The Barbed Whip Bears Witness

There have been hidden tragedies behind a number of major events in this country. The expulsion of the authoritarian Suharto regime in May 1998 was marked by a classic ritual: the burning of shops, looting, and raping of Chinese. Fifty-two years before that, amidst the tumult of revolution and the threat of the return of the Dutch to this land of the Indies, another bloody ritual took place that has escaped the gaze of history. In 1946 Malang was a field of slaughter, looting, and rapes of local Chinese who were suspected of being anti-revolutionary and with the Dutch. No one has properly recorded it, other than in a small book entitled Indonesia Aglow and in Flames, whose author used the pen name The Barbed Whip. TEMPO now presents the story of this mysterious writer, his book, and the obscure events themselves.