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	Suharto’s Death a chance for Victims to find Justice by Hendardi, Brad Adams Human Rights Watch & agencies Indonesia   Jan 2008   Suharto"s unjust legacy, by Hendardi. (ABC Online)   Each time the former Indonesian president Suharto slipped deeper into a critical condition, the public was aroused to debate. What was happening with the lawsuit against Suharto? Was he really corrupt and responsible for crimes against humanity? Furthermore, how did Suharto take power from Sukarno?   Those questions were not only asked by the elites, but also by the public. Many had the same opinion as me - that Suharto was not just an ex-president who deserved to be respected, admired and receive special treatment, but he was also someone who was corrupt and responsible for crimes against humanity. He altered democracy and turned it into an authoritarian regime.   I was first introduced to Suharto when I was a student at the Institute of Technology, Bandung, in 1978. I knew he was a military figure who was ravenous for power. The discipline he received from his military education was applied in building social, political, economic, cultural and security scenarios - and those scenarios had merely one objective: how to enrich himself so he was able to continuously last as a president, without having to work hard to achieve it. The institutional reconstruction in social, political, economic, cultural and security enabled Suharto to be president for 32 years.   The domination of Suharto’s regime and hegemony of his New Order was incorporated into every sector of public life and dragged every Indonesian intellectual to their knees. Any intellectual who had a different opinion from Suharto experienced exile, discrimination and violence until he or she stated his or her approval for Suharto’s thoughts. Those who still chose to think differently to Suharto had to migrate to another country to live in a more conducive intellectual climate and to escape violence.   Students rejected the arrival of several ministers at the University of Padjajaran in 1977. In 1978, in the lead-up to the General Session of People’s Consultative Assembly, university and high school students in Bandung, Jakarta and several other cities who no longer believed in Suharto as a president protested. Many student leaders were arrested and detained by the military intelligent apparatus. In 1979, dozens of students from the Institute of Technology, Bandung, the University of Padjajaran and the Islamic University, Bandung were charged and tried for humiliating the head of state.   At that time, I was trusted as Chair of Student Defending Committee of Student’s Council. It was a bad introduction to Suharto. The event also proved that the political system built by Suharto was effective in eliminating every citizen who had a different opinion.   My impression of Suharto was affirmed and confirmed in the field. When I was active in the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation and in the Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association, various human rights violations and crimes against humanity, which were under the responsibility of Suharto and the military came to my attention, as well as other activists, whose numbers were still limited in 1980s.   Suharto’s violence stretched from Aceh, East Timor to Papua. His New Order also introduced various systematic modus of silence and dwarfing of civic society. Not surprising, after the crisis in 1997 and the fall of New Order on 21 May 1998, the inheritance from Suharto was not merely economic destruction, which became the sign of the beginning of political crisis in Indonesia, but also the systematic destruction of the nation.   Corruption practices by Suharto and his cronies emerged after 1998. When Suharto was in power, almost no one dared to question his power and leadership practices, except those who were ready to face the military, migrate to a foreign country or were willing to be jailed without a fair trial.   Suharto, for a number of people, is a hero - the father of development and a superior general who succeeded in building the foundation of Indonesian economy to be equal with other nations in the world. Not only did he become an important player in the war to defend Indonesian freedom and to take over West Irian, he also succeeded in building a claim on prosperity, although it was fragile and easily collapsed when attacked by crisis.   Therefore, even though Suharto committed many crimes, the reasoning goes that forgiving him by giving abolition or deponering legal cases against him is the best way and a form of appreciation for the former leader of nation.   The attention by Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono-Jusuf Kalla’s government on Suharto’s recovery, as well as the attitude of a number of political elites and officials who suggest mercy and deponering his legal cases, is not only over-reactive, but also a repetition of a silly opera - supported by huge mass media coverage every time Suharto was hospitalised.   This is a form of humiliation to the victims of his New Order and public justice. Suharto did once “sit” on a trial – but he did not really present. Afterwards, Suharto was stated as having a permanent illness and lastly had a Decision Letter of Stopping Case Prosecution (Surat Ketetapan Penghentian Penuntutan Perkara or SKP3) for various crimes he was accused of. The issuance of the SKP3 without a valid reason was also a crime. After the SKP3 was issued, Suharto was never tried.   Settling Suharto’s civil cases outside court settlement was also an alteration of the main problem on how Suharto should have been treated by law, in terms of civil cases, criminal cases, as well as crimes against humanity that he committed. There was a systematic, grand design to direct the public to forgive Suharto and disregard his legal cases.   When Suharto was sick, political elites who enjoyed and used Suharto’s power were continuously shielding him from being processed by the law. They realized and understood that if Suharto were to be tried, they would be drawn in as well. They are cronies who are corrupt under a decree from the Assembly in 1998 on the Implementation of Government that is Clean and Free from Corruption, Collusion and Nepotism, and strengthened by another decree in 2003 that they should be tried.   The controversy of Suharto’s cases becomes a measure of the government’s success in law enforcement. We are seeing that although reformation has already been ongoing, the vision and orientation of law enforcement have not been altered. Stopping Suharto’s cases has been an abandonment of the principle of equality in the face of law, as well as real evidence of discrimination in law enforcement. Four presidents in power as a result of reformation did not have the political courage to complete it.   Treating Suharto humanely by merely visiting and praying for him when he was sick was not enough. Completing and making his legal cases clear were also authentic humane attitudes, which would have unshackled all controversies. While he is dead, my opinion on Suharto has not changed. My introduction probably would have been better if Suharto later dared to take the responsibility in the face of the law for every crime he committed.   * Hendardi is a prominent human rights lawyer and Chairman of the Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace in Indonesia.   January 28, 2008   Suharto’s Death a chance for Victims to find Justice, by Brad Adams. (Human Rights Watch)   The death of former president Suharto provides an opportunity for the Indonesian government to make a serious commitment to hold accountable the perpetrators of human rights abuses during his rule.   Suharto presided over more than three decades of military dictatorship and systematic human rights abuses, including media censorship, tight restrictions on freedom of association and assembly, a highly politicized and controlled judiciary, widespread torture, attacks on the rights of minorities, massacres of alleged communists, and numerous war crimes committed in East Timor, Aceh, Papua and the Moluccan islands. He also presided over a famously corrupt regime in which he, his family, and his cronies amassed billions of dollars in illegal wealth – funds which could have addressed Indonesia’s widespread poverty and social problems.   “Suharto has gotten away with murder – another dictator who’s lived out his life in luxury and escaped justice,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “But many of Suharto’s cronies are still around, so the Indonesian government should take the chance to put his many partners in human rights abuse on trial.”   To date, there has been virtually no legal accounting for the widespread abuses committed during Suharto’s rule, or for the violence instigated by pro-Suharto forces in a failed attempt to stave off his 1998 fall from power. Suharto himself never faced trial for human rights abuses. The former dictator spent the last years of his life living in luxury.   On account of Suharto’s alleged poor health, in May 2006, prosecutors dropped one case that alleged that he had stolen $600 million from the state’s coffers.   “Indonesia’s attorney general never issued an indictment against him for human rights violations,” said Adams.   “While there has been a great deal of political reform, repeated failures to hold perpetrators of serious human rights crimes to account have meant that Indonesia still has not come to terms with the worst of Suharto’s legacy.”   Human Rights Watch said that the lack of justice for Suharto’s crimes is directly linked to the continuing impunity enjoyed by Indonesia’s security forces, despite many political reforms and promises to address past abuses. Since 1998, the legal and institutional bases of Suharto’s political repression have been largely removed, and there has been great progress on freedom of association and expression.   One important consequence of this failure is that, although the military no longer formally plays a political role (the military’s “Dwifungsi” or “dual function” ideology relied on by Suharto has been abandoned and is now discredited), the military continues to be territorially and economically entrenched. The military still is not fully answerable to the Ministry of Defense, and much-heralded reforms to end the armed forces’ involvement in business are stalled.   The predictable result is conflicts of interest and abuses. Another consequence is that where there is conflict in Indonesia today, as in Papua, security forces – both military and special police units – still commit abuses and are almost never held accountable.   “Justice is a key missing piece in Indonesia’s reform story,” said Adams. “The failure to touch Suharto shows how far Indonesia still has to go if it is to establish strong, independent prosecutors and courts, and put an end to serious security-force abuses.”
	Found after 25 years: the children of the disappeared by Duncan Campbell The Guardian Argentina   January 28, 2008   DNA tests link Argentina''s lost generation to families they never knew they had.   Horacio Pietragalla felt "like a cat raised in a family of dogs" and was puzzled that, at the age of 14, he was already taller than his father. It was only later that he discovered he was the child of a leftwing activist murdered by the Argentine military during the "dirty war". The executioners gave Horacio away to a general''s maid more than a quarter of a century ago.   Now Pietragalla and dozens of other young Argentines are discovering who their real parents were and meeting their grandparents for the first time. Some are bringing legal actions against their parents'' kidnappers, while others are going through the painful process of realising the people they thought were their parents had lied to them.   An estimated 30,000 people were killed by the junta that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983 before it finally collapsed in the wake of the defeat in the Falklands war. Most of the victims were young and some were pregnant when arrested. Around 500 babies are believed to have been born in the army''s prisons. After their parents were tortured and killed, the children were handed over to military families.   Most of the children were unaware of their origins but their families, including activist groups such as the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, continued to search for them. Now, through the development of DNA testing, they have been able to trace and match 88 children to parents many of them never knew they had. Their story is told by award-winning director Estela Bravo in a film, Who Am I?, that has just won the main documentary prize at the Latin American cinema festival in Havana.   Juan Cabandié was one of the children handed over for adoption. He is now bringing a legal action against the man he had originally believed to be his father. "The woman who brought me up was a good person, lovable," he said. "She tried to compensate for the bad times I had with my supposed father. But, today I don''t have any relations with her, because I can''t understand a lie that lasted for 25 years." He maintains relations with his "sister" who, he said was supportive of his search to find out about his past. "She''ll always be my sister," he said.   Cabandié has now entered politics as a city councillor in Buenos Aires, inspired partly by the apology made in 2004 on behalf of the state by former president Néstor Kirchner, who turned the Naval Mechanical School, where much of the torture took place, into a "museum of memory."   Some of the children handed over for adoption had already been born when their parents were arrested. Claudia Poblete Hlaczik was eight months old when she was detained with her mother and given away as her parents were despatched to "the final destination", as the military papers called their deaths. She learned of her true identity when informed by a judge investigating the cases and has found it hard to adjust. "A person is 20 years old, and for 20 years she was called one name, and now she is called something else," she said. "Her uncles are not her uncles. Her grandparents are not her grandparents. And they are all people who she doesn''t know. It''s very hard."   Some surviving relatives finally found where their executed children had been buried. Berta Schubaroff describes in the film how she found her son''s grave: "I kissed and hugged his bones. I was filled with happiness and horror."   Others who believe they may be children of the disappeared are now waiting to have their DNA tested, Estela Bravo said yesterday from New York. She added that one of the remarkable aspects of the operation to find them was that many had the same quirks as the parents they never knew. "Juan Cabandié likes to go off to the mountains, look up to the sky and find himself, and his aunt has told him that his mother did exactly the same," she said.   In terms of action against the perpetrators, she said "the legal system is very slow. A lot of the judges are worried about going ahead with cases." Furthermore, many of those involved in the atrocities had a "pacto de silencio".   After the fall of the junta, a number of those in the military fled, many to the US and Miami in particular. Bravo now hopes to show her film there in the hope that more children will come forward.
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