Papers

• The Soviet culture in Indonesia 1950 – 1965 Agus Suwignyo Gadjah Mada University Rhoma Dwi Aria Yuliantri State University of Yogyakarta

  This paper examines the manifold ways that Soviet cultural identity was propagated by the Soviet government to Indonesia during the 1950s and 1960s. The Soviet government launched different strategies to make Indonesia an ally. It represented Soviet identity in the forms of material and immaterial cultures. We suggest that the Soviet project to represent its cultural identity constituted a soft diplomacy by which the ideas of Soviet citizenship was propagated to Sovietize the Indonesian society. Although the Sovietization failed in the end, the ways that Soviet cultural identity was propagated provided a citizenship, which conformed the Indonesian quest of the time.

• Unwanted communities: Southeast Asian Huaqiao as refugees (1941-1951) Xian Yu Jee Royal Holloway University of London

  In WW2 and the early Cold War, Southeast Asian huaqiao (??, Overseas Chinese) adopted twin roles of aid-givers and refugees; during the Japanese Occupation, Kunming in China played host to refugee Overseas Chinese, and relocation of these displaced persons became a thorny postwar issue. This paper explores the support networks for these China-bound huaqiao, but also includes the postwar landscape of aid and rejection faced by huaqiao refugees upon returning to Southeast Asia, particularly Malaya. Policies and conflicts influenced by racial nationalism to guilt-by-association ideological conflicts challenged their returns. Local governments also pressured refugee institutions such as the International Refugee Organization (IRO).
  Via historicising the networks and mobilities of the Southeast Asian huaqiao refugee, this paper localises the transnational huaqiao network to the regions and circumstances of WW2 Southeast Asia and the early Cold War. It offers a different dimension in understanding huaqiao through refugees and aid.

• Lofty themes and escalating violence in the ‘decolonization’ of West Papua, 1949-1962 Astrid Cornelisse Van horen zeggen Audioproducties Grace Cheng San Diego State University

  On December 27, 1949 sovereignty over the territory of the former Dutch East Indies (DEI), with the exception of what was then known as Western New Guinea (today known as West Papua), was officially transferred from The Netherlands to the Republic of Indonesia, ending a struggle for decolonization that was marked by significant violence. Although the status of West Papua was to be renegotiated in a year’s time, the Dutch Government refused to do so, but instead renewed its colonial project on the territory, which had previously received little attention from the colonial administration. The period from 1949 to 1962, when Dutch colonial forces left West Papua, was also marked by violence of various sorts: of the Dutch “civilizing mission” in the territory, which it renamed Netherlands New Guinea (NNG) in 1950, as well as confrontations between Dutch and Indonesian forces, which threatened to escalate into open conflict in the early 1960s. During this same period, the Netherlands and Indonesia both rigorously engaged in diplomatic efforts to gain support for their respective claims to West Papua in the international arena, employing distinct but equally lofty themes: The Netherlands, of the “sacred trust” it held in preparing West Papuans for self-determination; and, Indonesia, of decolonization as a prerequisite for postcolonial and global justice. The outcome was neither for the people of West Papua, who were not meaningfully engaged in the process of determining their postcolonial status. Behind the scenes, those who would emerge as the key decision-makers shaping the fate of West Papua were concerned about access to the vast natural resources of the territory, including the largest above-ground outcrop of base metal ore in the world. As such, the outcome was a pliant regime in not Hollandia (the capital of NNG) but Jakarta, one which was heralded for jettisoning its predecessor’s Third Worldist agenda and which established intensely repressive rule over the people of West Papua while facilitating the exploitation of its rich resources.

Abstract