K'tut Tantri

K'tut Tantri (1898–1997), born Muriel Stuart Walker, was a Scottish American woman who was best known for her work as a radio broadcaster for the Indonesian Republicans during the Indonesian National Revolution. Due to this work, she was referred to by the nickname "Surabaya Sue" among British and Dutch news correspondents.

Early life

Muriel Stuart Walker was born in Glasgow in the United Kingdom and emigrated with her mother to California following the First World War. She worked as a scriptwriter in Hollywood. Between 1930 and 1932, she also married an American man named Karl Jenning Pearson, who died in 1957. In 1932, she left the United States to being a new life on the Indonesian island of Bali, where she would spend the next fifteen years. Her decision to emigrate to Bali was inspired by watching a film called Bali: the last paradise, which gave a utopian image of the island, which was then part of the Netherlands East Indies. She wanted to become an artist there and abandoned her life in suburban America.

Bali

During her time in Bali, Muriel Stuart Walker was adopted by a local rajah named Anak Agung Nura. She also adopted the Balinese name K'tut Tantri, which translated into English as "fourth-born child." During her time in Indonesia, Tantri also became fluent in the Balinese and Indonesian languages. Later, she established a hotel in Kuta where she developed a fondness for the Indonesians and an aversion towards the Dutch, whom she regarded as "arrogant colonialists." She also became acquainted with several Western expatriate artists including Walter Spies and Adrien le Mayeur. During the Japanese occupation of Indonesia, Tantri chose to remain behind with the Balinese, who she regarded as her people. While she was later accused of collaborating with the Japanese, she has maintained in her autobiography Revolt in Paradise that she was imprisoned and tortured by the Japanese.

The Indonesian Revolution

Following the Second World War, Tantri was recruited into the Indonesian nationalist cause by rebels affiliated with the Indonesian guerrilla leader Bung Tomo. She became a radio broadcaster for the Voice of Free Indonesia. Due to her work for the Indonesian government, she became known as "Surabaya Sue" among the British and Dutch forces occupying Java; a reference to the Japanese propaganda broadcasters dubbed Tokyo Rose. In addition, Tantri contributed articles to an English-language magazine produced by the Republicans, which was also called the Voice of Free Indonesia. She witnessed the Battle of Surabaya and later joined President Sukarno's Republican administration as a speech writer and broadcaster. She also took a personal liking to Sukarno's oratory and charismatic personality.

In her memoirs, Tantri claimed to have been acquainted with Indonesian nationalist leaders like Bung Tomo and Amir Sjarifuddin. She also claimed that she had successfully exposed a plot by pro-Dutch Indonesians to overthrow Sukarno and install Hamengkubuwono IX, the Sultan of Yogyakarta, as the new President. In January 1947, Tantri took part in an Indonesian operation to sail a boat through the Dutch naval blockade to reach British-controlled Singapore. From there, she and the other Indonesian delegates had planned to travel to India or Australia to publicize the Indonesian story to the United Nations. She sailed from the port of Tegal in East Java in a boat that was captained by a pro-Indonesian Ambonese captain known as "Captain Ambon" and a sympathetic British skipper. However, this plan to travel to Australia did not eventuate since the travels funds promised to her by the Indonesian Ministry of Defence never materialized.

During her time in Singapore, K'tut Tantri was interviewed by Earle Growder and Eddy Dunstan, two journalists from the Straits Times newspaper. Since she lacked proper documents other than a passport issued by the Indonesian Republic, Tantri had to fake her way through the Singaporean immigration authorities by assuming the identity of an intoxicated woman who was the partner of a Chinese trader. Tantri subsequently reported her case to the Singapore Criminal Investigation Department which provided her with temporary identity papers. Tantri also took the credit for exposing a corrupt Indonesian agent who had been pocketing from the sale of sugar used to raise funds for the Indonesian Republic.

While in Singapore, K'tut Tantri met Abdul Monem, a representative from the Egyptian government and the Arab League, who had been sent by his government to extend formal diplomatic recognition to the Indonesian Republic. Since the Dutch and British consuls in Singapore had refused to help him travel to Yogyakarta, she and a sympathetic English businessman managed to charter a Philippines-registered aircraft for the sum of S$10,000, which she claimed the Indonesian Ministry of Defence would reimburse. This same aircraft later brought her back to Singapore along with the Indonesian Foreign Minister, Agus Salim, who was on his way to New Delhi to meet the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Throughout the duration of the Indonesian National Revolution, K'tut would make several trips between Indonesia and Singapore during several secret missions for the Republic.

Legacy

A few years later, K'tut Tantri found her way to Australia vis-a-vis Singapore where she helped publicize the Indonesian republican cause among sympathetic Australians. After obtaining an American passport from the United States Consul in Sydney, she returned to the United States where she published her memoirs, Revolt in Paradise, in 1960. The book quickly became a bestseller and was widely translated. For the next thirty years, she tried to get Revolt in Paradise made into a film but this never eventuated due to her adamant refusal to alter any details of the book. She spent her last years at a nursing home in Sydney, Australia where she died on 27 July 1997. Prior to her death, she was befriended by the Australian academic Tim Lindsey, who concluded that she had fabricated several of the events in her memoir.

Following her death, she was cremated following a non-religious memorial service on 9 August 1997. Her coffin was draped by the Indonesian flag and Balinese yellow and white clothes. Her funeral was attended by the deputy Indonesian Ambassador to Australia, Bill Morrison, the former Australian Ambassador to Indonesia, and his wife, several filmmakers, scriptwriters, anthropologists, and a historian. Her remains were cremated while her estate was distributed to poor Indonesian children. Despite her services to the Indonesian Republic, she was omitted from most of the official Indonesian records of the independence struggle and has received little serious scholarly attention.

The Indonesian diplomat Suryono Darusman confirmed most of K'tut Tantri's account including her work as a broadcaster for the Voice of Free Indonesia and speechwriter for President Sukarno, and her voyage to Singapore and Australia to publicize the Indonesian republican cause. However, he noted that despite her contributions to the Indonesian nationalist cause, the Indonesians were uncomfortable with her unorthodox lifestyle and her exaggerated claims for attention. According to Darusman, the Indonesians never bothered to find out her real name. The Singaporean historian Yong Mun Cheong also observed that the vituperative nature of her radio broadcasts in support of the Republican cause caused some embarrassment for the Indonesians. This led them to smuggle her out of Indonesia to Singapore in 1947, officially on the pretext that the Dutch would try to arrest her at the first opportunity.