Suharto

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Suharto
Personal life
Date and place of birth 8 June 1921 , near Yogyakarta, Dutch East Indies
Parents Kertosudiro and Sukirah
Claimed religion Islam
Education {{{education}}}
Spouse Siti Hartinah (d. 1996)
Children Siti Hardiyanti Hastuti, Sigit Harjojudanto, Bambang Trihatmodjo, Siti Hediyati Hariyadi, Hutomo Mandala Putra, Siti Hutami Endang Adiningsih
Date & Place of Death 27 January 2008 (aged 86)
Manner of Death Sepsis, anaemia, heart failure
Place of burial Buried in Solo with military honors
Dictatorial career
Country Indonesia
Military service Led military purge of Communists; KOSTRAD Commander from 1961-65; Chief of Staff from 1965-67
Highest rank attained Chief of Staff and later Commander
Political beliefs Militarist
Political party Golkar
Date of dictatorship 12 March 1967 (Official Date)
Wars started Invasion of East Timor
Number of deaths attributed Post-Coup Purges: 250-750,000 East Timor: 152,000 of whom at least 3/4 were the responsibility of Indonesia (Truth Commission)

Suharto (June 8, 1921 - January 27, 2008) was an anti-communist Indonesian military and political leader. He started as a military officer in the Indonesian National Revolution. He came to power following a bloodless coup in 1967, and served as the second President of Indonesia from 1967-1998 during which time he was involved in a number of massacres aimed at eliminating communists in Indonesia[1]. He was forced to resign his presidency in 1998 after mass demonstrations due to his authoritarian and corrupt administration. He passed away on January 27th, 2008.

Suharto was a close ally of the United States during the Cold War. As a result, he became a bête noire of the far left, who compared his crimes to those of Cambodia's Pol Pot--though relative to population size and percent killed, Pol Pot's were over 300 times worse.[2][3] In the wake of US defeat in the Vietnam War, President Ford saw Indonesia as a vital American ally in Asia needed to preserve America's waning influence in that part of the world.

Genocide in East Timor

In 1975, Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger met with Suharto in Jakarta--as fate would have it, on the very day Indonesia decided to invade the tiny island of East Timor. East Timor was in the midst of a low-level civil war that led to thousands of deaths and to a military takeover by a de facto Socialist dictatorship headed by the left-wing FRETILIN Party. FRETILIN had waged a violent insurgency in East Timor to seize power and to force out Portuguese and later Indonesian "colonialists." Widely perceived as Communist by the outside world, FRETILIN was feared in Washington and financed by Moscow. Before FRETILIN could set up a stable government, Indonesia began preparing for non-violent solutions to the perceived problem of Timorese independence. Indonesian leaders feared that allowing Timorese independence would inspire secessionist movements that could bring about the collapse of Indonesia.

Although FRETILIN was given a chance to avoid war, it rejected it for the sake of martyrdom. In an attempt to negotiate a settlement to the dispute over East Timor's future, the Portuguese Decolonization Commission convened a conference in June 1975 in Macau. Indonesia apparently believed that it could reach a compromise with FRETILIN, and repeatedly attempted to do so.[4] FRETILIN refused to attend the meeting on the grounds that it would never negotiate with the Indonesian regime, and Suharto was apparently shocked by their intransigence.[5] José Manuel Ramos-Horta, the current President of East Timor and a FRETILIN leader, expressed regret for this failure in his 1987 memoirs.

Many claim in retrospect that FRETILIN only sought independence for East Timor, and that the civil war was provoked by a failed coup by right-wing militarists, and not by FRETILIN. Others note that FRETILIN gained power by force and used the military to enforce its edicts, and that 40,000 Timorese fled their homes to escape their repression.[6] Further, during the bloody Indonesian occupation, as many as 49% of all East Timorese civilians violently killed at any given point were murdered by FRETILIN, and not by Indonesia.[7]

Ford and Kissinger believed that the Communists could not be allowed to make any further advances in the post-Vietnam War era, as they had in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Angola, and the Middle East. Ford gave Suharto a green-light to invade East Timor.[8] Ford was unambiguous: "We will understand and will not press you on the issue. We understand the problem and the intentions you have."

A Truth Commission found that 89-214,000 Timorese out of more than 700,000 were killed during the 24-year occupation, about 3/4 of them by Indonesian forces.[9] Portuguese authorities estimated a population of 609,000 Timorese in 1970; based on later censuses from the Catholic Church, the population grew at 3% per year (which is in line with all the other countries of South East Asia; Cambodia's grew at a rate of 2.9% per year at the same time despite being in the midst of a bloody civil war that killed hundreds of thousands; the Church estimates actually undercounted the population size by at least 5% on average, according to the Portuguese, due to the Church's incomplete access to society).[10] Projecting the population size for 1975 based on these findings, we arrive at a total of roughly 700,000. The mid-value of the plausible range established by the Truth Commission is 152,000 dead, but the most exact census suggested a 1980 population of 560,000.[11] Accounting for population growth during the years of mass killing, then, the number of "missing" Timorese was probably about 175,000. Accepting a growth rate higher than 1% during the genocide, or accepting a lower 1980 population, would only yield a higher total. This is 25% of the Timorese population. Due to the large number of deaths, these atrocities are commonly referred to as a genocide. Indonesia killed many thousands more throughout the remainder of the occupation.

References

  1. Suhato: A Political Biography, be R.E. Elson
  2. http://www.fair.org/extra/9809/suharto.html
  3. Assuming that Suharto killed .75% of all Indonesians during his reign, divide that figure by 32 to get his "annual percent killed": 0 .0234375%. Then compare this to Pol Pot's 7.5% killed annually.
  4. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/doc4.pdf
  5. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/doc4.pdf
  6. http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/labedz.pdf
  7. http://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/2008/01/14/is-it-really-true-that-east-timor-was-worse-than-bosnia-or-kosovo/
  8. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/#doc4
  9. http://www.ictj.org/en/news/features/846.html
  10. http://www.yale.edu/gsp/publications/KiernanRevised1.pdf
  11. http://www.yale.edu/gsp/publications/KiernanRevised1.pdf

References