Suharto the ruthless tyrant

It was in the early 1980s when the former Indonesian President Suharto was at the peak of his power. I was on my first visit to this most populous Muslim country in the world to do a special supplement for the Dubai-based English language daily Khaleej Times.

I was very anxious to visit this country about which I read a lot under its charismatic President Dr Sukarno whose political magic spelled over Indonesia and who was in the forefront championing the cause of newly-independent Asian, African and Latin American countries. Though by then Dr Sukarno was dead and gone, the way he mesmerized the people during his 22-year rule was such that it was impossible to separate his image from Indonesia.

Going from the airport to the hotel, I began my conversation with the cab driver speaking about Dr Sukarno. His response with a sparkling smile and brightened face was "He was a great man. All Indonesians love him. He is our father".

So, how is President Suharto, I asked?

His smile and brightness in the face disappeared. Showing signs of inner anger his swift response was "Oh, Suharto is worse than a butcher. He is killing people. No one is safe. We are very afraid to speak. Suharto's family, his supporters in the government and the army are looting the country together with American and British companies, but the people remain poor and are suffering".

With those words the atmosphere changed as the driver stopped talking. After few minutes, he slowed down the vehicle, looked at me and said "Oh, you asked about President Suharto? He is a very nice man. Very kind and good man". I couldn't believe my ears. Then he stopped talking .There was complete silence in the cab until we reached the Hotel, Sari Pacific, in the heart of Jakarta.

This in a nutshell was the plight of the people who were forced to live a dual life for survival. His attitude spoke volumes of the fear that enveloped Indonesia under Suharto's brutal dictatorship known for oppression, corruption and mass killings. Despite his crime record, the entire West, from political leaders and governments to the media, hailed Suharto as a man who brought economic progress and stability to Indonesia.

But those who lost their loved ones and suffered under him, described him as a perfect criminal who was allowed to live in luxury till his death and lamented that he left the scene without being brought to justice. In the aftermath of independence, Dr. Sukarno adopted a socialist economy, aligned with the communist bloc and provoked the West with his anti imperialist rhetoric. Together with Nehru, Nasser, Tito and other dynamic leaders, Dr. Sukarno was one of the inspiring forces behind the Non-Aligned Movement whose voice began to shape international public opinion.

Under such circumstances it was obvious that multi-national corporations which run the West found it impossible to have access to the enormous natural resources of this largest archipelago nation described by President Richard Nixon as "the richest hoard of natural resources, the greatest prize in southeast Asia."

It was also the time when the United States was desperate for allies in the region as the Vietnam War continued to escalate and oil boom had just begun. Thus there was a need to overthrow President Sukarno and install a puppet in power as they did later in Iraq and Afghanistan. Being a specialist in the art of manufacturing lies to mislead the world through their so-called free media to justify their designs, they came out with the theory of a communist threat, to overthrow Dr Sukarno.

Although the coup began on October 1, 1965, Dr Sukarno continued to clinging on to power for eighteen long months until March 1967 when General Suharto was installed as President.

According to U.S. historians Barbara Harff and Ted Robert Gurry, around a million people were killed during his bloody rise to power from 1965 to 1967 in the worst mass slaughter in Southeast Asia's modern history after the Khmer Rouge's killing fields in Cambodia. Besides more than 200,000 people, some of whom were the cream of the country's intellectual community, were imprisoned without trial for more than a decade.

The United States, Britain and Australia not only played a crucial role in the coup but, according to reports, also in the slaughter. In the subsequent years it was an uphill task for them to minimize the impact of these atrocities and human rights violations.

Within months, President Suharto paid his gratitude to the Western forces which installed him in power by opening up Indonesia for American and European multinationals to freely loot the resources of the country.

In Geneva in November 1967, at a conference presided by David Rockefeller, sponsored by the Time-Life Corporation and attended by corporate giants such as General Motors, Imperial Chemical Industries, British American Tobacco, Siemens and U.S. Steel, Suharto agreed to the corporate takeover of the country sector by sector.

Together with the multinationals came the Christian missionaries who started converting Indonesians in full swing. Muslims opposing conversions ended up in jail without trial and Islamic movements were either absorbed or its leaders jailed. Media, students' movements and dissents were ruthlessly crushed. Tea boys and office boys in all government establishments were trained spies and the bureaucracy was thoroughly demoralized. Seminars, lectures, symposiums and other such intellectually stimulating activities were unheard of and those who grew up in this oppressive environment were not equipped to see the world in its proper perspectives. Thus he committed intellectual and cultural genocides on several generations.

During my more than two-hour long interview with Vice President Adam Malik, the civilian face of the military regime, I noticed the frustration and the harm done to the younger generation which, he himself admitted, was bound to have devastating long-term effects in society and the fate of the country as a whole.

Indonesians living in this miserable environment tried to make the best of the situation with illusions of economic development. But the promised economic prosperity failed to reach the masses even after 32 years. Thus the scenario changed overnight in the midst of economic, financial, ethnic and religious problems besides scandals involving Suharto's six children who became fabulously rich. There were unprecedented riots and street protests with speculations that Indonesia may fall apart like Yugoslavia.

Unable to face the mounting opposition Suharto left the scene peacefully in 1998. The successive governments failed to take concrete measures to bring him to book. He died last Sunday and despite his crime record, corruption charges and numerous court cases, Suharto was accorded a state funeral with full military honours at a ceremony overseen by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono himself.

Suharto may be dead, but those loyal to him are still in powerful positions. The irony is that the third president to succeed him was none other than the immensely popular Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of Dr. Sukarno.

Suharto is dead, but the vivid details of those who had seen from their jungle hideouts, the horror of how prisoners, hands tied and face covered, brought to isolated places in lorries, being unloaded like animals, lined up and mercilessly massacred and buried in mass graves dug by the prisoners themselves, began coming out. More is to come and the world will come to know more about Suharto and his misdeeds.