Another dictator dies: Indonesia ex-leader Suharto
BayBak, Azerbaijan | Sunday, 27th January , 2008 , 10:34 [am] | International
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. | During his 32-years in power, the economy thrived, but thousands were killed in the provinces of Papua and Aceh and in East Timor invaded in 1975.
Suharto left office in 1998 amid mass protests over corruption and the human rights abuses, but did not stand trial on health grounds. |
Indonesian ex-leader Suharto, 86, has died after suffering multiple organ failure for the second time this month.
He died at 1310 (0610 GMT) after slipping into a coma, doctors said.
During his 32-years in power, the economy thrived, but thousands were killed in the provinces of Papua and Aceh and in East Timor invaded in 1975.
Suharto left office in 1998 amid mass protests over corruption and the human rights abuses, but did not stand trial on health grounds.
No-one has been punished for the killings.
Father of development?
“Indonesia’s second President Haji Muhammad Suharto has passed away at about 1310,” senior police officer Major Dicky Sondani told reporters at the Pertamina Hospital in Jakarta.
All six of his children were at the hospital.
Soldiers and police had to force back crowds of Suharto supporters to allow the ambulance with his body to leave the hospital on his way to his home in central Jakarta, before it is taken to Solo in central Java for the funeral.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono led a televised prayer to mourn the death of the former leader. He said this was the time to thank Suharto for the “services to the nation”.
Suharto was rushed to hospital on 4 January suffering from various heart, lung and kidney problems.
He had been living quietly in Jakarta since being overthrown during the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis. He had been in and out of the hospital several times.
Although he was accused of embezzling huge sums from state funds during his three decades in power, his lawyers always successfully pleaded that his failing health meant he should not stand trial.
Suharto’s rule was marked by rapid economic growth and political stability. Some Indonesians fondly call him the “father of development”.
But many often found it difficult to pin down what they felt about the man who had towered over their lives for so long, says the BBC’s Jonathan Head.
They certainly feared him, our correspondent says.
After all, the bloodshed which accompanied his rise to power, after a mysterious coup attempt in 1965 which he blamed on Indonesia’s then-powerful Communist Party, was on a scale matched only in Cambodia in this region, he says.
Within the space of a few months at least half a million people were slaughtered in anti-communist pogroms that, at the very least, Suharto and the military tacitly encouraged says our correspondent.
The trauma of that period scars Indonesia to this day, and was a key tool in Suharto’s armoury.
After his death was announced, Suharto’s eldest daughter, Siti Hariyanti “Tutut” Rukmana, told reporters: “We ask that if he had any faults, please forgive them… may he be absolved of all his mistakes.”bbc
, Voice of a Nation==========
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