Anarchism in Indonesia has its roots in the anti-colonial struggle against the Dutch Empire. It became an organized movement at the behest of Chinese anarchist immigrants, who played a key part in the development of the workers' movement in the country. The anarchist movement was suppressed, first by the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies, then by the successive regimes of Sukarno and Suharto, before finally re-emerging in the 1990s.
History
Dutch East Indies
The first evidence of anarchism in the Dutch East Indies was present in the anti-colonial writings of Eduard Douwes Dekker, who denounced the Dutch colonial administration over Indonesia, raising public awareness of the brutality inflicted against the Indonesian people. His works, including the well-known satirical novel Max Havelaar, were particularly influential among early Dutch anarchist circles. His grandnephew Ernest Douwes Dekker became a leading figure in the Indonesian anti-colonialist movement during the early 20th century. Ernest established contact with other radical anti-colonial activists, including the Indian anarchists Shyamji Krishna Varma and Har Dayal, whose work was published in Dekker's publication Het Tijdschrift. Dekker aligned himself against parliamentarism, due to the suppression of workers' rights that was carried out systematically by European parliaments. He also advocated for both violent and non-violent means of resisting colonialism, which he believed was a moral duty, and was sympathetic to the revolutionary strategy of syndicalism, as opposed to reformism. Dekker was widely considered to be an anarchist himself and was the first native Indonesian to be known as such. He later went on to found the Indische Party, one of the first political organizations established during the Indonesian National Awakening.
The organized anarchist movement
Dutch Christian anarchists, including Dirk Lodewijk Willem van Mierop, conducted propaganda work in the Dutch East Indies - publishing the periodical Levenskracht, which advocated for non-violence, natural living and vegetarianism. While agitating in the Dutch East Indies, van Mierop even established a local branch of the Union of Religious Anarcho-Communists. Chinese anarchists also conducted propaganda work there, with Zhang Ji traveling to Java in 1907, where he translated a book on the history of Chinese resistance to Dutch Colonial rule. From 1909, Chinese reading houses began to open around Indonesia, being a means of political education and organization for those resisting both Dutch colonial and Chinese imperial rule. After the 1911 Revolution overthrew the Qing dynasty, Chinese anarchists remaining in Indonesia channeled their efforts into the labour movement, organizing the country's first workers' organizations in Makassar, Batavia, Surabaya and Kupang. Anarchist cells began to arise between 1914 and 1916, distributing Liu Shifu's newspaper Minsheng among the populace.
Indonesian trade unions also began to emerge around that time, many of them influenced by Marxism. They were particularly active in organizing within the ranks of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army, establishing a soldiers' and sailors' union that coordinated resistance during World War I. On 7 May 1916, anarchist sailors in Surabaya organized a wildcat strike (without the union's approval) against their poor living and working conditions, coming into direct conflict with the military police. In the subsequent repression, 5 people were injured, 47 sailors were dismissed and one of the principle organizers was imprisoned for 8 months. The union leadership criticized the local branch for its lack of opposition to the strike, while the SDAP leadership declared it necessary to combat the "anarchist elements" within the union, and the army's high command called for unions to be separated from the armed forces entirely.