Ali Alatas

Ali Alatas was a prominent figure in the struggle for Indonesian independence, as well as a diplomat and a national hero. He was born in Batavia, now Jakarta, on 4 November 1932, to an Acehnese father and a Javanese-Bugis mother. He studied at the Indonesian Foreign Service Academy and earned a law degree from the University of Indonesia. He joined the Indonesian foreign service in 1954 and served in various embassies, including those in Bangkok, Thailand and Washington, DC, United States. He was also Indonesia's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva and New York. He was appointed as the foreign minister of Indonesia by President Suharto in 1988 and served until 1999 under Suharto and his successor B. J. Habibie. He was Indonesia's longest serving foreign minister and played a crucial role in regional and international affairs. He advocated regional cooperation and was involved in drafting the ASEAN Charter and the Constitution of the 10-member grouping. He also brokered peace negotiations in several hot spots in Southeast Asia, such as Cambodia, East Timor, and the Philippines. His most famous success was his role in helping to broker peace in Cambodia in 1991, which ended the war with the Khmer Rouge. He was also one of the witnesses of the Proclamation of Indonesian Independence on 17 August 1945, and one of the drafters of the preamble to the 1945 constitution, which contains the Pancasila as the state ideology. He was known as a historian and a writer, who wrote several books, such as Indonesia Merdeka, Sejarah Perjuangan Bangsa Indonesia, and Sejarah Kebudayaan Indonesia. He died of heart failure on 11 December 2008, at the age of 76, in Singapore. He was buried at Kalibata Heroes Cemetery, Jakarta. He was declared a national hero of Indonesia in 2009.