Tanahmerah


Tanah Merah is a town in the Papua province of Indonesia some two hundred miles the Digul river from Merauke within the interior of Western New Guinea. The town acted as a Dutch penal colony during the period when Indonesia was a Dutch colony.
Under Indische Staatsregeling Article # 37 "those who can be considered by the Government to disturb or have disturbed the public peace and order will be without any legal proceedings exiled for an indefinite period to a specially appointed place" were sent to Tanahmerah. Dr Sutan Sjahrir, first prime minister of the Indonesian Republic, described the political prisoners thus exiled as being in "profound spiritual misery" and "permanently broken in spirit".
In 1942, the "Netherlands East Indies Government-in-Exile", fearing partisan armies, which would prejudice postwar reimposition of Dutch colonial rule in the Indies, organised for the prisoners to be brought to Australia, to be interned as prisoners of war. This did not fit entirely well with the host country, and on 7 December 1943, the Tanah Merah prisoners were freed from their Australian prison camps.
Lockwood considers the evacuation of these prisoners to Australia to be a vital catalyst in the launching of the boycott on Dutch shipping at the end of the second world war, and in the subsequent creation of the Republic of Indonesia.
There is an airport .