12 Years A Slave Sub Indo

[Louella Kammann]

Inthe Netherlands, protesters called for the statue of Jan Pieterszoon Coen the Governor-General of the Dutch Trade Company (VOC) in the 17th century in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) to be removed.

Slave trading was widely carried out during the Dutch colonial period in Indonesia. Especially in North Sumatra, human trading for plantation workers, known as coolies, was widely practiced around 150 years ago.

Last year, I took some Australian students to Medan, as part of the New Colombo Plan program, to learn about plantation agriculture in North Sumatra. During the trip, I began researching about the soil in North Sumatra. I found out many pieces of research had been carried out in the colonial era on the soils of Deli.

The region near Medan is famous for its Deli tobacco, and colonial planters researched how to boost tobacco production. Behind the golden age and success of Dutch research, I found enormous human casualties that built plantations in North Sumatra. Widespread racism and slavery occurred in plantations managed by colonial companies.

The story goes that Jacob Nienhuys, a Dutch tobacco trader, came to Labuhan Deli in North Sumatra in 1863. Labuhan was a small village near Belawan, inhabited by only 2,000 Malay residents and about 20 Chinese and 100 Indians.

With the rapid development of plantations, he needed more workers. Every year, thousands of Chinese coolies were brought in from Penang and Singapore. Workers from Java, Banjar, and India were also shipped in.

In 1890, the Dutch transported more than 20,000 Chinese coolies to Deli. With cheap labours, tobacco companies could run a very profitable business. In 1896, the sale of 190,000 bales of Deli tobacco in Amsterdam brought in 32 million guilders. If converted to the current money, it is around US$450 million.

An article dated May 30th, 1913 in Sumatra Post wrote that around 1867, Nienhuys was indicted of flogging seven Chinese coolies to death. The case was never proven nor disproved, but the Sultan of Deli ordered Nienhuys to leave the land of Deli and never to return.

The contract included a penal sanction that allowed the company to punish the workers if they forfeited the agreement. The ordinance gave power to the planters to punish coolies who were thought to be disobedient, lazy or tried to run away.

The Deli Tobacco Planters Association was founded in 1879 to monopolise tobacco plantations in Deli. Cremer also lobbied the Dutch government to bring in workers directly from mainland China. In 1900, 6,900 workers were brought directly from the ports of Swatow in Guangdong Province and Hong Kong. From 1888-1930, more than 200,000 Chinese workers had been shipped into Deli.

The coolies were forced to work; they were slaves. The coolies worked from dawn to night, received enough wages to fill in their stomachs and cover their back; they lived in a shed like goats in their cages, they were called godverdom and could be beaten any time and could lose their wives and daughters as desired by the master.

In addition to the destruction to humanity, Dutch and European colonial companies, in developing plantations in North Sumatra, have cleared a massive area of virgin forests. Karl Pelzer, an academic from Yale University, estimated that more than half of the land in Deli Serdang and Langkat Regencies had been cleared for plantations during the Dutch colonial period.

The legacy of the Dutch plantation system still lingers. Plantations in North Sumatra still apply the colonial administration system, with an administrator, a plantation assistant, clerks, foremen, and labourers.

Along with this beautiful fairy tale, Nienhuys is narrated as the founder of the modern city of Medan. The Dutch Colonial Monument website glorifies Cremer as the colonial with the highest ideals that brought civilization, prosperity, peace, and order.

An AP survey of almost 400 men underscores the horrific conditions fishing slaves faced. Many described being whipped with stingray tails, deprived of food and water and forced to work for years without pay. More than 20 percent said they were beaten, 30 percent said they saw someone else beaten and 12 percent said they saw a person die.

For many, the return home is bittersweet. Parents collapse in tears upon seeing their sons, and some men meet siblings born after they left. But almost all come back empty-handed, struggle to find jobs and feel they are yet another burden to their extremely poor families. At least one crowd-sourcing site, set up by Anti-Slavery International, is aimed at helping them.

A study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine earlier this year, based on interviews with over 1,000 trafficking survivors from different industries, found half of those returning from slavery at sea suffered from depression and around 40 percent from post-traumatic stress disorder or anxiety. Those men were not connected to the Benjina cases.

He said one finger was ripped off while he tried to wrangle an unwieldy net on the deck of his boat, and the other three were crushed beyond saving. He was taken by refrigerated cargo delivery ship to Thailand, where the remaining digits were surgically removed. Four days later, he said, he was put back on a ship bound for Indonesia, where he fished for the next three years.

Like many of the men rescued from Ambon, Tun Lin had been working for PT Mabiru Industries, where operations were halted several months ago as authorities investigated trafficking and illegal fishing in the industry there. Mabiru, one of more than a dozen fishing, processing and cold storage firms in Ambon, sold packages of yellowfin tuna largely headed for Japanese markets, and also shipped to the United States. The company is shuttered and its managers could not be reached.

Then, as the news rippled around the island, hundreds of weathered former and current slaves with long, greasy hair and tattoos streamed from their trawlers, down the hills, even out of the jungle, running toward what they had only dreamed of for years: Freedom.

About 320 men took up the offer. Even as a downpour started, some dashed through the rain. They sprinted back to their boats, jumped over the rails and threw themselves through windows. They stuffed their meager belongings into plastic bags, small suitcases and day packs, and rushed back to the dock, not wanting to be left behind.

Throughout the day and until darkness fell, they kept coming, more and more men, hugging, laughing, spilling onto the seven trawlers that were their ride out. Even just before the trawlers pushed off Benjina on the 24-hour trip to neighboring Tual island, fishermen were still running to the shore and clambering onto the vessels. Some were so sick and emaciated, they stumbled or had to be carried up the gang plank.

Indonesian officials said security in Benjina is limited, with only two Navy officials stationed there to protect them. The men will be housed at a government compound while immigration is sorted out. Officials from Myanmar are set to visit the islands next week and will assist with bringing the men home and locating others.

The dramatic rescue came after a round of interviews Indonesian officials held with the fishermen, where they confirmed the abuse reported in the AP story, which included video of eight men locked in a cage and a slave graveyard. The men, mostly from Myanmar, talked of how they were beaten and shocked with Taser-like devices at sea, forced to work almost nonstop without clean water or proper food, paid little or nothing and prevented from going home.

Saw Eail Htoo and Myo Naing were among those he tormented. After three months at sea working with only two to four hours of sleep a night, the two Burmese slaves just wanted to rest. They fell asleep on the deck.

Their Thai captain decided to make an example of them, they said. So the two were driven by motorbike to a hill above the port. They were handcuffed together and placed in front of an Indonesian flag. Then they were punched in the face and kicked until they collapsed into the dirt, they said, blood oozing from their ripped faces.

The findings documented by Indonesian officials and the AP came in stark contrast to what a Thai delegation reported from a visit to Benjina earlier this week to find trafficked Thai nationals. They denied mistreatment on the boats and said the crews were all Thai, even though the AP found many migrant workers from other countries are issued fake documents with Thai names and addresses.

Three-quarters of the more than 320 migrant workers who left the island on Friday were Burmese, but about 50 from the country refused to go, saying they had not received their salaries and did not want leave without money.

Some were also from Cambodia and Laos. A few Thais were allowed to board the boats, but the Indonesians said Thai nationals could stay on Benjina more safely, since Thai captains were less likely to abuse them.

A firework soon shot off from one of the boats, signaling it was indeed time to go. The same trawlers where the fishermen had suffered years of abuse were heading back to sea. This time crowded with free men full of hope.

Indo-Guyanese or Indian-Guyanese, are Guyanese nationals of Indian origin who trace their ancestry to India and the wider subcontinent. They are the descendants of indentured servants and settlers who migrated from India beginning in 1838, and continuing during the British Raj.

The vast majority of indentured labourers in Guyana came from North India, most notably the Bhojpur and Awadh regions in the Hindi Belt of the present-day states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand. A significant minority also came from Southern India.[1] Among the immigrants, there were also labourers from other parts of South Asia. The vast majority of Indians came as contract labourers during the 19th century, spurred on by political upheaval, the ramifications of the Mutiny of 1857 and famine. Others of higher social status arrived as merchants, landowners and farmers pushed out of India by many of the same factors.[2]

3a8082e126