Showing posts with label Bandung Conference. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bandung Conference. Show all posts

Friday, September 25, 2009

Skywatch: Asia-Africa Flag Poles





These are the flag poles in front of Gedung Merdeka or the Museum of Asian-African Conference.

As some of you may already know, Gedung Merdeka or the Merdeka Building was the venue for the Asian-African or Bandung Conference in 1955.

29 countries attended the original conference. 109 countries attended the golden jubillee in 2005. Consequently there are more flag poles now than there were in 1955. Here is what the building looked like in 1955.

This post is Bandung Daily Photo's participation is the weekly meme Skywatch Friday. Please see other skywatchers's posts by clicking the link.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Lapangan Tegallega



No, this is not a cemetary and these marked stones are not the tombstones. As you may have noticed, the inscription on the foreground stone reads "The Islamic Republic of Iran" and underneath it the local name of a plant and its latin name.

This is the Tegallega city forest/park where the Bandung Lautan Api (Bandung Sea of Fire) monument is located. These trees and the marker stones were planted and put in place in April 2005 to mark the 50th Anniversary or the Golden Jubilee of the Asian-African Conference. Each country that originally attended the Conference in 1955 is represented here by a tree and a stone-marker. The trees were ceremonially dedicated by the respresentatives of those countries who again came to Bandung to attend the anniversary in 2005.

The Bandung Conference, as some of you may have known, took place from April 18 to 25, 1955. Jointly organized by Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Burma (Myanmar), and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), the conference - attended by representatives of 29 Asian and African nations, most of which were newly independent - was aimed at promoting political self-determination, mutual respect for sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference in internal affairs, and equality. Specifically, this group of nations that later became the fetus of the Non-Alligned Movement (NAM) were also pursuing the agenda of Afro-Asian economic and cultural cooperation and resisting colonialism or neocolonialism by the world's superpowers.