Some friends were wondering recently if Prabowo Subianto, Gerindra party candidate
for President, recently had the charges dropped against him for human rights
violations. I said I hoped it wasn’t
true, since the world community was pretty much in agreement that he is
basically a war criminal. But I did a
little digging just to make sure.
Imagine my disgust when I found out that no formal charges have ever
been filed against him, and that the US, while fervently hoping he doesn’t win,
is backpedaling like mad, and promises that if he does win, the State
Department “would re-establish direct
contacts with [him], and will not pursue allegations of human rights abuses.”
Why does the US place sanctions and boycotts on other
countries whose leaders commit genocide?
Would we be cozying up to Hitler if he’d won?
Dark days ahead, my
friends.
Indonesia Candidate
Tied to Human Rights Abuses Stirs Unease
By JOE COCHRANE (The New York Times) MARCH 26, 2014
Here
he is at a rally last Sunday. That horse
is worth more than JMD’s Aceh cocoa farmers make in a year.
JAKARTA, Indonesia —
Prabowo Subianto, a former special forces commander, kicked off his party’s
campaign for legislative elections with a rally last weekend that the local
news media characterized as “military style.” He rode into a Jakarta stadium in
a jeep to greet the party faithful, mounted a horse to circle the grounds and
paraded before uniformed party cadres standing at attention.
Despite widespread allegations that he
took part in some of Indonesia’s worst human rights abuses during his time as a
military officer, Mr. Prabowo — who has announced his candidacy for
president — is not playing down his military credentials in a country that many
see as craving a strong leader.
But Mr. Prabowo’s candidacy
has raised deep concerns among rights activists in Indonesia and abroad. They
note that the country’s
human rights commission recommended that he be prosecuted in the alleged
abductions of pro-democracy activists in the late 1990s, during the
final months of the military-backed government of President Suharto, his
father-in-law at the time.
Mr. Prabowo’s attempt to
become the country’s second directly elected president has also put the Obama
administration in a difficult position.
Mr. Prabowo, who graduated from American military
training programs in the 1980s and is an admirer of the United States,
has for years made it clear that he would like to meet with high-level American
officials. So far, the United States has demurred.
“The sensitivity comes from the extremely close
association between the U.S. and Indonesian militaries during the atrocities
the Indonesian military committed,” said
Jeffrey Winters, a professor of political science at Northwestern University,
adding that the administration appears to be banking on Mr. Prabowo’s losing or
on patching up any bruised feelings if he wins.
“Indonesia is far too strategically important to the U.S.
to have frosty relations between the countries,” Mr. Winters said. It not only has strong economic and security ties to
the United States, it also has the world’s largest Muslim population.
For the moment, Mr.
Prabowo, of the Great Indonesia Movement Party, has been polling behind Joko
Widodo, the popular governor of Jakarta who has made his name as a
squeaky-clean leader who tackles popular issues like education and Jakarta’s
chronic traffic. But the presidential election is still months away — in July,
after next month’s legislative election — and the charismatic Mr. Prabowo, 62,
has many ardent supporters at the grass-roots level, as well as among powerful
businessmen and retired military commanders.
Allegations against Mr.
Prabowo extend back to his early career, when he was a young officer in the
1980s in East Timor, where an armed movement was fighting Indonesian
occupation. Some human rights groups called for an investigation over allegations that he ordered the
massacre of nearly 300 civilians. Mr. Prabowo has vehemently denied
being on the scene of the massacre or having any involvement in it.
Later accusations center on
his time as one of Indonesia’s most powerful military men under Mr. Suharto. Human rights groups say Mr.
Prabowo, then a three-star general, was responsible for the abduction and
torture of 23 pro-democracy activists in 1997 and 1998, and for orchestrating
riots in May 1998 — just days before Mr. Suharto resigned as president — that
resulted in more than 1,000 deaths and the rapes of at least 168 women.
A government-appointed
fact-finding team established by Mr. Suharto’s successor reported that Mr.
Prabowo had met in his office with military, government and political figures
during the riots. That stoked speculation that they had plotted to use the
crisis as a way for Mr. Prabowo to take over the crumbling government in a
coup. Mr. Prabowo denies
any such plot and, in a recent interview, said he could have “taken over if I
wanted to.”
A member of the
fact-finding team, Marzuki Darusman, said, “To be fair, it’s all
circumstantial, and it’s still unresolved.”
In 2006, the National Commission on Human Rights released
a report saying 11 people, including Mr. Prabowo, should be prosecuted in the
activists’ abductions. The attorney general’s office, which has shied away from
most investigations of Suharto-era abuses, declined that request.
The abductions case did end
Mr. Prabowo’s military career. He was discharged in August 1998 for “exceeding orders” by arresting
the activists, some of whom, according to Mr. Prabowo, had bomb-making
equipment. While he
accepted responsibility as a senior officer for the torture of nine of the
activists, he has said he did not order it and has denied any knowledge
about the disappearances of the other 14.
“The main thing about Prabowo is, he’s never been
investigated, let alone prosecuted, for the long list of things he’s been
linked to,” said Matthew Easton, a former program
director for Human Rights First, an organization based in the United States.
“His actual command responsibility needs to be investigated.”
Mr. Prabowo argues that he
has been made a scapegoat for the abuses committed by the military during Mr.
Suharto’s 32 years in power.
“I’ve never been indicted
for anything; it’s always innuendos, always allegations,” he said, speaking
fluent English in the recent interview. “My critics always say I am a threat to democracy, blah,
blah, blah. I believe in democracy and in human rights.”
The United States — which
had worried about Indonesia’s stability amid American fears of Communist
takeovers in Southeast Asia — had supported Mr. Suharto, but appeared to begin
to distance itself from him and figures like Mr. Prabowo after Mr. Suharto lost
power.
The State Department denied Mr. Prabowo a visa in 2000
to attend his son’s university graduation in Boston, although it has never
explained why. And as Mr. Prabowo’s political career took off over the last six
years, successive American ambassadors have given him a wide berth even as
other foreign diplomats have met with him and as his brother, a prominent
businessman, made several trips to Washington to appeal for opening a dialogue.
Lower-level United States
officials have met with members of Mr. Prabowo’s circle, though not with him,
according to one of his party’s officials.
A State Department
spokeswoman recently appeared to suggest that Mr. Prabowo was not being singled
out, saying the United States ambassador, Robert O. Blake, “has no plans to meet
with declared candidates.” And at a recent gathering organized by the Jakarta
Foreign Correspondents Club, Mr. Blake said, “Whoever is elected, we will gladly work with.”
But the decision not to
meet with Mr. Prabowo before the election stands in contrast to the American
approach in India, where the ambassador broke nine years of American
estrangement with Narendra Modi, whose party is leading in polls, by holding a
publicized meeting with him in February. The State Department had revoked Mr.
Modi’s visa in 2005 over his alleged role in sectarian violence in Gujarat.
Political analysts say generational change and Mr.
Prabowo’s charm help explain why he is considered a strong candidate.
Many of the tens of millions of young Indonesian voters do not remember much
about the Suharto days, while many older voters contend that army commanders
were just trying to keep the fractious archipelago intact.
Mr. Prabowo also has won
fans in business, in part for his decisiveness. After he spoke at a gathering
last year with Indonesian business leaders and Jakarta-based American
executives, “half of them wanted to vote for him right there, even the
foreigners who can’t vote,” said one American who attended.
As for the chances of a
falling-out with Indonesia if Mr. Prabowo wins, analysts say that is unlikely.
They note that Mr. Prabowo remains an American supporter despite the cold
shoulder. Barry Desker, a former Singaporean ambassador to Indonesia, said he
expected the United States to exercise the same pragmatism it has in India if
Mr. Prabowo emerged as the front-runner.
“The State Department would re-establish direct contacts
with Prabowo,” Mr. Desker predicted, “and will not pursue allegations of human
rights abuses.”
