Indonesia must promote indigenous culture, experts say

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Indonesia should promote its indigenous cultures to help strengthen stability and security, experts said on Thursday.

The director of Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University's Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS), Badrus Sholeh, said Indonesia could follow the New Zealand government policy of incorporating Maori culture into its national identity.

"We need to promote local cultures in order to strengthen their identities, which is what the New Zealand government did with the Maori. This kind of policy can be used to overcome separatist movements in the country," he told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of an international seminar in Jakarta on strengthening security in the Asia Pacific.

The one-day seminar, organized in conjunction with the opening of the CSEAS, featured a number of speakers including Prof. Azyumardi Azra, the rector of Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, David Strachan, the charge d'affaires of the New Zealand Embassy in Jakarta, and James Veitch, a lecturer in the School of Government at Victoria University of Wellington.

Azyumardi said Indonesia and New Zealand had significant roles to play in strengthening stability and security cooperation in Asia and the Pacific.

"They have originally internal sources of culture, identity and state policy which may influence the ongoing peace building and efforts to prevent regional conflicts," he said.

New Zealand has facilitated interreligious forums in the region, while Indonesia has initiated strategies to fight the rise of Islamic radicalism and terrorism in Indonesia and the region, said Azyumardi, who is also on the advisory board of the CSEAS.