ARRESTS IN BATAVIA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26028, 17 December 1945, Page 6

ARRESTS IN BATAVIA

TWO WOMEN INCLUDED SOCIALLY PROMINENT BATAVIA, Dec. 14. British Intelligence officers arrested Mrs Heeravati Diah, the Americaneducated wife of the editor of Merdeka, the Indonesian Nationalist newspaper, the sentiments of which are frequently anti-allied. Diah was also taken into custody, hut was released after a night in confinement. Mrs Diah is a daughter of Dr Latip and a niece of Dr Soebardjo, Foreign Minister in the first Soekarno Government,’ who paid for her education at Columbia University. The nature of the charge is not yet known. The authorities detained a socially prominent Dutch woman and two of her women companions, all of whom remained free during the Japanese occupation. The Dutch woman is popularly credited with the composition of slogans which decorated buildings, trams and trains when Allied forces arrived in Java. The slogans were culled from Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, the Atlantic Charter, and the Declaration of Independence. It is believed they were prepared in the expectation that American troops would occupy the Netherlands East Indies. British military police arrested J. Petersen, a member of the German Nazi Party and leader of the German community in Batavia, says the Netherlands News Agency.