G.A. Siwabessy
| Gerrit Augustinus Siwabessy | |
|---|---|
| Minister of Atomic Energy, Minister of Health of Republic of Indonesia | |
|
In office 25 July 1966 – 17 October 1967 |
|
| President | Soekarno |
| Preceded by | Satrio |
|
In office 17 October 1967 – 29 March 1978 |
|
| President | Soeharto |
| Succeeded by | Suwardjono Surjaningrat |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
19 August 1914 Saparua, Maluku, Dutch East Indies |
| Died | 11 November 1982 (aged 68) Jakarta, Indonesia |
| Nationality | Indonesian |
Gerrit Augustinus Siwabessy (19 August 1914 – 11 November 1982) was the Minister of Health of the Republic of Indonesia.
Gerrit Augustinus Siwabessy was born to clove farmers Enoch Siwabessy and Naatje Manuhutu in Saparua, a small island in central Maluku within the vicinity of Ambon. Enoch Siwabessy died when his son was one year old; his widow then married Jacob Leuwol, an elementary school teacher. Because Leuwol was a teacher, Siwabessy and his family enjoyed a higher social status on par with pastors and priests while he attended elementary and middle school. G.A. Siwabessy graduated from high school (MULO) in Kota Ambon in 1931, where his grades were high enough to earn a scholarship funded by the government of the Dutch East Indies to NIAS (Dutch Indies Medical School) in Surabaya on Java. He studied alongside a highly multiethnic body of Indonesian students that, among others, included Ibnu Sutowo; this exposure to multiculturalism shaped his perspective to include Ambonese matters with respect to the nation at large where he had previously only considered Ambon in itself.
During Siwabessy's first years as an undergraduate, he attended a conference of the local Studenten Vereniging Christen (Christian Student Association) which took place in Kaliurang, a small town within the vicinity of Yogyakarta. His experiences helped him form ideas about how to design an Ambonese-oriented version of the association. Alongside Jo Picauly, a fellow medical student in Jakarta, Siwabessy created the Vereniging Ambonsche Studenten (VAS; Association of Ambonese Students) with two chapters; he led the VAS chapter in Surabaya. However, because not many Ambonese resided in Surabaya at the time, the club held little more than minor festivities. During the later years of his studies, Siwabessy created a more substantial organisation called Memadjoekan Cultuur Maloekoe, or MCM (Advancement of the Moluccan Culture), in 1938. The premise of the association was to provide a means of cultural unity for Moluccan students experiencing "a nomadic nostalgia, an urge for identity or personality".
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