Gideon Polya, “Mass Murderer Suharto Dead. US-backed Indonesian dictator killed millions”, MWC News, submitted 29 January 2008.
Mass murderer Suharto Dead. US-backed Indonesian dictator killed millions
This week General Suharto, former US-backed Indonesian dictator and mass murderer for 34 years, died at the age of 86 with an estimated $30 billion squirreled away. Mass murderer Suharto left an appalling legacy of about 0.5-1 million Indonesians murdered (Communists, progressives, ethnic Chinese), 0.2 million East Timorese murdered out of a total population of 0.6 million in the East Timorese Genocide (1975-2002), goodness knows how many people killed in Aceh and West Irian (West Papua), terrorizing by brutal and corrupt military, rampant corruption and consequent rise of Islamist activism and (variously military- and police-complicit) terrorist activity against the Indonesian Christian minority (about 10,000 killed with about 100,000 refugees) (see:
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-duin010202.shtml ) and recently against Western hotels and visitors (e.g. the 2003 Bali bombing that killed about 200 Western tourists).
A fundamental measure of the human consequences of social policies (e.g. war, dictatorship, colonialism, neo-colonialism, hegemony) is excess deaths (excess mortality, avoidable mortality, avoidable death, deaths that should not otherwise have happened). Excess death can be defined as the difference between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful, decently-run country with the same demographics. Using UN Population Division data one can estimate that excess deaths in Indonesia under Suharto totalled 33 million (noting that the 2005 population was 225 million) (see “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ and http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ).
However of wider global significance has been rampant Indonesian corruption and the continuing devastation of the Indonesian rain forests that is making a big contribution to global warming that threatens the Planet, and especially the Developing World. Top UK and World climate change expert Professor James Lovelock FRS estimates that over 6 billion people (mostly in the Developing World) will perish this century due to unaddressed, out of control, man-made global warming (see: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16956300/the_prophet_of_climate_change_james_lovelock ). According to the prestigious UK Royal Society (see: http://royalsociety.org/news.asp?id=7226 ): “Even if we act now Professor Lovelock believes that six to eight billion humans will be faced with ever diminishing supplies of food and water in an increasingly intolerable climate and wildlife and whole ecosystems will become extinct”.
The background to this US-, UK- and CIA-complicit catastrophe began with European colonizing of the region encompassing the Malay Peninsular (Britain), the Philippines (Spain) and Indonesia (Britain, Spain, Portugal and Holland) in the 16th-18th century. By 1800 the Dutch ruled most of present-day Indonesia with exception of East Timor (held by Portugal).
In 1945 Indonesia declared independence under Sukarno, this being followed by the 1945-1949, war of independence against the UK-backed Dutch. In 1949 independence was established under a Dutch-Indonesian Union but full independence was declared in 1954. In 1955 Indonesia hosted the important Bandung Conference of non-aligned nations and this was followed by increasing US and Western hostility. In the 1960s there was “ Confrontation” between Indonesia and UK over Malaysia and in 1963 Indonesia occupied West Irian (Dutch New Guinea; Western New Guinea, West Papua). In the mid-60s, the 3 million-strong Communist Party supported Sukarno, the Royal Dutch Shell assets were nationalized and the PERTAMINO oil organization was set up.
At his point, at the height of the Cold War, the US acted through General Suharto, who was head of Indonesian Intelligence, to remove the Independence Hero Sukarno and replace him with a pro-US dictatorship. In 1965, a US-backed coup was launched by the military under General Suharto on pretext of opposing a “communist coup”(for details see William Blum’s “Rogue State”). 750,000 to over 1,000,000 Indonesians were murdered (including many ethnic Chinese) and 200,000 were imprisoned, many for decades. The US embassy and CIA were actively involved in handing names of potential victims to the Suharto goons. In 1967, Suharto was formally made head of state and, despite student riots in 1971, the US-backed Indonesian military dictatorship involving horrendous corruption and human rights abuse was underway .
For an insider account of the horrible commercial abuse of Indonesia by America under Suharto read John Perkins’ “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”. In 1975 there was a UK-US-Australia-approved invasion and occupation of Portuguese East Timor, just hours after a visit by US President Ford – the subsequent 1975-2002 East Timor Genocide killed 200,000 out of 600,000 population.
Finally after 34 years with mounting pressure from students, media and both moderate and fundamentalist Muslim organizations, in 1999 the US-backed Suharto military dictatorship was replaced by democratically elected government under the outstanding moderate Muslim leader Abdur Raman Wahid (Gus Dur). Thus ended the US-backed Suharto military dictatorship associated with a 1965-1999 excess mortality of 33.3 million Indonesians. In 1999-2002 there was a UN-supervised East Timorese progression to independence. The devastating 2004 Tsunami tragedy (200,000 dead in Aceh, Sumatra) was followed in 2005 by a peace accord that ended over 4 decades of Acinese armed resistance.
The mass murderer Suharto is dead but the longevity of his violent, corrupt regime was enabled by the active connivance of the UK, the US and the RACIST LYING by Western Mainstream media and politicians that STILL enables continued gross, US-backed abuses of humanity around the world.
In 1966 the PM of Australia Harold Holt declared of the 1965 Coup: “"With 500,000 to 1 million communist sympathisers knocked off … I think it is safe to assume a reorientation has taken place." (reported in n editorial in The Age, Melbourne, January 2008:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/editorial/the-corruptible-life-and-crimes-of-a-despot/2008/01/28/1201369033517.html?page=2 ). In about 1970 Suharto visited America and the New York Times (“all the news that’s fit to print”) enraged people like ourselves with Indonesia and particularly Indonesian Chinese friends and acquaintances (including refugees from the Suharto tyranny) (we were working in New York at the time) by describing this evil mass murderer as (from memory) “a person of impeccable anti-Communist credentials”.
Today the same evil, racist, lying holocaust-ignoring mainstream media are telling the same kinds of lies about horrendous US Alliance crimes against Humanity all around the world, from Occupied Haiti through Occupied Iraq (1.5-3 million post-invasion excess deaths) to Occupied Afghanistan (3-6 million post-invasion excess deaths). Thus The Age, Melbourne in an astonishingly frank editorial entitled “ The corruptible life and crimes of a despot” stated (January 29, 2008) that: “The US, and the CIA, saw in Soeharto a strongman who could halt the [SE Asian] dominoes. Yesterday America hailed the former despot as a "historic figure". Despite "some controversy over his legacy", he had left a "lasting imprint".”
A former PM of Australia Paul Keating has gone to the funeral of his old “friend” Suharto. However the new neo-Bush-ite Labor PM of Australia, Religious Right Rudd (R3), in offering lavish condolences over the death of this mass killer was critical of this now-dead monster, albeit in astonishingly muted terms: “The former president was also a controversial figure in respect of human rights and East Timor and many have disagreed with his approach." Substitution of “Adolph Hitler” for “the former president” and delete “and East Timor” in this sentence would earn the speaker 10 years in prison in Austria for Holocaust Denial.
US-backed dictator Suharto’s family are $30 billion richer, but this evil US-backed despot has left a legacy of a corrupt, devastated country and over 33 million excess deaths ignored by the US media and “softened” by US lackeys like neo-Bush-ite Rudd. History ignored yields history repeated, genocide ignored yields genocide repeated. Silence kills and silence is complicity. Tell everyone you can about the life and death of this evil US-backed, active and passive mass murderer of over 33 million of his own people.