Suharto - war criminal

The ruling elite in these countries not only wants its companies to make quick bucks off the back of the dead. They have also determined that it is in their strategic, economic and political interests to support mass murderers like Suharto.

Indeed, as Iraq and Afghanistan show (once again), when the West thinks it is in their interests to do so they will don the gloves of blood themselves, rather than rely on proxies like Suharto.

Then there is the looting of the Indonesian coffers. Suharto, his family and cronies were corrupt. Transparency International claims that Suharto and his family filched as much as A$40 billion from the country’s coffers.

The criminal case against him for this corruption ended because of his ill health. The civil case will be settled out of court. I wonder who presently in power in Indonesia benefits from these decisions.

International courts have been useless in the fight against this mass murderer, a man clearly guilty of war crimes and genocide.

That’s because the West didn’t want him tried. He was their ally. And further, any action could implicate those who aided and abetted Suharto, like the Australian leaders Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke, Keating and Howard.

Apparently only those criminals who lose the West’s support (like Saddam Hussein) suffer some sort of retribution. Certainly those from the West who support dictators are never charged. And those Western leaders (like Bush, Blair and Howard) who invade other countries and kill hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians are never brought to justice.

Individual terrorism is abhorrent. State terrorism, whether by Suharto or his Western backers, is just as abhorrent.

Near the site of the Bali bombing, a bombing in which 88 Australians were murdered, there are mass graves from 1965 and 1966. There are about 88,000 dead there. Our outrage over Bali should extend to those Suharto murdered. It doesn't.

An uprising in 1998 forced Suharto from power. That revolution was incomplete because it is Suharto’s acolytes who now run the country. Indeed, Golkar, Suharto's party, is the biggest in Indonesia.

Only when the working people of Indonesia are in power, instead of Suharto’s cronies, will Indonesia be free of its murderous past.

Now the dictator is dead. May he rot in hell. If there is one.