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John Wattilete (born Johannes Gerardus (John) Wattilete [1] in Bemmel, Gelderland, Netherlands, 25 January 1955) [2] is the fifth and incumbent president in exile of the Republic of South Maluku (or South Moluccas, Indonesian : Republik Maluku Selatan, RMS) and has been in office since 2010. [3] [4] He was preceded by Frans Tutuhatunewa. [5] [6]
Wattilete was born in the Netherlands to a South Moluccan father and a Dutch mother. He grew up in Bemmel and studied law in the Catholic University of Nijmegen (now renamed Radboud University Nijmegen). He graduated in 1983 and became a lawyer in the Amsterdam law firm Wattilete Advocaten.
He was involved in the Moluccan youth movement Collectief '91, which found the policies of the Republic of South Maluku in exile (RMS) government too soft. At their first meeting, then-exile president Johan Manusama unexpectedly entered to hear their criticisms. Shortly thereafter, John Wattilete became his executive.
From 1995, he managed the General Affairs position within the RMS cabinet in exile. In 1999 he travelled to Indonesia twice with Reverend Otto Matulessy as an RMS delegate. They met Indonesian president B. J. Habibie and then with his successor Abdurrahman Wahid. During that period, there were great tensions in the South Moluccas between the Christians and Muslim populations of the region and as a result of the civil strife, there were many people killed and injured on both sides. The then RMS president Frans Tutuhatunewa was not so happy with these delegations spearheaded by Wattilete and Matulessy. In retrospect, the more pragmatic Wattilete also admits that the conversations were futile and led to nothing.
Around 2003, Wattilete succeeded Pieter Thenu as Prime Minister / Vice President of the RMS. In April 2009, it was announced that President Tutuhatunewa would retire soon and that Wattilete would be a possible successor of the now 85-year-old president Tutuhatunewa. Wattilete became president of the RMS and was sworn in on 17 April 2010. Almost the entire management of the RMS consists of Moluccans who were born or were resident in the Netherlands. He made statements in an interview with the Nederlands Dagblad saying that the Moluccan people should be able to speak freely about the political future of their islands and that both the Indonesian government and the RMS government in exile should adhere to that outcome. Should the Moluccan people indicate that they no longer strive for their own state, Wattilete would be prepared to attach consequences to it, as he said. If independence is not desired, he opined that his government would accept autonomous status but as part of the Indonesian state for the time being (a situation similar to Aceh), with a bigger say by the Moluccan people in their own Moluccas affairs.
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 as 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 46,150.92 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 2022 was 1,881,727. Maluku is located in Eastern Indonesia.
South Maluku, also South Moluccas, officially the Republic of South Maluku, was an unrecognised secessionist republic that claimed the islands of Ambon, Buru, and Seram, which make up the Indonesian province of Maluku.
Johannes Alvarez Manusama was a former schoolteacher and freemason, RMS Minister of Education and Minister of Defence (1950), was the third president of the unrecognised secessionist republic of the 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 50 people hostage. The hijacking lasted 20 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.
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.