Above left Adam Malik
(left) and George Bush
at the 26th United
Nations General
Assembly in 1971,
of which Malik was
elected presidenttop right Malik (right)
shakes hands with
Portuguese foreign
minister Ernesto Melo
Antunes in Rome, 1975Above right Malik
(right) meets UN
Secretary-General
U Thant at the UN
Headquarters in New
York , 1971“Pak Adam Malik raised us in an egalitarian way,
which was unusual considering the pronounced
family hierarchies in Asia. He wanted us
to call him bung (meaning ‘bro’),” Malik’s
granddaughter, Salmaini, shares. “He shed his
ethnic family name, Batubara, so people would
see his Indonesian identity instead of
his Mandailing ethnicity. And he always
emphasised to us the importance of learning
other cultures and languages.”
Born in North Sumatra, Adam Malik
was educated up to elementary school and
subsequently self-taught. Obsessed with books
from an early age, he worked as a clerk in his
father’s bookshop, where he picked up English,
Japanese, Dutch and Arabic.
Jailed at the age of 13 for his participation
in a nationalist group fighting against
Dutch rule, Malik later founded a news agency
to support the nationalist press. After Indonesia
declared independence, he took on key
positions in various political parties and rose to
the post of ambassador to the Soviet Union and
Poland. He was 50 when ASEAN was formed.
“In the years leading up to the ASEAN
Declaration, my grandfather was deeply
disturbed by konfrontasi, since his mother was
from Chemor, Perak [in Malaysia]. We have
lots of relatives there,” says the younger Malik.
“Malaysia always related to him on a personal
level, and he used to share his concerns about
the situation with my father.”
Malik’s peronal attachment to ASEAN even
led him to name one of his granddaughters
Aseani (she was born in the same year as the
inauguration of the ASEAN Secretariat in
Jakarta). After the formation of ASEAN, Malik
was elected President of the United Nations
General Assembly in 1971 and went on to
become Indonesia’s third Vice President. He
passed away from liver cancer in 1984.“A region which can stand
on its own feet, strong
enough to defend itself from
any negative influence from
outside the region”
Adam MalikAdam Malik (INDONESIA)
DATA SOURCES: TIME, SRIMAL FERNANDO AND CHAMINDA
PADMAKUMARA/THE DIPLOMATIC SOCIETY, FIDEL V RAMOS/
ASEAN@50, GODWIN NG/THE NEW PAPER, HISTORYSGPHOTOS © UN PHOTO/TEDDY CHEN, KEYSTONE/GETTY IMAGES