The Maluku Islands or the Moluccas are an archipelago in the eastern part of Indonesia. Tectonically they are located on the Halmahera Plate within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone. Geographically they are located east of Sulawesi,west of New Guinea,and north and east of Timor. Lying within Wallacea,the Moluccas have been considered a geographical and cultural intersection of Asia and Oceania.
Maluku is a province of Indonesia. It comprises the central and southern regions of the Maluku Islands. The largest city and capital of Maluku province is Ambon on the small Ambon Island. It is directly adjacent to North Maluku,Southwest Papua,and West Papua in the north,Central Sulawesi,and Southeast Sulawesi in the west,Banda Sea,Australia,East Timor and East Nusa Tenggara in the south and Arafura Sea,Central Papua and South Papua in the east. The land area is 57803.81 km2,and the total population of this province at the 2010 census was 1,533,506 people,rising to 1,848,923 at the 2020 census,the official estimate as at mid 2023 was 1,908,753. Maluku is located in Eastern Indonesia.
South Maluku,also South Moluccas,officially the Republic of South Maluku,is an unrecognised secessionist republic that originally claimed the islands of Ambon,Buru,and Seram,which currently make up most of the Indonesian province of Maluku.
Johannes Alvarez Manusama,a former schoolteacher and freemason,RMS Minister of Education and Minister of Defence (1950),was the third president of the unrecognised secessionist Republic of South Moluccas (1966–1993).
Frans Lodewijk Johannis Tutuhatunewa was the fourth president in exile of the Republic of the South Moluccas between 1993 and 2010. He was born in Batavia,Dutch East Indies. He was preceded by Johan Manusama and succeeded by John Wattilete in 2010.
Wijster is a village in the Dutch province of Drenthe. It is a part of the municipality of Midden-Drenthe,and lies about 11 km north of Hoogeveen.
Thomas Matulessy,also known as Kapitan Pattimura or simply Pattimura,was a famous Ambonese soldier who became a symbol of both the Maluku and Indonesian struggle for independence,praised by President Sukarno and declared a national hero by President Suharto. He has several namesakes in both the Netherlands and in the Indonesian archipelago.
On 23 May 1977,a train was hijacked near the village of De Punt,Netherlands. At around 09:00 that morning,nine armed Moluccan nationalists pulled the emergency brake and took over fifty people hostage. The hijacking lasted twenty days and ended with a raid by Dutch counter-terrorist special forces,during which two hostages and six hijackers were killed.
On the morning of Monday 23 May 1977,four armed South-Moluccans took 105 children and their five teachers hostage at a primary school in Bovensmilde,Netherlands. At the same time nine others hijacked a train in the nearby De Punt. Both hostage crises lasted for twenty days before being ended by military interventions.
On 2 December 1975,seven South Moluccans seized a train with about 50 passengers on board in open countryside near the village of Wijster,halfway between Hoogeveen and Beilen in the northern part of the Netherlands. The hijacking lasted for 12 days and three hostages were killed.
Dr. Christiaan Robbert Steven Soumokil was a South Moluccan politician and prosecutor who served as the second president of the Republic of South Maluku from 1950 until his execution in 1966 by Indonesian forces loyal to Suharto.
This article surveys the postage stamps and postal history of the Republic of South Moluccas. Historical or political incidents can be found in the main article.
Henry Stolow was a stamp dealer in Berlin,New York,and Munich who was behind the issue of numerous stamps of doubtful validity.
Johan Teterissa was a Moluccan elementary school teacher,activist and member of the Republic of the South Moluccas,or RMS,an active separatist group which advocates independence for the Maluku islands from Indonesia. Teterissa was sentenced to life in prison for treason in April 2008 after leading a nonviolent protest against Indonesian rule in 2007. Teterissa,and a group of 19 traditional Moluccan dancers,unfurled a secessionist flag of the banned South Moluccan Republic in front of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on June 29,2007,in Ambon,the capital of Maluku. Amnesty International designated him a prisoner of conscience.
Moluccans are the Austronesian-speaking and Papuan-speaking ethnic groups indigenous to the Maluku Islands,Eastern Indonesia. The region was historically known as the Spice Islands,and today consists of two Indonesian provinces of Maluku and North Maluku. As such,"Moluccans" is used as a blanket term for the various ethnic and linguistic groups native to the islands.
The Moluccan diaspora refers to overseas Indonesians of Moluccan birth or descent living outside Indonesia. The most significant Moluccan diaspora community lives in the Netherlands,where it numbers c. 70,000 people as of 2018.
The Invasion of Ambon was a combined Indonesian military operation which aimed to seize and annex the self proclaimed Republic of South Maluku.
Johannes Latuharhary was an Indonesian politician and nationalist of Moluccan descent,who served as the first Indonesian governor of Maluku from 1945 until 1955,though he did not assume office in Maluku until 1950. A Protestant Christian,Latuharhary was an early proponent of Moluccan inclusion in the Indonesian state and he was an active participant in the struggle for Indonesia's independence.
Johanis Hermanus Manuhutu was a South Moluccan civil servant in the Dutch East Indies and the first president of the Republic of South Maluku in 1950.
Foxhol is a village in the Dutch province of Groningen. It is part of the municipality of Midden-Groningen. In 1842,the potato starch factory Eureka was founded in Foxhol by Willem Albert Scholten. Foxhol became an industrial area with factories and shipyards. The village is nowadays part of the urban area of Hoogezand.
