The following is a statement from DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang, issued on Wednesday, April 17th, while in Bandung, Indonesia. It has been published in its entirety.
Statement by DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang in Bandung, Indonesia on Wednesday, 17th April 2025:
I arrived in Bandung in Indonesia today.
In the past few days, I have been visiting Surabaya to find what made Indonesia great. Surabaya has a history of 1,200 years.
I visited Trowulan to see how Indonesia motto “Bhinneka Tunggal Ika” – “Unity in Diversity” – came about. I also went to Mt. Bromo to watch sunrise and the active volcano Mt. Bromo generating plumes of smoke. Later I climbed Mt. Bromo but I could not see the bottom of the crater.
Seventy years ago in 1955 when I was in Form One in Batu Pahat High School, Asian and African leaders met for the first time in the first Afro-Asia Conference in Bandung. Great names including President Sukarno of Indonesia, Prime Minister of China Zhou Enlai, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, President Nasser of United Arab Republic, Ghana President Kwame Nkrumah, President of Tito of Yugoslavia were among the leaders of 29 countries who gathered in the Indonesian city in a historic occasion to declare their neutrality in the East-West conflict.
It led to the founding of the Non-Aligned Movement in world politics and the birth of a global movement transcending national boundaries.
Now, with the advent of Trumpian politics in American politics, and the preoccupation of the world whether the China-American trade war will lead to nuclear war and the eradication of mankind, the world is facing its great danger in history.
Has the world anything to learn from the Bandung Conference in1955?
At the end of the April holidays in 1955, I joined two Form One students to cycle from Batu Pahat to Malacca. In those days where there was no Internet with nearly everybody having an iPhone and digital communication almost universal, the bicycle trip from Batu Pahat to Malacca was quite adventurous and bold-minded.
As Tan Tik Seng, one of the trio, said last week:
”Yes, I remember the event. You were most interested and talked about it all the time.”
As Allan Goh Chay Foo, another member of the trio, reminisced recently:
“That was the time when a lot of countries were fighting or clamouring for independence. That was also the time when many giants from the Afro-Asian countries walked the world.”
Has the world of 2025 anything to learn from the first Asia-African Conference of 1955?
I am visiting Bandung to find out!