Suharto was well into his 25th year of his brutal rule of Indonesia when I first became conscious of just how awful he was, in regards to the illegal occupation of East Timor. Maybe it's because most people in that part of the world aren't white and the press here just didn't care. But the information campaign on campus about just how bad things had become, really angered me. This was not long after freedom had come to most of Eastern Europe, was several years after a peaceful revolt in the Phillipines -- and this had been going on since 1975?
His record of economic growth for his country, an average of 7% a year, certainly can't be dismissed. But his repression against his opponents and especially his attempts at committing genocide in Acer, East Timor and West Papua must never be forgotten. Who knows how many billions of dollars he stole from his people and hid in secret bank accounts? (I think Transparency International voted him the most corrupt world leader ever.) And certainly Canadians and Australians won't forget how he colluded with corrupt business men to sell what was essentially a fraud -- the Busang "gold" pit.
He died today at the age of 86, 10 years after the people in the country finally got fed up with him and forced him out. I personally think Hell is too good for him.
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General Suharto spent his evil life creating an American version of the Dutch East Indies Corporation (VoC); in 1961 he organised a pathetic attempt at a military invasion of West Papua, while his Freeport friends in Washington tricked Kennedy into writting the “New York Agreement” selling the people of West Papua like cattle to Indonesia.
After Suharto came to power he gave the colonial minerals to Freeport & related American corporations; and he put the population of Java to work in factories making the cheap American clothes of the 1970s.
By time America moved its cheap factories to Mexico the people of Java had developed a taste for Colonial Profits of West Papua & other colonies, and they liked it.
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