THE URGENCY OF THE WORLD CONGRESS OF THE MOLUCCAN NATION, THE BURIED HISTORY OF THE RMS, AND THE LAWSUIT AGAINST STRUCTURAL STATE VIOLENCE

🌐 Urgensi Kongres Masyarakat Maluku Sedunia, Sejarah RMS yang Terkubur, dan Gugatan atas Kekerasan Struktural Negara

MALUKU June 17, 2026
Author: Gibran Faqih Latuconsina (Youth of Maluku)
Editor: Suara Nunusaku Editorial
translation: Martha Louhenapessy en Nico Souisa - FKM-RMS the Netherlands

AMBON — The idea of holding a World Maluku Community Congress was born from the womb of our collective anxiety, especially among the younger generation of Maluku. We are witnessing firsthand the accumulation of global economic uncertainty, the stagnation of regional development, and the social fragmentation experienced by the children of Maluku — both those who remain on their ancestral land and those scattered across the global diaspora.

For me, this initiative is not merely a routine ceremonial agenda. It is an urgent and total consolidation to unite the intellectual, economic, and cultural potential of Maluku that has for too long been deliberately left to drift separately without a clear direction.

This momentum simultaneously serves as a real test for the new leadership of Maluku Governor Hendrik Lewerissa and Vice Governor Abdullah Vanath for the 2025–2030 period: whether they can rise above the barriers of electoral political interests to formulate a sovereign future for Maluku, or whether they will instead sink into the pragmatism of power.

As a young person from Maluku, I consider it essential to examine the urgency of this congress by linking it to three crucial dimensions:

1.The consolidation of the global diaspora under new leadership.
2.The deconstruction of historical memory that has long been silenced by the state.
3.The grievance against the economic development imbalance and structural violence that Maluku continues to experience within the national political constellation.

The organization of a global-scale forum for the Maluku community must be positioned as an instrument of paradiplomacy and strategic development asset consolidation, not merely a stage for cultural display. We must remember that for centuries, the Maluku archipelago stood tall as an epicenter of world civilization because of its spice wealth, which triggered the arrival of great nations such as the Portuguese, Spanish, English, and eventually the Dutch. Yet ironically, in the narrative of modern Indonesian development, this enormously significant historical contribution has been deliberately ignored, and Maluku has consistently been positioned as a peripheral region, regarded merely as an appendage in national development.

This anxiety resonates with what was voiced by our brother, Fadel Rumakat, a functionary of the National Coordination Board of the Islamic Student Press Institute (LAPMI) and a Maluku youth activist. Rumakat, whom we also know for his integrity as Director of the Young House Against Corruption (RUMMI) — the one who bravely reported the alleged corruption of Rp700 billion in funds from PT Sarana Multi Infrastruktur (SMI) involving local political elites such as Lucky Wattimury — firmly stated that 
Maluku’s current challenges require a massive consolidation that transcends sectarian and factional political interests.

​However, amid this wave of optimism, I and the Maluku public are enveloped by a very fundamental sociopolitical doubt: whether our new regional head pair, Hendrik Lewerissa and Abdullah Vanath, 

possess the political courage and grand vision to realize this congress, or whether they will instead be trapped in a circle of pragmatism merely to preserve the political existence of their own group.

Through the World Maluku Community Congress, we have a golden opportunity to build a comprehensive diaspora database, identify the specific expertise of our people, and design schemes for the repatriation of capital and intellectual resources. Sacred values such as pela, gandong, and orang basudara must immediately be transformed from mere cultural slogans that sweeten officials’ speeches into concrete operational foundations for development. Until now, the inability of the local political elite to consolidate social and community forces has left Maluku far behind regions such as Papua and North Maluku, which have been far more intelligent and organized in building collective awareness to pressure central government policy.

In mapping the real conditions, we are confronted with chaotic diaspora demographic data due to the absence of accurate figures on the number of Maluku people living outside the region or abroad. The target of compiling an integrated database has always been obstructed by the weak political will of the regional government. Likewise, in terms of cultural-economic synergy, the value of local brotherhood has so far remained nothing more than a slogan to sweeten speeches, while post-conflict fragmentation and the sectoral ego of the elite continue to hinder the formation of investment networks. In the dimension of development diplomacy, Maluku’s low bargaining position causes the region to remain neglected because of the pragmatism of local elites who focus solely on political survival.

We cannot speak about Maluku’s future without daring to open the Pandora’s box of the past. One of the greatest psychological obstacles to national reconciliation and Maluku diaspora consolidation is the history of the Republic of South Maluku (RMS), which was deliberately buried alive and made taboo by the state’s power apparatus, particularly throughout the New Order era. School history textbooks hegemonically reduce the RMS to a purely separatist movement driven by narrow personal interests, without ever opening space for critical study of the sociopolitical background that gave birth to it.

As young intellectuals, we must dare to look at objective facts with clarity. The proclamation of the RMS on 25 April 1950 by Dr. Christiaan Robbert Steven (C.R.S.) Soumokil together with J.H. Manuhutu and Albert Wairisal was in fact the culmination of profound disappointment over the collapse of the federal system of the Republic of the United States of Indonesia (RIS) into the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia (NKRI). The agreement of the Round Table Conference (KMB), which guaranteed the right to self-determination for the constituent states, including the State of East Indonesia (NIT), was deemed to have been unilaterally violated by the political elite in Java.

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