Soedjatmoko

Who was Soedjatmoko?

Soedjatmoko, familiarly called Bung Koko, was an Indonesian intellectual and diplomat. Born to a noble father and mother in Sawahlunto, West Sumatra, after finishing his primary education, he went to Batavia to study medicine; in the city's slums, he saw much poverty, which became an academic interest later in life. After being expelled from medical school by the Japanese in 1943 for his political activities, Soedjatmoko moved to Surakarta and practised medicine with his father. In 1947, after Indonesia proclaimed its independence, Soedjatmoko and two other youths were deployed to Lake Success, New York, to represent Indonesia at the United Nations. They helped secure international recognition of the country's sovereignty.

After his work at the UN, Soedjatmoko attempted to study at Harvard's Littauer Center for Public Administration; however, he was forced to resign due to pressure from other work, including serving as Indonesia's first chargé d'affaires in London for three months as well as establishing the political desk at the Embassy of Indonesia in Washington, D.C. By 1952 he had returned to Indonesia, where he became involved in the socialist press and joined the Socialist Party of Indonesia. He was elected as a member of the Constitutional Assembly of Indonesia in 1955, serving until 1959; he married Ratmini Gandasubrata in 1958. However, as President Sukarno's government became more authoritarian Soedjatmoko began to criticise the government. To avoid censorship, he spent two years as a guest lecturer at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and another three in self-imposed unemployment in Indonesia.