Word: suharto
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...remember the day president Sukarno died. It was June 21, 1970, and I was in a taxi going from Jakarta's airport into town after completing a tour of the U.S. as a student leader - a trip made possible through a program initiated by Suharto, Sukarno's successor. The streets were quiet and I asked the driver why. He replied in a neutral voice that Sukarno had just passed away. After the chaos and isolationism of the Sukarno years, my student movement had supported Suharto's vision of stability and economic growth. Nevertheless, I felt a sad sense of passage...
...atmosphere was totally different when Suharto died on Jan. 27 from multiple organ failure. For days before his lingering death, people milled around the hospital. Television crews jostled for camera space while news anchors played up the melodrama. It was like opera, with tragedy and comedy served up in equal parts: the tragedy of death, which is final and almost always sad, and the comedy of dignitaries past and present and sundry celebrities falling over themselves for a piece of the global spotlight...
...Suharto's story does make for grand opera: a village boy who grows up into an army general, then acquires absolute power in the wake of a mysterious communist coup and military countercoup. Historians say those tumultuous days in the fall of 1965 sparked half a million murders, and that Suharto and his soldiers were responsible. We students did not know about the killings at the time. If we heard anything bad, we refused to believe it. And if we believed it, we thought it justified. We chose what we thought was freedom against communism. Eventually, many of us changed...
...breathtaking view from Karanganyar's Astana Giribangun mausoleum, the final resting place of former President Suharto, was fit for a king - and the reception of Indonesia's longest-serving leader no less royal. Tens of thousands of Javanese came out to pay their last respects today in this small town in central Java, lining the steep hills overlooking the spectacular rice fields that feed this nation of more than 230 million people. Beneath hundreds of banners that read HAVE A SAFE TRIP FROM THE PEOPLE OF SOLO, old ladies walked for miles under the sweltering midday sun just to catch...
...When Suharto's body arrived, his coffin, draped in the Indonesian flag, was pulled from a simple, silver caravan by regular soldiers with little other security around the vehicle. There was no mad rush, no wailing or rending of garments, just a quick escort into the area where VIPs and family members were waiting. For such a historic moment, the feeling was subdued - less sadness than respect. "Suharto ruled with an iron fist but he also managed to create a mystique and aura around him," says Sujiwo Tejo, a well-known Javanese playwright and musician who made the trip...