The Rise and Fall of Afro-Asian Solidarity

Abstract

After signing treaty of friendship in Djakarta on April 1, 1961, Communist China and Indonesia repeatedly called for a AfroAsian Conference in shortest time. Special emissaries persistently visited capitals of Asia and Africa and eventually succeeded in bringing representatives of twenty-two nations to Djakarta in April 1964, for Preparatory Meeting. There it was decided to hold Second Bandung on March 10, 1965. The selection of host government was left to recently created Organization of African Unity. The provisional agenda agreed upon in Djakarta provided, among other topics, for discussions concerning renunciation of threat or use of force in international relations and strengthening United Nations. The eagerness of Communist China and Indonesia to discuss such matters should have impressed Asian and African diplomats as quite ironical. As result of Sino-Soviet dispute, Asia and Africa had been deluged with flood of polemical tracts expounding Chinese Communist views on domestic and international functions of violence and on inevitability of war. For their part, Indonesians, by applying constant military and political pressure on Malaysia since September 1963, were practicing what Chinese were preaching. As for future of United Nations, promoters of Second Bandung Conference had expressed their views candidly in joint SinoIndonesian statement issued in Peking on January 28, 1965. Following President Sukarno's decision to withdraw from United Nations, despite numerous Asian and African appeals to reconsider this nihilistic gesture, joint statement proclaimed that the United Nations cannot reflect anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist desire of people of world, nor can it organizationally reflect reality in which new emerging and revolutionary forces have far outstripped decadent forces. Notice had thus been served that participants in an African-Asian conference might be confronted with an uncomfortable choice between United Nations, in which smaller countries play an important role, and an unpredictable new organization of New Emerging Forces. As token of his determination, President Sukarno had laid, on April 19, 1965, cornerstone of complex of buildings, to be erected in Djakarta