Azerbaijanis know more about Indonesia through Cultural Festival

Jakarta (Indonesia Window) – The Azerbaijani people know more about Indonesia through the 2019 Indonesian Cultural Festival held by the Indonesian Embassy in  Baku on September 10-15, 2019, at Heydar Aliyev and the Fountain  Square in the capital city of Baku.

The event was opened by Azerbaijan’s Minister of Culture and Tourism, Abulfas Qarayev, according to a statement from the embassy received in Jakarta on Tuesday.

In his remarks, Qarayev thanked Indonesia as a friendly country for the holding of the 2019 Indonesian Cultural Festival.

“Alhamdulillah, the 2019 Indonesian Cultural Festival has been held successfully and is great,” he said.

According to Qarayev, the 2019 Indonesian Cultural Festival has made the Azerbaijan people aware of the diversity of ethnicities, languages, cultures and natural beauty of Indonesia.

Meanwhile, the Indonesian Ambassador to Azerbaijan, Husnan Bey Fananie, said the Indonesian Cultural Festival made Indonesia better known in Azerbaijan.

“The Indonesian Cultural Festival is a proof that we want to advance the cultural and economic sectors as well as strengthening the diplomatic relations between Indonesia and Azerbaijan. There are a lot of Azerbaijan people who participated in the Indonesian Culture Festival,” Husnan said.

The event also featured multiculturalism seminars, business meetings, exhibitions of Indonesian products and art performances.

This year’s Indonesian festival was enlivened by Indonesian musicians and artists, pencak silat (martial arts), reog (a traditional dance from Ponorogo, East Java), and games of angklung (bamboo-made traditional musical instrument from West Java).

The festival also featured a dance group of students from the Indonesian Azerbaijan study center at the University of Languages, ​​which is nurtured by the Indonesian Embassy. They performed dances from various regions in Indonesia.

The prime products on display at the festival were batik, woven cloth, coffee, chocolate, as well as cosmetics and sports items.

The Indonesian Defense Attaches for Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan and Qatar, Marine Colonel Harwin Dicky Wijanarko, said that the festival was a form of bilateral cooperation in the fields of culture, education, Indonesian language development at the Azerbaijan campus, and the economy.

The festival was supported by several Indonesian ministries, namely, the Ministry of Culture and Education, the Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs (small and medium enterprises), the Ministry of Tourism, and the Ministry of Youth and Sports as well as the Government of Malang (a district in East Java Province).

Reporting by Indonesia Window