Why do some tyrants pay the price for their crimes, and others live their
lives in luxury even if they lose power? This posting is relevant to an
upcoming presentation of the film "East Timor: Betrayal and Resurrection"
to be shown at UW in the Turner Auditorium (D-209) at 6 PM on Thursday
April 6, 2006.

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Associated Press
Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Suharto Avoids International Tribunal

By Slobodan Lekic

photo: Then Indonesian President Suharto shoots targets with a rifle at
the family's Tapos ranch in Bogor, West Java, Indonesia, in this Jan. 12,
1994 file photo. Tucked away in a posh residential district of Jakarta,
Suharto, the dictator who led Indonesia for more than three decades, lives
freely in the comfort of his sprawling house even though he is widely
believed responsible for the deaths of twice as many the former Iraqi and
Serbian leaders combined. (AP Photo/State Secretariat HO, File) (AP)

The spotlight of international justice has shone on Saddam Hussein and
Slobodan Milosevic to hold them accountable for alleged war crimes.
But many are asking: what about Suharto?

Indonesia's dictator for 32 years is widely believed responsible for the
deaths of twice as many people as the former Iraqi and Serbian leaders
combined, yet he lives freely in a posh residential district of Jakarta.

"Suharto certainly belongs in the same category as Milosevic or Saddam
as far as crimes against humanity are concerned," said Dede Oetomo,
a human rights activist and professor at Airlangga University in Surabaya.
"He receives preferential treatment in the West because he delivered
Indonesia to them during the Cold War, while nobody in the political
class here sees any benefit in pursuing him."

Critics say Suharto's and other cases highlight an inconsistency that
lends credibility to charges that the trials in The Hague and Baghdad
are "victors' justice."

In Iraq, Saddam's tumultuous trial is continuing in fits and spurts, while
the effort to bring Milosevic to justice came to an abrupt halt this month
when he died in custody at the International War Crimes Tribunal.

But Suharto, 85, is among half a dozen former despots around the world
who have managed to evade or delay justice for their alleged misdeeds.

They include Ethiopia's Mengistu Haile Mariam, who directed the "Red
Terror" of the 1970s but now lives comfortably in exile in Zimbabwe, and
Chile's former dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, whose security forces
murdered thousands of leftists and other political opponents from 1973
to 1990. He is free on bail after being charged in a tax-evasion case.

Liberia's new government is urging Nigeria to extradite exiled warlord
Charles Taylor, accused of causing tens of thousands of deaths during
its civil war. And in Cambodia, no Khmer Rouge figure has stood trial
for the death of an estimated 1.7 million people between 1975-79.

It weakens the deterrent force of war crimes tribunals, said Dr. Harold
Crouch, an expert on Indonesia at the Australian National University.

"Obviously the deterrent value would be much greater if they indicted
all these people," Crouch said. "But Suharto always did what the West
wanted him to do; that's the main difference between him and Saddam
and Milosevic."

Suharto was an unknown two-star general in 1965 when he put down a
still-unexplained military mutiny which he attributed to leftist officers.
In the confusion that followed, Suharto seized power from the legal
government and launched a purge in which at least a half million people,
mostly communists, socialists, trade unionists and other leftists, were
executed.

As he tightened his grip, Suharto quickly gained support from Washington
and other Western capitals, which viewed him as a bulwark against
communism in Southeast Asia.

Washington facilitated Indonesia's 1969 takeover of the former Dutch
colony of West Papua, and acquiesced in its 1975 invasion of the former
Portuguese colony of East Timor. The long wars that followed have claimed
200,000 lives in West Papua, human rights monitors say, and 183,000 in
East Timor according to a U.N. and East Timorese government report.

The number of innocent Iraqis who perished during Saddam's rule is usually
put at over 300,000, with no precise statistics available. Milosevic's
wars in former Yugoslavia are said to have claimed at least 200,000 lives,
although some place the figure lower.

In Indonesia, several dozen officers have been tried on charges of killing
of hundreds of civilians in East Timor and elsewhere during Suharto's
time, but all were freed.

"If you can't convict a captain, how can you convict his president?" said
Crouch.

The leaders of Indonesia's fledgling democracy set out to try Suharto for
corruption, gave up, and have never sought to bring him to justice for war
crimes.

"The problem for any post-Suharto government is that it is difficult to
bring him to trial ... because he is still backed and supported by the
military, which itself participated in the killings of tens of thousands
of people," said Munarman, head of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation.
Like Suharto, he goes by one name.

"The politicians have to be very careful. There is still a very real
possibility the military could wrest back power," he said.

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