By Bridget Harilaou

I sit in a small room next to the bedside of an activist, veteran and family friend – he is more than 90 years old, his eyesight is failing and it is too much of a struggle for him to leave his bed. Instead Pak Soemarsono talks to me from under the blankets, he paints a picture of what it was like before independence, under Dutch colonial rule.

He was in middle-school, just a few months from graduating from a Dutch school in Kutoarjo. The headmaster of the school was a Dutch man with incredible wealth, status and power in his community, and he was known for taking a fancy to many of the young girls at the middle school. One day, the school had a picnic by the sea. About 100 children attended. Everyone was running and playing in the sand, away from the food and bags, which were placed in the shade. Soemarsono got thirsty, so he went back to the secluded shaded area to get a drink. What he saw would inform the beginnings of his political consciousness.

The headmaster had a fair-skinned girl named Swarti on his lap, with her skirt pulled up all the way and his hands underneath her clothes. The headmaster shouted, “What do you want?” Pak Soemarsono stuttered a reply, “I came to get a drink, Tuan” – Tuan means master. It is a name for someone you serve. It was the title all people used when talking to the headmaster.

“I will give you a good drink then.” The headmaster pushed the girl away and gave Pak Soemarsono chocolate milk from his private thermos and treated him with complete respect. But Pak Soemarsono knew it was for a price. The headmaster did not want him to tell anyone what he had seen.

When he got home, he couldn’t eat, he couldn’t talk, all he could see was the poor girl, bare thighs and frightened face, unable to protest. It was common knowledge that the headmaster had the power to withhold diplomas and graduation from any student who caused trouble.

But his Aunty knew something was wrong, and before long she knew everything. His Aunty was so upset she immediately told her neighbour, a relative of Swarti. Swarti was a ‘priyayi’ from an educated and upper class family, descended from governors who once ruled the area. Once her family knew what had happened to her, they caused an uproar in the community, which the headmaster would surely hear about.

That night Pak Soemarsono feared for his life, and he was right to do so.

The next morning the headmaster was waiting for him. After the gong, all the other children headed to class but the headmaster grabbed Soemarsono by the shirt and pulled him into an empty classroom. “What did you do? What did you say?”

Soemarsono told the truth, “I talked to my Aunty.”

The headmaster was furious, “From a little mosquito, you have made this story the size of an elephant!” The Dutch man looked as if he would kill Soemarsono. Instead the headmaster beat him. Soemarsono was hit until he bled, kicked out of the room and bashed in the yard as hundreds of children and many teachers looked on – doing nothing.

Pak Soemarsono never got his graduating diploma from that school.

The sickening power and rule the Dutch established over Indonesia left no room for protest against sexual abuse of underage girls. But what it did do was light a fire in Soemarsono. Before long he joined the Youth Movement, Perkumpulan Pemuda, in Surabaya to fight for independence. He talked to me about the thousands of young people who died fighting against the Dutch, and how he fought not only for Indonesian independence, but women’s rights, worker’s rights and freedom from all oppression. He fought in one of the most famous battles of Surabaya, taking Hotel Yamato (now known as Hotel Majapahit), burning the Dutch flag and flying the Indonesian flag in its place.

“That hotel was a Dutch hotel, it was a Dutch symbol, a hotel for white people.” And that is why claiming it for the new Indonesian state was so significant.

Just before winning independence from the Dutch, Soemarsono joined the Indonesian Communist Party, Partai Komunis Indonesia. He was sceptical of Sukarno, the soon-to-be president, and wanted to ensure that once independence was won, Indonesia would continue on a just path liberating everyone not just from colonialism, but class and gender oppression too.

Over the next 30 years, Pak Soemarsono was imprisoned five times. Independence was not all it was planned to be. Each time he thrown into gaol, it was for being an “orang kiri” or a ‘left-wing person’. Communists were severely persecuted and even ‘purged’ in Indonesia, particularly in 1965-66 with the support of an anti-communist America, and Soemarsono is lucky to have eventually made it to Australia, where he lived out his retirement in peace.

I feel so honoured to have had the chance to talk to Soemarsono. I relate so much to his ideas of equality, feminism and activism. If he had such ideas in the 1940s and fought for freedom from Western imperialism, surely I can do the same. The passion and fierce belief in freedom for Indonesian people is something that I can still feel in his words today.

Most young Indonesians take for granted their liberty from Dutch colonial rule. They fail to see the ravages and scars of exploitation from the West that still exist today. They specifically fail to see its continuation in the form of global capitalism as companies and corporations fill the country with mines, logging and factories. No one seems to draw the connections between the affluence of the West, the persecution of communist ideologies and the poverty suffered by 68 million Indonesians every day. But I will not forget Pak Soemarsono’s contributions to this country, and what he really fought for. Left-wing ideals and freedom from White supremacy.