Word: padang
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Harmaini, headman of the village of Padang Japang, is a political dinosaur. The calendar in his office is a year old and his pen and paper supply ran out weeks back. But the 63-year-old shows up everyday in a freshly-pressed safari suit, does some retirement planning and is actually eager to welcome his imminent replacement, a village chief elected in a whole new way. "I'm relieved," he says, "that we'll finally be going back to a system that truly suits our community...
...waterfront, Buginese sailmakers squat on the docks sewing large squares of canvas together. The spicy aroma of cooking fires drifts lazily in the twilight haze on the Musi River in Palembang, and the evening sun casts a warm orange glow on the great white mosque of Banda Atjeh. In Padang, the bustling bazaars are piled high with a rainbow of fruits and silks...
...Sumatra, where the government says a mere 1,500 rebels remain holed up in the jungle, the rebels themselves claim to number 7.000. After a recent hand grenade-throwing incident in the Sumatra town of Padang, nervous government authorities ordered all males to wear shirts tucked into trousers. Worn uncinched, the shirts too easily concealed weapons such as hand grenades. Declared the rebel spokesman: "Another month will mark the third year of our struggle against Djakarta. Our spirits remain high...
Government troops at dawn scrambled from transports into lifeboats and landing craft, surged onto the beaches north of Padang, the rebel nerve center. A spearhead of Indonesian marines had already pushed inland against light resistance. At the Padang airfield, eight miles north of town, government planes strafed gun positions while 200 paratroopers drifted down at the field's edge. Within twelve hours, the rebel defenders were in flight along the road to Bukittinggi, 58 miles away, and Padang was firmly in the control of Djakarta's Colonel Achmad Jani, who had learned his lessons well...
Miscalculations. In Red China the Peking People's Daily crowed that "the liberation of Padang is a victory of the Indonesian people in their fight against colonialism and for peace. The U.S. was directly behind the Sumatran rebellion and gave much aid to the rebels...