The spirit of Bandung

Josef Purnama Widyatmadja, Hong Kong

In his book, The Color of Curtain (The Mississippi University Press), Richard Wright writes about the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference, "The despised, the insulted, the hurt, the dispossessed -- in short, the underdogs of the human race were meeting. Here were class and racial and religious consciousness on a global scale. Who have thought of organizing such a meeting? And what had these nations in common? Nothing, it seemed to me, but what their past relationship to the Western world had made them feel. This meeting of the rejected was in itself a kind of judgment upon the Western world!"

According to Wright, the Asia-Africa Conference was the first world summit that gathered former colonized Asian and African nations without interference from any Western force.

It was at this conference that Soekarno proclaimed:

"For long years we Asian and African people have tolerated decisions made in our stead by those countries which placed their own interests above all else. We lived in poverty and humiliation. But tremendous changes have taken place in the past years. Many peoples and countries have awakened from centuries of slumber. Tranquility has given way to struggle and action. This irresistible force in sweeping the two continents." (Zhang Yan, The Mississippi Quarterly Report, 1997).

In the midst of the ideological conflict between capitalism and communism, the participants of the conference proposed a third way, an ideology that tried to merge Asian and African nationalism, religion, and humanity. The communists from China, the nationalists from Indonesia, the theocrats from Saudi Arabia and the capitalists from Japan, came up with one statement that supported the common course of Asian and African peoples, i.e. to fight colonialism, imperialism, racism, discrimination, and to claim equal rights for all other colonized nations in order to bring forth a just and peaceful world.

In relation to the Conference, The Christian Science Monitor Daily wrote at that time

"The West is excluded. Emphasis is on the colored nations of the world. And for Asia it means that at last the destiny of Asia is being determined in Asia, and not Geneva, or Paris, or London, and Washington. Colonialism was out and hands off is the word. Asia is free. This is perhaps the historic event of our century."

Fifty years after the Bandung conference, however, Asian and African leaders seem to have lost their enthusiasm to fight for their aspirations.

They cling to development ideology instead of people-centered development. They get involved in ethnic and religious conflicts. They get themselves into border disputes with their neighbors and ignore the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. They failed in building democratic institutions. Many criticized the 1955 conference saying that the leaders who attended were part of the national bourgeoisie (institutional ruling elite). Worse, they offered themselves as servants of foreign forces.

So, what has changed fifty years after the Asia Africa Conference? We can see that African countries have been liberated from colonialism. Apartheid has also been abolished in South Africa. And it is true that the Cold war has ended. However, the cold war has been replaced by the war of terror, itself directed at a particular religion. The world is under the direction of one country. The Palestinians are still struggling to achieve their freedom. Poverty is a common scene in many Asian and African countries.

The economic exploitation of Asian and African peoples has a new face and a new form. "Colonialism also has its modern dress, in the form of economic control, intellectual control, and actual physical control by a small and alien community within a nation. It is a skillful and determined enemy and it appears in many guises," the late Sukarno said during the 1955 conference.

Dictatorships still flourish in Asia and Africa, and human rights violations are a daily practice. People are still threatened by a "war on terror", pre-emptive wars, with weapons of mass destruction, poverty, human right abuses, and HIV/AIDS.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Bandung conference, it is important for Asia-Africa to engage in extensive dialog to identify the challenges and opportunities the movement has to address in the wake of the dynamics of globalization and the American "war on terror". The role of Asia- Africa in promoting a just international order will depend largely on its inner strength, unity and cohesion.

The writer is a social activist/commentator based in Hong Kong. He can be reached at josefpw@cca.org.hk.