Soekaesih

Soekaesih (EYD: Sukaesih, born ) was a Communist Party of Indonesia activist known for being one of only a handful of female political prisoners exiled by the Netherlands government to Boven-Digoel concentration camp (from 1928 to 1931). After being released she traveled to the Netherlands in the late 1930s and campaigned for the camp to be shut down.

Biography Soekaesih was born in Garut, West Java, Dutch East Indies around 1895 to a noble Sundanese family. Her father was a subdistrict chief who died when she was six; she then lived with her grandfather, himself a retired official. She was co-founder of the Communist Party's women's section in Batavia in around 1926 and was also active in its affiliate group the (Popular union) along with Moenasiah and other women communists. For a time in 1927, she was chair of the Weltevreden branch of the (Wife's Union), also known as the . She was held in pretrial detention for a year, until being exiled to Digoel in April 1928. Relatively few women activists were arrested and exiled there; among these were activists and educators including not only Soetitah and Moenasiah in Semarang and Saama, a fellow activist in the women's division of the organization in Batavia. On the other hand, many women ended up travelling there and living with their interned husbands during the late 1920s and 1930s. One estimate from early 1928 stated that, out of 823 people interned at the Tanah-Merah camp in Digoel, only 15 were women, but another 231 women had traveled there to live with their interned husbands. Soekaesih's husband Sukarna died while they were imprisoned there. According to some accounts, they were deported there because Philippo was suspected of trying to revive the banned Communist Party of Indonesia. She stayed there for several years lecturing on Digoel, especially to local groups of the Communist Party of the Netherlands, and advocating for the camp to be shut down. Her lectures were generally given in Indonesian and were translated into Dutch by Rustam Effendi or others. During this period, the former camp doctor L. J. A. Schoonheyt, who had since become a member of the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands, was also touring and giving lectures in favour of the camp. Soekaesih and van Munster wrote and published a pamphlet contradicting his claims about the positive nature of the camp, titled (Indonesia, a police state, with an answer to dr. Schoonheyt). The brochure quickly sold out of the first printing and was reprinted the following year. She continued to be active in documenting the former camp at Digul (which was closed after World War II) and in 1955 joined a new organization that sought to promote research about it and to build connections between the families of former internees. Her adopted son Boejoeng Saleh Poeradisastra was also a Communist activist and became a political prisoner at Buru during the Transition to the New Order. Her place and time of death are not documented.

Legacy In 2019, as part of an effort to rename streets in a new district in Amsterdam after anti-colonial figures, her name was approved for a street name on the central island of IJburg, which is currently still under construction.