Suharto dies

[hongi]

And these were his wrongs:

Hiding out in the dense, humid jungle, Markus Talam watched Indonesian soldiers herd manacled prisoners from trucks, line them up and mow them down with round after round of automatic weapons fire.

It was 1968, and the killings were part of a final offensive by forces under Gen. Suharto to wipe out the communist party and secure his position as leader of Indonesia, now the world's most populous Muslim nation.

"They gunned them down and dumped their bodies in a mass grave dug by other prisoners. I remember the sound of the guns clearly: tat-tat, tat-tat, tat-tat ... over and over again," said Talam, 68, who was later jailed for 10 years after being named a leftist sympathizer.

Suharto, who died on Sunday at a Jakarta hospital, seized control of the military in 1965 and ruled the country for 32 years, suppressing dissent with force and supported by an American government at the height of the Cold War.

Estimates for the number killed during his bloody rise to power — from 1965 to 1968 — range from a government figure of 78,000 to 1 million cited by U.S. historians Barbara Harff and Ted Robert Gurr, who have published books on Indonesia's history. It was the worst mass slaughter in Southeast Asia's modern history after the Khmer Rouge killing fields in Cambodia.

A frenzy of anti-communist violence stained rivers with blood and littered the countryside with the bodies of teachers, farmers and others.

"They used to dump the bodies here," recalled Surien, a 70-year-old woman who lived near a bay used as an execution ground. "People called it the beach of stinking corpses because of the smell."

The CIA provided lists of thousands of leftists, including trade union members, intellectuals and schoolteachers, many of whom were executed or sent to remote prisons.

Another 183,000 died due to killings, disappearances, hunger and illness during Indonesia's 1975-1999 occupation of East Timor, according to an East Timorese commission sanctioned by the U.N. Similar abuses left more than 100,000 dead in West Papua, according a local human rights group. Another 15,000 died during a 29-year separatist rebellion in Aceh province.

The prick should have been sent to jail.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Ah yes, the tyrant is dead. Hopefully, more in Asia will follow.

[K. A. Pital]

Sukharto? The guy who wiped a third of East Timor? Why didn't this guy face some sort of execution, you know? Because U.S. allies in the Cold War like Sukharto or Pinochet are off-hands when it comes to prosecution? Dazzling.

Oh, and it's always nice to see CIA being at the forefront of good deeds.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Sukharto? The guy who wiped a third of East Timor? Why didn't this guy face some sort of execution, you know? Because U.S. allies in the Cold War like Sukharto or Pinochet are off-hands when it comes to prosecution? Dazzling.

Oh, and it's always nice to see CIA being at the forefront of good deeds.

The Indonesians couldn't bring it upon themselves to try him. On one hand, you have the so called "pro-democracy" parties, on the other, you have the Suharto supporters. Quite frankly, a lot of government officials, party members ought to be tried for corruption and what not.

Never mind a few other things this tyrant is known for. Back then, it was fashionable to round up communists, or suspected communists all in the name of getting US support.

[Elfdart]

May he burn in hell. Right now, Pol Pot must be kicking himself:

So if you kill hundreds of thousands of people for Uncle Sam you don't have to spend your last days in a shack in the jungle? Shit.

I was amused by this bit of revisionist history:

Estimates for the number killed during his bloody rise to power — from 1965 to 1968 — range from a government figure of 78,000 to 1 million cited by U.S. historians Barbara Harff and Ted Robert Gurr, who have published books on Indonesia's history. It was the worst mass slaughter in Southeast Asia's modern history after the Khmer Rouge killing fields in Cambodia.

Must have been an American reporter who did the write-up on this story since only American journalists gloss over the 2-3 million dead Vietnamese, plus half million Cambodians killed by Uncle Sam. By the way, if you subtract the Cambodians slaughtered by the US, the death toll in Cambodia is smaller than Suharto's holocaust.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Nah, with some of the region's leaders secretly loving Suharto, seriously, who's going to care? My own country's ex-Prime Minister, who for reasons he will not really tell you is still in office wielding lots of influence, declared him a "Friend of Singapore" and says people aren't giving Suharto the respect he deserves. Yeah right, that idiot himself uses similar tactics to deal with the opposition. God knows how many are still locked up without trial.

[ray245]

Nah, with some of the region's leaders secretly loving Suharto, seriously, who's going to care? My own country's ex-Prime Minister, who for reasons he will not really tell you is still in office wielding lots of influence, declared him a "Friend of Singapore" and says people aren't giving Suharto the respect he deserves. Yeah right, that idiot himself uses similar tactics to deal with the opposition. God knows how many are still locked up without trial.

I wonder if the majority of singaporeans will be mourning or cheering when LKY dies...

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Nah, with some of the region's leaders secretly loving Suharto, seriously, who's going to care? My own country's ex-Prime Minister, who for reasons he will not really tell you is still in office wielding lots of influence, declared him a "Friend of Singapore" and says people aren't giving Suharto the respect he deserves. Yeah right, that idiot himself uses similar tactics to deal with the opposition. God knows how many are still locked up without trial.

I wonder if the majority of singaporeans will be mourning or cheering when LKY dies...

I will be first to try to spit on his grave. The only thing is they will probably arrest me.