West Papua Women’s Office-Docklands is publishing the English translation of De Verstekeling, van Sorong naar Rotterdam (The Stowaway, from Sorong to Rotterdam) and launching Eddy Korwa’s amazing biography—with its 60 historic photos—on Sunday 31 August 2025.
Endie van Binsbergen & Eddy Korwa, Launch De Verstekeling, van Sorong naar Rotterdam, August 2020
The Stowaway is a page-turner: history, love, politics, solidarity, death, tragedy, soccer ….
On 19 April 1964, Eddy Korwa and Tony Rumpaisum, two well-educated young Melanesian West Papuans, escape their newly occupied and increasingly violent homeland on the last Dutch cargo ship to leave Sorong. Eddy’s pen pal from primary school happened to be a deckhand on the ship, and arranges for them to hide under the oil tank. Indonesian diplomats and intelligence agents hunt down the dissidents in Sorong, Geelong, Sumatra; the British lock them up for a few days in Borneo. Three months after leaving Sorong, the MS Schelde Lloyd reaches Rotterdam in The Netherlands. Eddy and Tony are locked-up in a police cell for five days, then brought before the Police Commissioner, who tells them he’s sending them back to (Indonesian) West Papua. At this point we are up to Chapter 5. Buy the book to see what happens next!!
Co-writer Endie van Binsbergen is a Dutch activist from Utrecht in The Netherlands. For six years she spent every Wednesday with Eddy capturing his story and putting it, as she says, ‘in the right order’, then organised its publication, printing, and distribution. In October 2024, David Bradbury, an intrepid Australian film-maker, captured the two of them at the annual West Papua Market in Utrecht, where they were selling the original (Dutch) version of the book.
David’s great little marketing video (5mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNLQIfrI0bE
Endie grew up in a rural Dutch village where many Moluccan families had been “temporarily” placed after Indonesia’s independence in 1949, and she is still friends with several of her primary school classmates. In the mid-1980s, after getting involved with working women in Indonesia and human rights in West Papua and East Timor, she realized that significant details of her nation’s colonial history were not in the school books. She has been addressing that (typical colonial) white wash ever since, working with Moluccan and West Papuan refugees, and as Spokesperson for the Free East Timor Foundation (Stichting Vrij Oost Timor) since its formation in 2000.
Endie and Jacob Rumbiak, Baucau Airport, East Timor, boarding the RAAF Hercules heading to Darwin, 3 September 1999, the day before the UN announced the referendum result (78.6% for independence)
Endie was an official observer of the referendum in East Timor in 1999, where, remarkably, she met Eddy’s relative, Jacob Rumbiak, who was also an observer of the tiny nation’s historic and very bloodied liberation moment. Here is an excerpt from Endie’s essay Looking back at 1999:
“At the voting centre in Beloi …. we met another observer…. he told us that he came from Jakarta, but looking at his face I could tell he was a Papuan. We talked for quite a while .… He intrigued me.
[After the referendum] we saw the violence increasing … and on 2 September our office in Dili convinced us to leave Viqueque the next morning … that afternoon we met the Papuan observer again, and he asked us to take his reports to Dili, as his ride got involved in an accident and could not pick him up. He said that he planned to travel by perahu (fisherman’s boat) along the coast, as there was no other way to get from Viqueque to Dili. We had a quick team meeting and decided that this man would travel with us to Dili.
That night in Baucau we watched CNN at our neighbour’s and heard that Xanana Gusmão was released from Cipinang prison. Our friend whispered: “We need to tell him not to come back to Timor yet. They will kill him. Can I use the satellite phone?” Now we knew for certain that this man was not just an observer. “Who are you, who are you really?” I asked him. He shook his head and said: “I am a friend, trust me. I will tell you about myself when we are out and safe”. We did trust him. But we also told him to stay away from the satellite phone”.
REVIEW 1: THE STOWAWAY, Vien Sawor, 2nd generation Papuan in the Netherlands
The Stowaway provides a valuable insight into a population group that has been neglected in Dutch history books: the Papuans in the Netherlands. With a touch of melancholy I read the story in one go. Melancholy because of the people in the story that I know. Sadness because many of them have already passed away; they never saw their ideal for a free West Papua come true. The anecdotes are recognizable to many Papuans in the diaspora. Funny, moving, but also hopeful, because “as long as the Morning Star will shine, there is still hope for a better future for the next generations”. (Vien Sawor, Collaborative Organizations for West Papua (SOWP).
REVIEW 2: THE STOWAWAY is important because Eddy Korwa was a protegee of the political and social development in his homeland between 1950 and 1961 when West Papua was a United Nations Non-Self-Governing Territory (NSGT) administered by the Netherlands (1950—1961). Non-Self-Governing Territories are defined as “territories whose people have not yet attained a full measure of self-government”. A NSGT changes its status via an exercise of self-determination (referendum) wherein the people choose to i) become an independent state, or ii) in free association with another state, or iii) integrate with an independent state. There has never been an act of self-determination in West Papua.
DR JOE’S AUCTION FOR WP RENT COLLECTIVE
One of the items in Dr Joe Toscano’s regular auction for the West Papua Rent Collective (which pays the rent on our office) is a beautifully crafted fully lined tissue box made from baby shells collected by Babuan’s friends in Biak Island, West Papua. Raise your hand for this one, it’s a one-off, there won’t be any more.
REVIEW 3: THE STOWAWAY, Angela Turner, WP Women’s Office-Docklands
This is an easily readable book with a smooth narrative. Eddy Korwa was personable, intelligent and enthusiastic in all that he did. As well as being Eddy Korwa’s story it is a history book.The criticism of this book is the deserved feeling of shame that citizens of U.S.A, Netherlands, Australia and the United Nations will experience. The historical political facts stop us relaxing and simply enjoying a rollicking good tale. These countries voice support of democracy, freedom and independence but lost their voice if defending these ideals might cost trade advantages. Eddy Korwa’s information of bigger countries’ and the U.N’s complicit activities and deliberate neglect of West Papuans is knowledge that we must have so that finally we will demand that Indonesia’s repugnant genocide and pillaging of a different race, ethnicity and country must cease.
The Dutch colonisation of West Papua seems to have been forgiven by the Papuans with the Dutch plans, preparation and implementation of self government. I was disappointed to learn that President Kennedy started the rot of countries being selfish rather than principled by declining to attend the 1961 inauguration of the enthusiastically celebrated, elected New Guinea Council so as not to offend Soekarno. Indonesia’s theft of West Papua was started by lustful President for Life Soekarno (married 12 times) who initiated political tensions in 1949 but Eddy Korwa noticed active infiltration intensify in 1960.
Hmmm, I wonder why the United Nations Security Force of only Pakistani troops failed to interfere when Indonesian soldiers beat peaceful Papuans in 1962? Australia followed the leader. Although Eddy Korwa and Tony Rumpaisum had been accepted by the Netherlands, while the ship was in Melbourne the stowaways were jailed in Geelong for the crime of leaving “West Irian”! Nor could Australia have them claiming refugee status. In 1985 there was a group of Australians who did help West Papuans at the U.N. Conference “Working group on Indigenous populations”. No, not our government, Australian Aborigines.
It was also disappointing to learn that fake news wasn’t invented by Donald Trump. Dutch newspapers published Indonesia’s false good stories as truth. The 1984 incident of 4 Papuans seeking asylum in the Dutch embassy in Jakarta didn’t sound familiar to me. My bad memory or censorship?
Eddy Korwa’s book is enhanced with little details: Indonesia not approving of Papuans following Dutch clothing fashions like ‘drainpipe’ trousers; “My body trembled with excitement.” “We probably didn’t look human anymore.” His italicized interjections add clarity. The newspaper clippings, condensed from 3 pages in the original Dutch edition of “The Stowaway”, still convey resistance and struggle.
In 2017 Eddy Kowra was insulted by a young ignorant Dutch public servant because, like Australia, Dutch education doesn’t cover Papua. “I am a Papuan and I will remain a Papuan. I am not an immigrant. I was born under the Dutch flag.” Would we be as astute in Eddy Korwa’s situation? As educated, as politically informed, so persistently seeking freedom?
