Lie Eng Hok

Lie Eng Hok (1893-1961) was an Indonesian independence activist and Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) supporter in the Dutch East Indies. He was also a journalist for the popular Chinese Indonesian newspaper Sin Po. The Dutch government accused him of being involved in the 1926 Banten rebellion and exiled him to the Boven-Digoel concentration camp from 1927 to 1932. He was a personal friend of Wage Rudolf Supratman, author of the Indonesian national anthem.

Biography Lie was born in Balaraja village, Tangerang Regency, Banten residency, Dutch East Indies on February 7, 1893. Little is known about his early life.

In the 1910s and 1920s he was a journalist for the Sin Po newspaper, as well as for lesser-known Malay language papers such as , , and . The first cohort of PKI recruits there were apparently all printing press employees, notably of the Dutch language paper , and Lie was among them. He got in trouble with the law in Serang, in September 1925 for trying to visit a colleague in prison and refusing to back down when permission was denied. And in October 1925 the PKI's office opened in a building he owned in the Pasar Serang. In late 1927 he was exiled to the Boven-Digoel concentration camp in what is now Papua. In it, he noted that the camp authorities had reduced the prisoners' stipend by one quarter, and that by the following year they would no longer receive any at all. He said that he had operated a coffee shop in the camp to support himself for some time, but that it was no longer viable and he asked for support from .

He was released from Boven-Digoel after a decree from the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies on January 19, 1932. He returned to Semarang and apparently resumed his work as a bookseller.

On December 22, 1959, he was declared a Pioneer of Independence ( by the Indonesian government.

He died on December 27, 1961. He was initially buried in a public cemetery in Semarang, but in 1986 his body was reburied in the Giri Tunggal Heroes' Cemetery. His name is apparently one of the only two Chinese names found on graves there.