The Phantom World of Digoel

Abstract

In the final years of its imperial rule after the communist revolts in Java in 1926, the Dutch Indies colonial regime established an infamous mass internment camp, Boven Digoel, in the heart of the malaria-infested New Guinea on the fringe of the empire to force its inmates to live a normal life under abnormal conditions.1 Boven Digoel, Upper Digoel, so called because it was located up the Digoel river, was not a penal colony. As the Indies government studiously made clear, internment was not a penal sanction but an administrative measure, invoked by governor general's extraordinary powers, exorbitant rechten, to require the internee to live in a certain place.