The Guardian 13 February, 2008
Suharto: guilty of
mass corruption & mass murder
Andy Alcock
The death of Suharto, the former Indonesian dictator, has led to much debate about his legacy in the SE Asian and Pacific regions. Many media commentators have been very critical of Suharto and the Indonesian military (TNI) for the bloodshed, suffering and injustice they unleashed on peoples in Asia and the Pacific. They have also been critical of Western leaders who colluded with the TNI and claim that their complicity has brought great shame to their respective nations and has contributed to many of the social problems in the region.
In the light of this, Australia now needs to make some basic decisions about its future relations with Indonesia. This has implications for our relations with the US because Indonesia has been a client state of the US since 1965.
Suharto — background
Mahommed Suharto was born on June 8, 1921 in a village in Central Java. Because of a family connection to low-level Javanese nobility, he received a good education.
In 1940, after working in a bank and as a labourer, Suharto enlisted in the Dutch colonial army and a year later, became a sergeant. A week later the Dutch surrendered to the invading Japanese Imperial Army.
Suharto then joined the Japanese occupation police force and in 1943, became a battalion commander in the Peta (Defenders of the Fatherland), a Japanese-trained militia.
In October 1945, after the end of World War II, Suharto joined the Indonesian Army on the same day that it was founded. He fought against the Dutch during the Indonesian war of independence and became a distinguished regimental commander. Sukarno became the founding president of the newly independent Indonesia.
In the years after independence, Suharto had a steady rise to power within the military until 1964, when he was made commander of Kostrad, the army’s strategic command. It was in this position that he took the army into West Papua, beginning a brutal occupation that continues until today.
At this time, the military purged itself of pro-Sukarno elements, leaving Sukarno politically and militarily isolated and allowing Suharto to rise to take the position of both president and chief of the armed forces in 1967.
The 1965 coup
On September 30, 1965 some military officers staged a coup in which six anti-Sukarno generals were killed.
The official accounts published by the military describe the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) as being the "puppetmaster". However, a number of scholars believe that there was no PKI involvement or that, if there was, it was minimal and that the coup was the result of rivalry between military factions. Others believe that Suharto played a leading role in the whole affair including the murder of the six generals.
On October 16 that year, Sukarno appointed Suharto as minister for and commander of the army. Suharto subsequently ordered the military to "clean up" the PKI.
To gain support for the bloodbath that he unleashed, Suharto, claimed that the slain generals’ bodies had been sexually mutilated. This claim was later shown to be deliberately false when the post-mortem documents were revealed decades later.
The killings were on such a scale that the disposal of the corpses created a serious sanitation problem in East Java and northern Sumatra, where the humid air was said to reek of decaying flesh. Observers reported of small rivers and streams that were literally clogged with bodies.
Amnesty International (AI) estimated that between half to a million people were murdered by the TNI. Many Indonesians believe the number to be in excess of three million.
A secret CIA report noted that, in terms of the numbers killed, the anti-PKI massacres in Indonesia ranked as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th Century along with the Nazi mass murders.
In addition, the military detained about 200,000 political prisoners on the remote Buru Island.
According to AI reports at the time, they were kept in appalling conditions. While most were detained there for 10 years, many were not released until the late 1990s.
Role of the US
When Suharto seized power, according to US lawyer and researcher, Kathy Kadane, the CIA gave lists of people active in unions, progressive politics, social justice and human rights to the Indonesian military (TNI). She claimed that as many as 5,000 names were furnished to the Indonesian Army, and the Americans later checked off the names of those who had been killed or captured.
This was later confirmed by documents from the US State Department and the CIA which indicated that General Suharto and other generals were acting on the encouragement of US leaders.
The death lists had been drawn up after 1962 at the instigation of the CIA’s then Far East division chief, William Colby, who later became CIA director.
A key person in this was the US Ambassador Marshall Green. He was later posted to Australia in the lead-up to the dismissal of the Whitlam Labor government in November 1975. In 1990, Green and other retired US diplomats and CIA officers admitted that they had provided the Indonesian generals with execution lists of the names of thousands of national, regional and local leaders of the PKI.
The PKI
The PKI was in a coalition government with Sukarno’s Nationalist Party (PNI). It was a legal political party and was the third largest communist party in the world. It claimed three million members, and through affiliated organizations — such as labour and youth groups — it had the support of 17 million others.
Herb Feith, a former professor of politics at Monash University, believed that the PKI was the least corrupt of any of the political parties in Indonesia at the time and was doing more to genuinely support the millions of rural poor.
Feith was raised a Jew and spent time in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. He came to Australia as a refugee and he and his wife were amongst the first Australian volunteers to work in Indonesia in the early 1960s.
He made frequent trips to Indonesia after that time to be involved in Muslim, Jewish and Christian dialogue.
TNI repression in the region
The TNI first occupied West Papua in 1962 and has been responsible for tens of thousands of deaths and its repression there continues.
The death toll during its occupation of East Timor is reckoned to be about 200,000; some say it is nearer 300,000.
In addition, it has also played a bloody role in Acheh, Maluku (Moluccan Islands) and other parts of Indonesia.
Suharto’s rule continued until 1998 when riots broke out across the archipelago in the wake of the Asian economic crisis. Students took to the streets in massive and sustained demonstrations calling on and demanding Suharto’s resignation and political change.
He was replaced by his deputy, Jusuf Habibie.
Corruption
Suharto, his family and his cronies cheated literally billions of dollars from poverty stricken Indonesians and other people in the region who have suffered as a result of the barbarity and corruption of the regime.
Australia’s role
Many scholars believe that Australian politicians and intelligence operatives also assisted in the Suharto coup. Certainly they have been complicit in and aided and abetted the crimes of the TNI during the years after 1965. After Suharto’s death, all that former Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer could say was that we will never know the extent of Suharto’s corruption. He made little mention of his human rights abuses.
Former PM, Paul Keating, went to Suharto’s funeral. In 1998, after Suharto was ousted, Keating went to Indonesia to visit him and claimed that Suharto was his spiritual father! Why would anyone consider the SE Asian equivalent to Adolf Hitler his spiritual father? Maybe, he was just thinking of furthering his business interests in Indonesia.
After Suharto’s demise, Keating wrote an article for at least two major daily Australian newspapers. It was full of mistakes. He claimed that FRETILIN started the coup that led to the civil war in East Timor in 1975. This was actually instigated by the Union of Democratic Timorese (UDT) who murdered many FRETILIN members and then assisted the Indonesian military in its invasion including the murder of five Australian-based journalists in Balibo in October 1975.
Australians often pride themselves on being fair-minded and supporters of justice. We must demand that our elected leaders give a strong priority to human rights in international affairs.
Future relations
If Australians truly value human rights and social justice in our region, we should be demanding that our leaders:
declare Australia to be neutral and refuse to cooperate with regimes that are abusing human rights;
refuse to cooperate with the TNI until all the war criminals in its ranks have faced justice;
call for the TNI to withdraw from West Papua and allow the people to have a referendum about their political future;
call on the Indonesian president to take back the huge sums of money amassed by the Suharto family and Indonesian generals and to give compensation to the victims of TNI brutality in the region;
call on the UN to take the appropriate action to ensure that all individuals who commit crimes of genocide, human rights abuse and extensive corruption that leads to human suffering are brought to justice.
Andy Alcock is Information Officer for the Australia East Timor Friendship Association (SA)