[R-G] O'Keefe: Suharto's brutal legacy

[Anthony Fenton]

rabble.ca    January 28, 2008

Suharto's brutal legacy

Link: http://rabble.ca/news_full_story.shtml? 
sh_itm=3a0d242a4b9cb61ad705b2840c40de7c&rXn=1&
by Derrick O'Keefe
General Suharto, Indonesia's former dictator, has died at the age of  
86. He was, for many years, Ottawa's man in Jakarta.
Of course, he was also Washington's man in Jakarta. In many ways, he  
was similar to Washington's pre-1990 man in Baghdad. For most of  
their thuggish careers, he and Saddam Hussein had U.S. support, among  
other things, in common. Both consolidated their power after  
participating in bloody purges of communists and radical  
nationalists. Saddam purged the Left from Iraq's Ba'ath Party;  
Suharto took the helm after helping purge the Left from the  
Indonesian archipelago – the 1965 coup that overthrew the nationalist  
government of Sukarno was followed by the murder by death squads of  
up to a million activists, workers and peasants.
Both Saddam and Suharto viciously repressed political opponents and  
ethnic minorities; both accumulated great personal wealth and handed  
down top security and economic positions to their children; both  
illegally annexed small neighbouring states: Kuwait in 1990 and East  
Timor in 1975, respectively.
While the 1991 Gulf War was waged in the name of liberating Kuwait  
(and restoring a monarchy that denied women the right to vote), the  
massacre of civilians later that year in East Timor's capital, Dili,  
elicited no response from western media and no outcry from western  
politicians. During the two and a half decades of Indonesian  
occupation of East Timor, it is estimated that 200 000 people were  
killed. Suharto's regime also massacred thousands in other oppressed  
regions, such as Aceh and West Papua.
For all their similarities, then, the politics of empire intervened  
and led Saddam and Suharto to very different ends. The "butcher of  
Baghdad" was hanged in a rushed execution, while the butcher of Dili  
died surrounded by the best medical attention money could buy.
In Canada, it's worth remembering the shameful role with respect to  
Suharto's regime played by the Liberal Party, which claims to uphold  
a humanitarian tradition in its foreign policy.
Back in the 1990s, the strongman in Jakarta was respectfully referred  
to in our mainstream media as President Suharto. He was touted as a  
modernizer, a unifier, and an important ally in Canada's quest to  
expand trade and investment in Southeast Asia.
Canada sold weapons to the dictatorship, which then Liberal Secretary  
of State for Asia-Pacific Raymond Chan justified on the absurd  
grounds that they were defensive weapons only.
And so it was that in 1997, when Vancouver hosted the APEC summit,  
Jean Chretien's Liberal government rolled out the red carpet for the  
dictator, and dished out the pepper spray and riot squads on the  
activists who worked to expose Suharto's gross human rights  
violations and Canada's complicity.
At the University of British Columbia, where one of the main  
gatherings of the heads of state was held, a security fence was  
erected, "preemptive" arrests were made against protest organizers  
like Jaggi Singh, and of course pepper spray was used liberally.  
According to a public inquiry held after the APEC protests, in the  
lead up to the summit Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy had  
debased his office to the point of apologizing to the Indonesian  
authorities for a Suharto "Wanted" poster that had proliferated  
around town.
Seeing this spectacle up close as an undergraduate provided me with  
an intense and valuable learning experience about the true nature of  
politics. Back in the quaint days before the "war on terror," our  
rights to freedom of speech, assembly and dissent were quickly –  
automatically, really, with the justifications made up on the fly –  
subordinated to the needs of capital.
All the high-sounding rhetoric of human rights from the likes of  
Axworthy disappeared in an instant when it came to appeasing a key  
business partner. Subsequent Liberal foreign affairs ministers, such  
as Bill Graham and Pierre Pettigrew, would up the ante from  
complicity to outright aggression when, for instance, Canada played a  
key role in overthrowing Haiti's democratic government in 2004.
It's worth noting too that, back in the 1990s, it was initially only  
very small networks of activists on the Left who worked to bring the  
plight of East Timor to the public's attention in Canada. It was a  
tiny nation, half of an island, with a Roman Catholic majority that  
was occupied by the world's most populous Muslim country. Those  
standing up for self-determination for Palestine and Iraq today,  
against whom pro-war ideologues trot out Islamophobia and "clash of  
civilizations" nonsense, were the same people agitating for the  
freedom of the Timorese, who happened to be a predominantly Christian  
people.
At the time, the East Timor Alert Network (ETAN), with the help of  
the odd outspoken MP such as the NDP's Svend Robinson, did the heavy  
lifting to expose the Liberals' complicity with Suharto's crimes.
A statement on ETAN's U.S. sister group's website sums things up  
eloquently:
"Indonesia's former dictator General Suharto has died in bed and not  
in jail, escaping justice for his numerous crimes in East Timor and  
throughout the Indonesian archipelago…"
"To overcome Suharto's legacy and to uphold basic international human  
rights and legal principles, those who executed, aided and abetted,  
and benefited from his criminal orders must be held accountable."
We can be sure that current Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier  
and his Conservative colleagues will make some statements on  
Suharto's death parroting whatever comes out of Washington.
But I'd really like to hear from the likes of Chretien and Axworthy.  
What do they have to say for themselves and what do they have to say  
now about the dictator that they aided, abetted, and protected from  
protest?
Derrick O'Keefe is the editor of rabble.ca.