TAPOL Bulletin No. 37, January 1980: Indonesia's Political Trials
TAPOL Bulletin no. 37 (London, January 1980): editorial on the end of KOPKAMTIB's release plan, plus Julie Southwood's long study of 1,014 political trials since 1966. It notes the 1965 Lubang Buaya claim that communist women castrated the generals, and the 1975 subversion trial of Gerwani's Sulami and Sudjinah, with S
New objectives at 11th NVB congress
Front-page De Waarheid report (12 Feb 1980) on the 11th congress of the Nederlandse Vrouwenbeweging (NVB), which re-elected Riek Hoogkamp. The congress adopted a declaration asking Dutch ministers to press Indonesia to restore civil rights of released political prisoners, grant amnesty to women independence fighters, a
Trial will not go ahead (Tanti Aidit)
Short De Waarheid item (6 Mar 1980, p.9): the planned trial of Tanti Aidit after twelve years' detention will not go ahead. It argues she had nothing to do with the 'CIA-organised coup' and her only offence was Gerwani board membership, naming Suharti, Sudjinah and Shri Ambar as fellow Gerwani women who also paid.
Indonesian women (lecture by Mieke Lokkerbol)
De Waarheid report (2 May 1980, p.5) of a talk by Mieke Lokkerbol of Komitee Indonesië on the Indonesian women's movement from Kartini to Gerwani. It describes Gerwani's programme (marriage law, rape penalties, labour law, schooling, health, price control), claims 1.5 million members in 1963, its ban after 1965, and ma
TAPOL Bulletin no. 44 (London, March 1981): army takeover of the legal sector, Free-Aceh trials, Pramoedya's Buru novels harassed, East Timor, US human rights report. A short item (p.4) reports that eight women political prisoners long held in Bukit Duri were moved to Tangerang women's prison: Sulami (20 years), Sudjin
Women of Indonesia (review of the Komitee Indonesie women's group booklet)
De Waarheid review (4 Mar 1981, p.8) by Joop Morriën of a Vrouwengroep Komitee Indonesië booklet 'Vrouwen van Indonesië: strijd om bestaan'. It covers women's position under colonialism, adat and Islam, rural-urban migration and prostitution after 1965, and ends with a chapter on NVB–Gerwani solidarity with recollectio
TAPOL Bulletin no. 47 (London, September 1981): East Timor offensive and the East Timor assembly's report, West Papuan refugees, Pramoedya's re-arrest, the new Procedural Code, and rape and lesbianism cases. Its new 'Spotlight on a Prisoner' profiles Suwardiningsih, the only woman full member of the PKI Central Committ
Ostlendingen, 13 Oct 1981: prisoners of conscience in half the UN's member states (Sudjinah profiled)
Page of the Norwegian regional daily Ostlendingen (13 October 1981) with an article on Amnesty International's Prisoners of Conscience Week. It profiles three prisoners, including Sudjinah, 47, described as active in what was once Indonesia's largest women's movement, arrested early 1967, held eight years before trial
Conversation on the 35th anniversary of the Dutch Women's Movement (Annie van Ommeren-Averink)
De Waarheid interview (20 Oct 1981, p.5) with Annie van Ommeren-Averink, CPN politician and NVB board member, on the NVB's 35th anniversary. She recalls labour and women's struggles; a photo of Umi Sardjono, freed after years of imprisonment, hangs in her home, last seen in March 1965, and she works for the CPN's Indon
'Don't go - don't go - peace with Indonesia' (Annie Gelok on the Schoonhoven refusers)
De Waarheid feature (19 Aug 1982) in which Annie Gelok recalls NVB women's solidarity with Dutch conscripts who refused service in Indonesia (Schoonhoven refusers, 1949), the Zuiderkruis embarkation, Heiltje de Vos's 'Vrede met Indonesië' banner, and campaigns for Piet van Staveren and Ratio Koster. It touches an IDFF/
Chance for Women (Canberra Times, 30 October 1982)
Canberra Times, 30 Oct 1982, p. 4 (AAP-AFP): short item citing Jakarta daily Sinar Pagi that seven women could be named candidates for Indonesia's Vice-Presidency, among them S.K. Trimurti, Harsati Subadio, Minister for Women's Affairs L. Sutanto and several officials' wives. Gerwani not mentioned.
Chance for Women (Canberra Times, 30 October 1982), duplicate
Canberra Times, 30 Oct 1982, p. 4 (AAP-AFP): short item citing Jakarta daily Sinar Pagi that seven women could be named candidates for Indonesia's Vice-Presidency, among them S.K. Trimurti, Harsati Subadio, Minister for Women's Affairs L. Sutanto and several officials' wives. Gerwani not mentioned.
A woman vice-president for Indonesia? (Berita Harian, 30 Oct 1982)
Berita Harian (Singapore) AFP report, 30 Oct 1982: seven Indonesian women figures may be named candidates for vice-president to replace Adam Malik. Only the lead is available; the sweep notes S.K. Trimurti among them, which the snippet does not show and is unconfirmed. Gerwani is not mentioned.
Harian Rakjat, Daily Newspaper of the Communist Party of Indonesia (Groves, 1983)
Kerry Groves's ANU MA thesis (1983) on Harian Rakjat, the PKI daily: its stance on press freedom, administration, polemics (e.g. with Merdeka, 1964), content and treatment of leaders, drawing on Indonesian sources and interviews with ex-prisoners. Gerwani appears in Chapter VI (pp.142-149) on the paper's women's column
Neues Deutschland, 23 Jan 1985, p. 6: Convention against discrimination of women
Neues Deutschland, 23 January 1985, p. 6 (Außenpolitik): short commentary by Dietrich Sow[...] 'Konvention gegen Diskriminierung der Frauen'. After Indonesia and Jamaica joined, the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women has been ratified by 63 states. It credits the USSR with the
Despite executions... generals can count on continued support
Front-page De Waarheid report (5 Jun 1985) on Dutch minister Schoo's opening speech at the 28th IGGI conference in Amsterdam, urging donors to continue backing Suharto's regime without mentioning executions. A Komitee Indonesië spokeswoman says she was shocked that Schoo ignored the ban on Gerwani and that existing wom
Ties (Joop Morrien on ties between CPN and PKI)
De Waarheid profile (11 Nov 1985, p.15) of CPN's Joop Morriën, who spent eight months in Indonesia in 1954 (Java tour, Yogyakarta artists' colony, meetings with unionists and Gerwani members) and planned Dutch-language book publication. He recalls being treated as PKI representative on the Prague journal 'Problems of P
The Straits Times, 10 Dec 1985: Child labour laws 'ignored' (former Labour Minister)
Straits Times, 10 December 1985, Jakarta dateline: lead snippet only (full text behind NewspaperSG terms). A former Labour Minister says Indonesia has adequate child-labour laws but employers ignore them and children fear to report breaches. The sweep log tentatively suggests the unnamed speaker may be S.K. Trimurti; t
'No body issues, they reproach us for it': 40 years of the Dutch Women's Movement
Het Parool feature by Petra van Alten (30 Oct 1986) on the 40th anniversary of the Nederlandse Vrouwenbeweging (NVB): founding in 1946 from Algemene Vrouwenbonden and resistance women, its protests against Dutch Indonesia policy and troop sailings, Cold War isolation, affiliation to the Women's International Democratic
People's Daily World, 4 November 1986: Indonesia executes communists
People's Daily World, 4 Nov 1986, p. 7-A: short item on worldwide protests against the execution of nine Communist political prisoners in Indonesia under Suharto, several jailed for years; a PKI representative links the executions to the 45% rupiah devaluation. Readers urged to write to Suharto. Surrounded by Haiti and
Swiss press, 14 May 1987: violations of human rights against parliamentarians (IPU; Sundari)
Courrier de Geneve report (by Angelica Roget, 14 May 1987) on 100 cases of abuse of parliamentarians raised at the Inter-Parliamentary Union conference in Managua. For Indonesia it says only that 'M. Sundari', a former parliamentarian aged 70, has been detained since 1965. The identification with Siti Sundari Abdul Rah
For a free Indonesia (founding of the Wertheim Foundation)
De Waarheid report (30 Nov 1987, p.4) on the launch of the Wertheim Foundation, where W.F. Wertheim praised a Hendra painting of a male and female guerrilla. He argued that the Suharto regime rests on mass murder and falsified history, and that one task is to write the real history of Gerwani, Lekra, SOBSI and the PKI.
Losing a Revolution: The PKI versus the Army in Indonesia, 1949-1965 (Sutley, 1988)
Stewart K. Sutley's MA thesis (Political Science, McGill, 1988) applies Tilly and Aya's 'political conflict' model to the PKI-Army struggle of 1949-65, arguing the PKI's state-within-a-state depended on Sukarno and was destroyed after the army struck at the president. Gerwani is treated only as the PKI's 'women's front
East is East and West is West (Kousbroek)
Rudy Kousbroek's column 'Oost is Oost en West is West' in NRC Handelsblad (19 Feb 1988): an anecdote of a Minahasan surveyor in Maluku shocked by his atheism, with remarks on Indonesian attitudes to feminism and childlessness. Ends as the surveyor asks whether they are communists. No mention of Gerwani; background colo
Troop shipments unlawful (review of De Jong)
De Waarheid book review (30 Apr 1988, p.5) of a De Jong volume on Dutch troop shipments to Indonesia, arguing the 1946-47 deployments lacked a constitutional basis and that resistance (Amsterdam strike of Sept 1946, Indonesia refusers, Schoonhoven boys) was more significant than De Jong suggests. Lawyers Trees Sunito-H
Social system (on the Indonesian women's movement after 1949)
De Waarheid text (7 May 1988, p.6), apparently a speech/interview by an unnamed Indonesian woman, on the Indonesian women's movement. She says Gerwani, with about 1.5 million members after 1949, gave the movement its mass character defending peasant and working women, while Perwari led on polygamy; after 1965 Gerwani w
De Waarheid obituary-style note (15 Oct 1988, p.7) on Trees Sunito-Heyligers, Dutch lawyer who defended the Schoonhoven refusers and Piet van Staveren and was first chair of the Nederlandse Vrouwen Beweging (NVB) in 1946; her husband chaired Perhimpunan Indonesia. It summarises her defence arguments linking refusal to
Hundreds of Indonesia refusers recalled memories (reunion in Dronten)
De Waarheid report (17 Oct 1988, p.2) on the reunion of hundreds of Dutch Indonesia refusers in Dronten, organised by Jan Maassen, with historian Ger Harmsen speaking and a 'comité eerherstel' formed to explore rehabilitation. Trees Soenito-Heyligers is honoured as defender of many refusers; supporting bodies include t
Harian Neraca serial 'Siapa menabur angin akan menuai badai' (34): 1962-64, SOKSI and Gerwasi
Harian Neraca, 9 Feb 1989, p. 10: instalment 34 covering 1962–64; notes the army-initiated SOKSI and its onderbouw bodies, including 'GERWASI to counterbalance GERWANI'.
TAPOL Bulletin No. 95, Oct 1989: IPU pressure wins release of jailed MP Siti Sundari Abdulrachman
TAPOL Bulletin no. 95 (October 1989). Under 'IPU pressure wins release for jailed MP' (pp. 12-13) it reports the release on 17 August 1989 of Siti Sundari Abdulrachman, Indonesia's longest-serving woman political prisoner, then 68. A founding member of Gerwis, which became Gerwani, she sat on Gerwani's Executive Counci