and wiped out the village of Weredai. Forty bodies were eaten in the feast that followed. It took the Sukis about four months to paddle back to their homes. The Government then paid them a visit and brought some of their number down to Daru Island as prisoners. This, however, hardly dampened the ardour of the multitude or spoiled their taste for “long pig.”

Nevertheless, the communists reached the coast unscathed. Eloquence evidently won the day, the mouth proving mightier than the spear. But, meantime, the Australian magistrate at Daru received word of the Javanese escapees and he arrested them. They were taken over to Thursday Island and from there returned to the Dutch authorities. ———

A Suki war canoe in one of the narrow streams running into the Middle Fly River.

These reed-bordered avenues twist and turn for innumerable miles among the swamps and lagoons, on the banks of which are situated the villages. ———

A human skull used by members of the Suki tribe to decorate their huts. ———