A new plane is about to land in the Tanah Merah Airport, Boven Digul. From afar when the plane is about to land, there is something interesting in that humble airport.
There is a statue, with a serious face along with his trademark spectacles. He was among the people who made Indonesia got its indepence, the Proclamator, Moehammad Hatta.
“Wherever fate leads us, wherever the oppressor threw us all over, every inch of Indonesia, is ours. Upon the land and water I live, I am happy. Wherever my feet stood on the land of Indonesia, there is where the hope and our dreams grew,” wrote the letters that is immortalized in that statue of Moehammad Hatta, or better known as Bung Hatta.
The statue of Bung Hatta is the memorial of those who fights against the Colonialism in Papua. Bung Hatta was once exiled in Digoel in 1926. He was “imprisoned” in the horrors of nature, in the long downstream of Digoel River, full of dangers.
However, what he wrote in that place in the year of 1935 is not the fears of dengue fever, nor the horrors of the uncharted jungle behind the dorms of the Collonials.
He instead wrote: Wherever my feet stood on the land of Indonesia, there is where the hope and our dreams grew”.
From Merauke, in the year of 1935, Bung Hatta, as the prisoner of the Collonials, already stated the name of our nation, Indonesia. And that is how importance the meaning behind the words “From Sabang to Merauke”.