Minister of Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Tjahjo Kumolo has voiced support for a move by the National Archives of Indonesia (ANRI) to submit first Indonesian President Soekarno’s speech for UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme.
Soekarno’s speech “To Build the World Anew”, which was read at the UN General Assembly on September 30, 1960, has been preserved by the National Archives of Indonesia. It will be submitted as a documentary heritage to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Kumolo said here on Monday.
“I need to emphasize that the Ministry of Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform strongly supports ANRI’s efforts in making the archives of President Soekarno’s speech titled ‘To Build the World Anew’ as a collective memory of the world or Memory of the World,” he remarked.
Soekarno’s speech has inspired one of Indonesia’s national goals: realizing world peace, he said.
Soekarno played a role in promoting world peace by placing Indonesia in the world political arena, starting with the 1955 Asia-Africa Summit in Bandung and the Non-Aligned Movement I Summit in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1961, Kumolo added.
“Indonesia through Bung Karno did not stop voicing for the reduction of tension between the two major world blocks at that time: the United States and the Soviet Union,” he noted.
Meanwhile, ANRI head Imam Gunarto said that the submission of Soekarno’s archived speech to UNESCO was based on the belief that Soekarno was an influential president in terms of international relations.
“This represents the pinnacle of Soekarno’s thoughts and struggles in leading Indonesia and having a significant influence internationally,” Gunarto remarked.
Indonesia has received support from a number of allied countries, who encouraged it to submit the speech as a UN documentary heritage, he said.
The ANRI has proposed two more archival materials as documentary heritage to the UNESCO: the archives of the Non-Aligned Movement I Summit and Hikayat Aceh, he informed.
The archives of the Non-Aligned Movement I Summit are a joint nomination proposed with Serbia and Algeria and include letters of support from countries that attended the summit, Gunarto said.
“Meanwhile, the Hikayat Aceh archive was submitted by Indonesia and the Netherlands because it belongs to ANRI and KITLV (Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Landen Volkenkunde),” he added.
Source: Antara News