E Contrario

Mahathir visits the dying Soeharto

Indonesian dictator Soeharto is died. Ironically the news reached me while I was in the lock-up.

The date of Soeharto’s death, 27 January 2008 was almost 10 years apart from his stepping down as President on 21 May 1998.

Soeharto reign had a great deal of impact on me. My interaction with the struggle of Indonesian students against Soeharto military regime in the ’80s was a very inspiring experience. In my days of students’ activism, I had built up a network of Southeast Asian young activists who were fighting against dictatorship.

I should thank Soeharto for my first experience of arrest in Malaysia. On 12 November 1991, Soeharto ordered the “Santa Cruz Massacre” in Dili. Hundred of East Timorese were brutally gunned down by Indonesian army. Among those killed was my young friend, a Malaysian student studying in Australia, Kamal Bamadhaj.

I initiated a protest at the Indonesian Embassy in KL. The police arrested me at the gate of the embassy when I unfolded a placard saying “stop the killing!”

I was taken to the Tun H.S. Lee police station and got 3 hours of a very intimidating interrogation by the SB.

From 1991 onward, the human rights NGOs in Malaysia had been returning to the Indonesian embassy on 12 November every year. Each year we got very rough and violent reception by Malaysian police and Indonesian embassy staff.

The rise of Reformasi in Malaysia too had a close connection with the downfall of Soeharto. Asian Financial Crisis which started in 1997 exposed the fatal weaknesses of Southeast Asian crony capitalism.

Back in 1997, I was convinced that authoritarian regimes in Asia including Malaysia’s would fall one after another. True enough, we witnessed military-back governments in South Korea, Thailand etc. collapsed like domino. On 21 May 1998, Soeharto was forced out by mass protests.

I remembered Mahathir said something to the effect of the WB/IMF conspired to overthrow Soeharto and Mahathir himself. The fall of Soeharto must have panicked Mahathir.

Motivated by the Reformasi struggle in Indonesia, Malaysian democratic movement too launched our own Reformasi. The rest was history. Mahathir and Soeharto had both became history.

The death of Soeharto unfortunately did not mark the end of the era of Asian dictatorship. Authoritarian regimes still have a firm grip in Burma, Malaysia, Singapore and so on. Dictators in these countries continue to apologize for Soeharto’s crime. Naturally Soeharto’s two great friends, Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir strongly spoke out to defend Soeharto.

I called the troika of Mahathir-LKY-Soeharto the greatest proponents and defenders of Asian Values. For them, gross human rights violations were justifiable for the sake of economic growth. This myth eventually fell flat as we are now informed that autocracy breeds corruption and economic downturn.

For me, Soeharto was one of the cruelest butchers in modern history. Unfortunately the world was deprived of hearing Soeharto’s own confession and defence in an open court. Soeharto despite his death is still responsible for the killing of half to 1 million leftists and a quarter of East Timorese, massive systematic discrimination of ethnic minorities. Above all, he must be held accountable for his corruption which condemned millions of Indonesian masses into poverty and malnutrition.