The Tangerang Republic

 

The revolution that came to Indonesia on August 17, 1945, wasn’t the clean, heroic thing the history books would later make it out to be. No sir. It was messier than a dog’s breakfast, bloodier than a Sunday sermon in Coldwater, Mississippi, and twice as mean.

See, revolutions have a way of bringing out the worst in folks, same as a full moon brings out the howling in dogs. And in those early days after Sukarno and Hatta proclaimed independence, the darkness that lived in men’s hearts—that thing that’s always there, waiting, patient as cancer—well, it came crawling out into the daylight.

In Jakarta, they were shouting “Merdeka!”—freedom. But down in Tangerang, Christ, they were shouting something else entirely. They were shouting “Kill!” And if that doesn’t make your blood run cold, friend, then you haven’t been paying attention to how these stories usually go.

The thing about mobs—and I’ve seen my share—is that they start with an idea. Maybe even a good idea. But ideas are like fires, and fires spread, and before you know it, the whole damn forest is burning and nobody remembers who struck the first match.

The Scapegoats

In Tangerang, they needed someone to blame. They always do. The Chinese folks who’d been living there, working their shops, raising their kids, minding their own business—well, they made for convenient targets. Too convenient, if you ask me.

“The Chinese,” folks whispered in the coffee shops and the market stalls, “they’re in with the colonials. Always have been. Look how they live—better than us, don’t they? Look how they keep to themselves.”

It’s the oldest story in the book, older than Cain and Abel. Find someone different, someone who maybe has something you want, and convince yourself they’re the reason for all your troubles. Sri Mastuti Purwaningsih wrote about it later, how the natives saw the Chinese as part of the colonial machinery. But I’ll tell you what she maybe couldn’t—there’s a hunger in people, a darkness that feeds on fear and envy, and once you give it a name and a face, it becomes something terrible and alive.

By November 1945, the Chinese families in Sepatan, Mauk, Kronjo, and Kresek were packing their bags and running like their hair was on fire. Smart of them. Damned smart. Because what was coming next wasn’t revolution—it was something older and uglier.

The Butcher’s Bill

Tubagus Kurnia didn’t last long as Assistant Wedana of Sepatan. Poor bastard was inaugurated and dead before the ink was dry on his appointment papers. The mob came for him like something out of a fever dream, and when they were done, well, let’s just say his wife didn’t have much to bury.

The Wedana of Kresek, a man named Iskandar, was luckier or maybe just faster on his feet. He ran, and he kept running, and he never came back to Tangerang. Smart man. Sometimes the only way to win the game is not to play.

In Parungkuda Village, Haji Muhur came calling with forty of his closest friends, all of them armed to the teeth and mean as stepped-on snakes. They wanted the village head out—the colonial-appointed one—and they wanted their own man in. A fellow named Laut bin Pitak. Democracy in action, Tangerang style.

The Mystic Warrior

Enter K.H. Achmad Chaerun, stage left, carrying more charisma than a revival tent preacher and twice the ambition. He was what folks in Maine might call a “dowser”—one of those men who claimed to have a direct line to powers beyond the ordinary. A mystic warrior from Sangiang Village who could supposedly calm troubled waters and speak to the spirits.

The Regional Indonesian National Committee thought they were being clever when they decided to make Chaerun their puppet regent. They figured if they couldn’t beat him, they’d use him. What they didn’t count on was that some men aren’t made for following orders, especially when those orders come from other men instead of whatever dark voices whisper in their ears at night.

The committee met on October 6, 1945, in the regency hall. All the big shots were there—KNID officials, Freedom Front members, BKR security corps leaders. They chewed over the Kurnia and Iskandar “incidents” like dogs worrying a bone, and came to the conclusion that Regent Agus Padmanegara had to go. He was weak, they said. A collaborator. The people had lost faith.

So they decided to roll the dice with Chaerun. What could go wrong?

The Coup

Everything, as it turned out.

On October 9, thousands of people—and I mean thousands, a real biblical plague of humanity—marched to Karawaci behind Chaerun and his KNID cronies. They took over a guild hall owned by a Chinese businessman named Oey Kiat Tjin, turning it into their revolutionary headquarters. You could almost hear the wheels of history grinding, metal on metal, sparks flying.

Padmanegara wasn’t going down without a fight. He called in warriors from Batuceper and Rawa Bokor, hard men led by a fellow called Haji Taung. For a moment there, it looked like Tangerang might become a real battlefield, with real blood soaking into real dirt.

But Chaerun was smarter than that. Or maybe just more patient. On October 18, in a place called Curug, he declared himself “Father of the People of Tangerang.” Just like that. No election, no ceremony, just a man standing up and saying, “I’m in charge now.”

He sent his boys—BKR leader Soetedjo, along with thugs named Deos and Sheikh Abdullah—to surround the regent’s house. The masses came marching from Karawaci and Sepatan, a human river flowing toward one man’s doorstep.

Only problem was, Padmanegara wasn’t home. Just his guards, standing there like actors who’d forgotten their lines.

That’s when things went sideways. Without the proper dramatic confrontation, without the resignation letter signed in trembling hands, Chaerun just… took over. Declared himself regent by fiat. Sometimes the simplest solutions are the most terrifying.

The Republic of Nightmares

What Chaerun built wasn’t a government—it was something else entirely. He called it the Tangerang Republic, but republics are supposed to answer to the people. This thing answered only to Chaerun and whatever voices told him what to do in the dark hours before dawn.

He dissolved the entire civil service, top to bottom, replacing career bureaucrats with his own cronies. The police force—what was left of it from the Japanese occupation—got the ax too. In their place came the “Black Militia” and something called the Dare-to-Die Troops. If those names don’t make you want to pack up and move to someplace safer—like maybe the surface of Mars—then you’re braver than I am.

The Central Council Dicterium ruled with four heads: Chaerun, Sumo, Suwono, and Abas. Like something out of a Greek myth, if the Greeks had been into arbitrary executions and property seizure.

They reorganized everything, renaming the administrative districts Region I, Region II, and Region III. Bureaucratic efficiency, Tangerang Republic style. Clean, simple, and absolutely terrifying in its implications.

The Reckoning

The thing about strongmen—and history’s littered with them like broken bottles after a Saturday night bender—is that they always overreach. Always. Chaerun declared independence from Jakarta, cutting all ties with the national government. That was his mistake. You can terrorize your neighbors, steal their property, murder their leaders, but you don’t pick fights with people who have bigger guns than you do.

The national government sent in TKR Regiment IV under Lieutenant Colonel Singgih. Real soldiers, not the half-trained militia thugs Chaerun had been using to keep order. The takeover was swift, bloodless, and probably inevitable.

They arrested Chaerun and his top lieutenants—Alibasyah, Sheikh Abdullah, Haji Muhur, Haji Saalan—without a shot being fired. Shipped them off to Selabintana in Sukabumi for execution. No appeals, no last-minute reprieve, no dramatic final speech. Just the machinery of justice grinding forward, implacable as death itself.

The Republic of Tangerang died as quickly as it had been born, leaving behind nothing but graves and traumatized survivors and the kind of stories that get told in whispers for generations afterward.

Regiment IV established something called the Government Apparatus Support Board, staffed with the same civil servants Chaerun had dismissed and some military officers who presumably knew which end of a rifle to hold. They even invited some of Chaerun’s former followers to participate in the new government. A generous gesture, some might say.

Others might call it a trap. And on January 16, 1946, when those former followers showed up for their first meeting, well… let’s just say some invitations come with hidden costs.

Because that’s the thing about revolutions, friend. They eat their own children, every time. The lucky ones die quick. The unlucky ones live long enough to see what they’ve built, and realize they’ve created something that would have been better left buried.

The revolution that began with shouts of “Freedom!” ended with the silence of the grave. And in Tangerang, they’re still digging up the bones.