Manchester United Joins in Wishing Indonesia Happy Batik Day

Jakarta, Beritasatu.com – The English Premier League football club, Manchester United (MU), through one of its strikers, Joshua Zirkzee, congratulated Indonesia in celebrating National Batik Day which is celebrated every 2 October.

These remarks were conveyed in the form of a video uploaded to MU’s official Instagram account, @manchesterunited, and reported from Jakarta on Wednesday (2/10/2024).

Zirkzee started his message by greeting MU fans in Indonesia with the words, “Hi all fans in Indonesia,” then continued his words in Indonesian.

“Happy Batik Day,” said the player from the Netherlands.

The video closes with the sentence that reads, “Proud of wearing batik, proud of Indonesia’s cultural heritage.”

In the upload description (caption), MU wrote, “Authentic Indonesian culture, a heritage for the world,” complete with an illustration of the Red and White flag.

Indonesia commemorates National Batik Day every October 2 because on that day, precisely in 2009, UNESCO, a United Nations agency which operates in the fields of education, science and culture, officially recognized batik as a Humanitarian Heritage for Oral and Intangible Culture (Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity).

According to information taken from the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia, Indonesia’s official application to recognize batik as cultural heritage was accepted by UNESCO on January 9 2009.

Then, at the fourth session of the Intergovernmental Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage, UNESCO officially confirmed batik as part of the Heritage of Humanity list on October 2 2009.

As a form of appreciation for batik, the Indonesian Government through the Secretary General of the Ministry of Home Affairs, Hadi Prabowo, issued Circular Letter Number 003.3/10132/SJ which calls for the use of batik in the context of National Batik Day on 2 October 2019.

Through this circular, the Ministry of Home Affairs recommends that all officials and employees in regional government, both at the provincial, district and city levels, to wear batik clothes every Wednesday.

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