Semaun

Semaun (1899–1971), also spelled Semaoen, was the first chairman of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) and was a leader of the Semarang branch of the Sarekat Islam. Semaun was born in 1899 in Curahmalang, Jombang, East Java. Semaoen was the son of Prawiroatmodjo, a bricklayer in the railway ministry. Although not the son of a rich man, Semaoen managed to get into the Tweede Klas school (a second-class native school) and obtained additional education in Dutch by attending a kind of afternoon course. After completing primary school, he was unable to continue to higher education. Therefore, he worked at the Staatsspoor (SS) Surabaya as a small clerk. His emergence on the political stage of the movement began at the age of 14. At that time, in 1914, he joined the Sarekat Islam (SI) afdeeling Surabaya. A year later, in 1915, he met Sneevliet and was invited to join the Indische Sociaal-Democratische Vereeniging, the social democratic organisation of the Dutch East Indies. Thus by the age of sixteen, he was elected as one of the first Indonesian members of the Union of Train and Tramway Personnel (VSTP), soon quitting his job as a railway worker to become a trade union activist full-time.