Dutch New Guinea : A Vital Issue
pp. 7-8 · Read in the full issue
ISLAND affairs generally, and the New Guinea area in particular, have had more attention from Australian Press and radio in the past month than ever be fore. Recent events at last have awakened publicists to the danger that lies immediately northwest of Australia.
And the fact that between overcrowded Asia and under-populated Australia there is now nothing except an anti-European Indonesion “republic” is of equally vital interest to the South Pacific com munities eastward of Australia.
For a long time, it has been apparent that there is great danger to Australia in overcrowded Asia. When the Japanese, using Western war technique, came swarming southwards in 1942, we had fullest justification for all the warn ings issued in the previous 20 years. The Americans broke Japan, and sent the in vader scuttling home; but, to-day, the danger is greater than ever. The menace of a militarist, Imperialistic Japan has been replaced by a hungry Asia that is more than half Communist, and is directed from Moscow by the arch enemies of Western civilisation.
It will be a miracle if the Communists, in the next year or two, do not over-run Southeast Asia—lndo-China, Siam, Burma and possibly Malaya. In such an event, the Communist penetration of the so-called Republic of the United States of Indonesia would be inevitable. With out the protection of America, our hope of ultimate survival, here in the South Pacific, will be feeble.
THAT is why there are already mani festations of strong feeling in rela tion to Dutch New Guinea. Because Western New Guinea is in no way con
nected with Indonesia—and also, prob ably, because of its new oilfields —the Dutch were careful, when framing The Hague Agreement last November, to ex clude New Guinea from the new State of Indonesia. It was agreed that the future status of Dutch New Guinea should be settled during 1950.
Australia noted this arrangement with satisfaction. It meant that Indonesia would approach no nearer the Australian coast than western Timor. It would not have been pleasant to have had Indo nesians, reacting to anti-European and pro-Communist influences, just across Torres Strait, and alongside Australian New Guinea.
But, from the very day the Indonesian flag was hoisted in Batavia, the noisy little spokesmen of the so-called republic have been clamouring for possession of Dutch New Guinea. As part of their campaign, they have been trying to induce the United Nations Organisation to approve the idea that the whole island of New Guinea (Australian Trustee Territory, Australian Papua, and Dutch New Guinea) should be placed under a United Nations Trusteeship, in which Australia, Netherlands and (of course) Indonesia would be jointly concerned.
Both the Dutch and the Australians have frowned upon the idea—it is quite certain that the new Australian Govern ment would not consider it for a moment —but it is indicated that one or two of the little mischief-making Leftist group of UNO are quite intrigued with the plan.
As this is written, Dutch and Indo nesian delegates are assembling in Batavia (Jakarta) for the first of the Dutch-Indonesian meetings provided for
in The Hague Agreement; and, already, there are reports that the Indonesians want the Dutch New Guinea question to be first item on this agenda. The impu dence of these people, in trying to pick a quarrel with Netherlands and Australia over western New Guinea, while they still have to show themselves capable of governing the huge territories which have been placed in their care by The Hague Agreement, has a certain sig nificance.
CABLING on March 8, Mr. Osmar White, well-known correspondent of Melbourne Herald, having completed a tour of Dutch New Guinea, says that large numbers of Dutch and part-Dutch people, who fled from Indonesia when the natives assumed control, are practic ally starving. He says that in Manok wari, there are 1,000 persons trying to subsist on weevily rice and native food stuffs; that, in other centres, hundreds of people are living under conditions that he calls “horrifying”; that scores are arriving on every boat; and that the efforts of the Dutch to deal with a most difficult situation are being systematic ally defeated by an Indonesian blockade of food cargoes intended for New Guinea.
The blockade, he says, extends even to mail.
Only three centres, says Mr. White, have an adequate, if very poor diet. The rest are living a miserable and almost hopeless existence, plagued by malaria and other tropical diseases. A large pro portion of the new arrivals from Indo nesia are office workers and small busi ness men unsuited to New Guinea con ditions; but, they say, they would rather perish in the jungles than return to the humiliation and terror of the new Indo nesia.
Other newspapers, and the Australian
Parliamentarians, have had nothing to say about these disclosures. But Osmar White has done a great service to Aus tralia by showing Australians—and Pacific dwellers generally—what they can expect if ever they find themselves alongside the Indonesian set-up.
Another newspaper correspondent has siezed the occasion to remind Australia that it was Australia’s Dr. Evatt—ably supported by organised gangs of Com munist-led wharf labourers—who did more than any other man in the United Nations to force the Dutch out of Indo nesia, and transfer the vital achipelagoes to Indonesian control.
I'he Dutch New Guinea issue is very important, in itself; but, as an indication of xuture Euxopean-Indonesian relation ship, it has great significance.