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TIME: He gave unity to Indonesia 08/23/1999
He united his country and set it free. He liberated his people from
a sense of
inferiority and made them feel proud to be Indonesian--no small achievement,
coming after 350 years of Dutch colonial rule and three-and-a-half years of
Japanese occupation. What Sukarno did on Aug. 17, 1945 was no different from
what Thomas Jefferson had done for Americans on July 4, 1776.
Perhaps even more: Sukarno was the only Asian leader of the modern era
able to unify people of such differing ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds
without shedding a drop of blood.
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