DEMAND FOR INDEPENDENCE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25964, 3 October 1945, Page 5

DEMAND FOR INDEPENDENCE

READY TO RESIST DUTCH

(Rec. 11 p.m.) LONDON, Oct. 2. Dr Soekarno, President of the Indonesian Republic, announced that 70,000,000 natives, having proclaimed independence, will fight any attempt to restore Dutch sovereignty to the Netherlands East Indies, says the New York HeraldTribune’s Batavia correspondent. The vanguard of the British occupation force got a friendly reception, but not a single Dutch flag was hoisted. One outside'Allied headquarters was the only flag seen. Elsewhere was the red and white emblem of the new Indonesian Government.

The senior Dutch representative, M. van der Plas, said the Netherlands were prepared to offer Indonesians complete autonomy in a few years. This proposal was received coolly in Nationalist quarters.

M. Haji Salim, one of the founders of the Nationalist movement, said: “We have had Dutch promises for 350 years. We will not hesitate even to start a new world war if the Dutch try to re-establish themselves.”

It is reported from Batavia that the first small detachment of Netherlands Indies troops who returned to Java, airborne from Borneo, are now on duty in Batavia. The group consisted of 45 liberated prisoners of war, mostly Indonesians. Annamese Nationalists held demonstrations throughout the country this week protesting against the British attitude in Saigon, says the Hanoi correspondent of the Associated Press. Meanwhile, there have been several bitter clashes inland between guerrillas and parachuted French troops. The French have not always been successful.

The Daily Mail', in an editorial on the Far East situation, said: “What are British troops doing in the Netherlands East Indies and French Indo-Ohina? Are we so overburdened with man-power that we can undertake such commitments? Not only are we incurring casualties, but we are tying up considerable bodies of men in quarrels which are not our concern. Demobilisation is finally decided by national policy, and that policy seems to have decided that our men are more profitably engaged in Saigon and Batavia than they could be in London or Manchester.

“It cannot be argued,” the paper continues, “that it is Britain’s duty to interfere between the French and the Annamese in Indo-China, or between the Dutch and the Indonesians in Java. If these are United Nations affairs why are we not getting more help from the Americans, whose manpower reserves are so much greater than ours? The British seem to be inevitably involved whether the shooting is in Greece, Syria, Palestine, Annam, or Java. They get nothing for their trouble except the execrations of everyone else.”