Thursday 20 May - Day Three of Conference

Another early start for both of us this morning, with Alexis and I starting the day with a swim. Again, despite the heat of the outside temperature, it was even warmer under the water, but the exercise was invigorating. And at 7am we had the pool to ourselves.

After breakfast our first session involved a presentation by a Professor who worked for the Ministry of Defense. His presentation was based on the military’s view of peace building. Their strategies focus on the heart and mind of the people of Indonesia – national and character building. He referred to this as non-military warfare – developing human resources (intellectual skills; work ethic; national awareness; national character; morality (based on local culture); and patriotism. Unfortunately I missed a lot of what the Professor had to say because of his accent but his presentation provided an interesting perspective for delegates to compare how their own countries were dealing with diversity in their own countries.
References: www.dephan.go.id; www.potham.dephan.go.id

We had an interesting and unexpected second speaker. Originally we were to have the Chairman of Youth of Malaysia, but he was called away to serve his military service. His place was taken by his wife who also works with the Malaysian government. She provided a very interesting presentation based on the conference theme “Fostering Peace through Strengthening Unity in Diversity” from a Malaysian perspective. Noori had been educated at Syracuse University in the USA and her broad knowledge, intellectual background and excellent English was reflected in her presentation. Malaysia offered a perhaps more liberal approach to the diversity issues in their country, and like Indonesia is focused on education and tolerance of the diversity and the need for cultural groups to retain their identity while collaborating to create a unified country.

Question time offered an opportunity to explore the two perspectives while also expressing concerns about their own situations. NZ via Ann Candy, encouraged indigenous peoples to strive to prevent the loss of their identity and cultures by being swamped by more dominant introduced cultures. Conflict within countries impeded the promotion of peace-based programs when the preoccupation for some peoples was more survival-based. In countries like Thailand which is currently involved in riots about human rights, Noori stated that this indicated that their basic needs are being met, so that they are now more directed on a higher level - and a more “privileged” - self-actualisation need such as human rights.

The program became a little confused at this stage because the Minister of Marine was supposed to arrive but he was late, so we were invited to have morning tea. Alexis and I decided to set up our booth. No sooner had we done this .Then we were told that he had arrived. I remained with the booth and his presentation was apparently short, and then because it was his birthday, everyone was invited to lunch.

After lunch there was a panel and break out group discussions were planned on the morning’s talks. Because of our limited opportunity to get out of the hotel to do a bit of shopping, we joined with Ann Candy (ex Deputy Mayor of Manukau) and Georgina Kupa of NZ to go to Kuta for a couple of hours.

We returned just in time to get ourselves changed and onto a bus to go to a show and dinner sponsored by the Ministries of Culture and Tourism. The convoy of 9 buses was given a police escort so that red lights were not an issue when it came to getting us from A to B. It had been a busy day and required an early night, especially as we have a breakfast meeting at 7am for the International Council planned for tomorrow.