-
7
16.
(c) Saigon. The political situation in Indo-China forbids
any considerable development of active political
propaganda by a British agency, directly or indirectly.
Until recently, moreover, there have been obstacles
to our passing a considerable amount of information
to the French authorities in French Indo-China for
their use if they agree and are capable of using it.
This restriction has now been relaxed and it may be
hoped that the French can do something about it on
the basis of material to be supplied by the R.I.O.
(d) Indonesia. There has been a hiatus of several months,
since the departure of the Information Officer. A
new Information Officer is about to leave the U.K.
for Batavia, This appointment coincides with the
favourable political development inaugurated by the
outcome of the Hague Conference. It may be found
desirable to develop information activities in
Indonesia considerably: at present they are restric-
ted to a very small organization in Batavia alone,
and probably have little or no effect on the popula-
tion as a whole.
As regards the colonial territories, the position
may be briefly stated as follows:
(a)
(b)
In the light of para. 14 (a) and (b) above, Public
Relations Officers should have more time now for
local activities: long-term and general
anti-Communist publicity are the direct task of the
Regional Information Office, i.e., the latter approach
departments, officials, publicists and newspapers,
etc., direct.
The Department of Public Relations in the Federation
of Malaya is energetically concerned with the local
aspects/
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