Sutan Sjahrir

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sutan Sjahrir (5 March 1909 — 9 April 1966) was the first prime minister of Indonesia, after a career as a key Indonesian nationalist organizer in the 1930s and 1940s.

Sjahrir was born in 1909 in Padang Panjang, West Sumatra; his father was an advisor to the Sultan of Deli. He studied in Medan and Bandung, and then moved to Leiden, The Netherlands to study law around 1929. In Holland he gained an appreciation for socialist principles, and was a part of several labor unions as he worked to support himself. He was briefly the secretary of the Indonesian Association (Perhimpunan Indonesia), and organization of Indonesian students in the Netherlands.

He returned to Indonesia in 1931 without finishing a law degree. He helped set up the Indonesian National Party (PNI), and became a close associate of future vice president Mohammad Hatta. He was imprisoned by the Dutch for nationalist activities in November 1934, first in Boven Digul, then on Banda, and then in 1941, just before the Indies fell to the Japanese, to Sukabumi. During the Japanese occupation of Indonesia he had little public role, apparently sick with tuberculosis.

He was appointed Prime Minister by President Sukarno in November 1945 and served until June 1947. Sjahrir founded the Indonesian Socialist Party in 1948, which, although small, was very influential in the early post-independence years, because of the expertise and high education levels of its leaders. But the party performed poorly in the 1955 elections and was banned by President Sukarno in 1960. Sjahrir was jailed in the early 1960s, and died in exile in Zürich, Switzerland in 1966.