Aliarcham

Aliarcham (c.1901-1933) was a Sarekat Islam and Indonesian Communist Party party leader, activist and theoretician in the Dutch East Indies. He was a major figure behind the PKI's turn to more radical policies in the mid-1920s. He was arrested by Dutch authorities in 1925 and exiled to the Boven-Digoel concentration camp, where he died in 1933. He became a well-known Martyr, especially among Communists and Indonesian nationalists.

Biography Early life Aliarcham was born in 1901 or 1902 in Asemlegi, Juwana district, Pati Regency, Dutch East Indies. He was the son of a school principal in Madiun. He studied in a Pesantren (traditional Islamic school), then at a Hollands Inlandse School (Dutch language primary schooling) and a teacher's school in Ungaran. In 1922 he was expelled from his teaching job at a school in Purworejo Regency, possibly because he had organized a group among his students. After his release, in the summer of that year he was made PKI commissioner for Batavia alongside Alimin, leader of the party's standing committee and may have also been acting party chairman for a time. However, his time in power was also a time of disarray for the party, as Semaoen had been deported and the party's standing committee was having trouble directing local branches.

At a special congress of the PKI Yogyakarta in December 1924, Aliarcham pushed for radical action, suggesting that the party should abolish its Sarekat Rakjat affiliate groups and reorganize into ten-person PKI cells who would be able to act independently. He was opposed to the PKI continuing to be so moderate and willing to compromise. During the first half of 1925 Aliarcham was in jail and had to step down from his PKI leadership posts, because he had broken the colony's strict press censorship laws.

Arrest and internment In late 1925, there were a number of strikes in East Java in various trades including metalworking, printing, and ice manufacturing. Aliarcham was arrested in Surakarta in late November 1925 as one of the ringleaders of those strikes under an extralegal method called . A number of other high-ranking PKI figures were also caught up in that round of arrests, including Darsono and Mardjoan, leader of the dockworkers union and other PKI-affiliated groups. The arrests prompted official complaints from Communist members of Dutch parliament, including Louis de Visser, but deportations, exile and internment were a well-established technique and the government did not back down. The government also made it illegal for the PKI or their affiliated trade unions to gather. Three weeks after his arrest, without any trial, the government decided exile him to the eastern part of the Indies, first to Merauke, Merauke Regency and eventually to the Boven-Digoel concentration camp in (now located in Papua). His colleagues in Semarang were horrified by his extralegal internment and started a fundraising committee for him and for Tjoa Tiang Leng, who had also been imprisoned.

Aliarcham and fellow exile Madjoan arrived in Merauke on January 10. At that time the exiled Surakarta communist Haji Misbach was also in Merauke but the two were forbidden to meet. Aliarcham would remain in Okaba for more than a year. During that time, his wife and son came to live with him there, and would subsequently follow him to wherever else he was sent, until 1929 when she became pregnant with their second child. That more remote camp was reserved for "irreconcilable" communist prisoners who would not act deferential to the authorities or accept paid work as "functionaries" or regular labourers. Conditions were very poor there, with Malaria and other diseases rampant among the prisoners.

Aliarcham lived there for the remainder of his exile. He became one of the key figures in the Tanahtinggi camp. In December 1928, Henk Sneevliet, Dutch Communist and founding member of the PKI, tried to wire a "Christmas present" of 480 guilders to Aliarcham and Gondhojoewono on behalf of the National Labor Secretariat. The wire transfer was blocked by the Governor General of the Indies. It may have been a stunt by Sneevliet to demonstrate the unfairness of the situation of the detainees; although legally people were allowed to send them books and personal items, most were turned away.

After years in Tanahtinggi, Aliarcham got Tuberculosis and sometimes traveled for examination in Tanahmerah, although he refused treatment. He finally died of his illness on his way back to Tanahmerah, on July 1, 1933. The photo of his grave site, with a wood and tin structure built over it and with a poem by Henriette Roland Holst inscribed on it, was in particular widely reproduced. A number of other high ranking PKI members also died in that camp, including Mas Marco; their graves were kept well-maintained until the camp finally closed in the 1940s. He converted to Catholicism during his internment and was not among that group of Aliarcham followers.

In 1959, the PKI named their new theoretical school in Jakarta after Aliarcham: the or Aliarcham Academy of Social Sciences. It operated until 1965 when it was closed during the Transition to the New Order.