Suharto's Passage: One Small Man Leaves a Million
Corpses
posted January 15, 2008 (web only)
Allan Nairn
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080128/nairn
This essay originally appeared on Allan Nairn's News
and Comment blog.
(Suharto has since done the right thing and died) 
General Suharto of Indonesia is fading fast, the news bulletins say. So when I came into the country, I started asking how people felt
about their dying killer.
(Body count, around 1 million-plus, overwhelmingly civilian).
Suharto's legacy has been lauded by Bush and Rudd _________________________________________________
The first man I ran into--near a coffee/rice stall--
though the radio blared the death watch, said nothing
about it, until I raised it.
"So much the better," he smiled.
Even people I know well did not bother to mention it,
though they know I follow politics.
One market lady had just described her own recent
ailments--decades of squatting and pounding grain take a
toll--when I asked about Suharto.
"Suharto?", she said. "He ate too much money. He's full.
He ate so such that others can't eat."
She chuckled at her own joke. Everybody laughed. The
mourning period should be over by lunchtime.
The New York Times, in 1993, after the East Timor
massacres , Philip Shenon wrote that Suharto "r[a]n the
country with a grandfatherly smile and an iron fist" and
lamented that his "accomplishments are not widely known
abroad."
On earth, in Indonesia--below the towers of life-giving-
or-taking wealth and distant killing decision--Suharto
seemed to have been seen, on the one hand, as a small
man, but on the other, as a menace.
You could talk corruption, but you could not mention the
murders. You had to work hard to forget them. The
government helped with "Clean Environment" laws that
banned the surviving relatives from social contacts, on
the theory that if they got around, their memories might
pollute society.
A grandmother, when pressed, once told me about bodies
bobbing in Sumatra rivers.
But as a rule, people don't like to talk about Suharto's
founding massacre, the one that was, in the words of
James Reston of the Times, the "gleam of light in Asia"
(June 19, 1966), and in the words of the CIA, which
assisted, "one of the worst mass murders of the 20th
century" (for background see posting of November 8,
2007: "Duduk - Duduk, Ngobrol-Ngobrol. Sitting Around
Talking, in Indonesia.").
Interestingly enough, on the official, bureaucratic
level, it is corruption talk that is taboo.
In 1998, I was being interrogated after giving a press
conference on Suharto's secret aid from Clinton
(including snipers and "PSYOP"(s); see posting of
December 12, 2007), and Suharto's man began to read
aloud from my file--parts disturbingly accurate, parts
ridiculous.
He asked about my political views. I went into a speech
about the massacres and how Suharto and Clinton should
share a jail cell. The man was thoroughly bored. But
then, somehow, I mentioned corruption.
He was offended, angry. He sat upright: "What do you
mean, corruption?!"
It made sense, on the popular level that was Topic A.
So, therefore, it was a dangerous topic. Bureaucrats are
not encouraged to speak the word. Cash envelopes enter
pockets quietly.
But the massacres? They were unlikely to spark a flame,
the Suhartoites had calculated.
Survivors really can be selfish sometimes--forget the
dead and kiss the killers--especially if clever ongoing
terror is applied. Forced thought control is sometimes
possible.
When Suharto goes, there won't be weeping in the
kampungs, I know, but there may be on some US campuses.
There, there developed a school of thought (and of
subsidy) that held that Suharto was OK since, though he
had "human rights" problems, the official statistics
showed rapid GDP growth.
The proponents were strict anti-communists, but had
absorbed some Pravda thinking, since that argument was--
as it happened--the same one once used to justify
Stalin.
But as short, thin people gathered this morning at, say,
the Belawan ferry to Malaysia could tell you, Pak
Harto's massacre development, unlike Uncle Joe's, did
not vault Indonesia onto a new plane.
Neighboring countries, once tied with Indonesia in real-
eating development, have post-rise-of-Suharto-and-his-
army far surpassed it, so Indonesians leave home,
seeking work, often trading dignity for their babies'
brain growth. (See "Duduk-Duduk" on the choices sending
poor Indonesians overseas, and the posting of November
24, 2007, "Rising in Malaysia. The Dangers of Feeding
Poor People, " on Malaysia's different, far-faster
development).
The interesting question is not why are foreign sponsors
so suave about explaining murder (key answer: because
they can get away with it) but rather why do local
people, in so many places, let one small man rise above
them?
That's a complex question, for another day. But right
now, some people here are busy with the death
anniversary of another, far bigger, person, a lady
buried in a goat field, who was--by consensus of several
kampungs--a shining, good person, a great one.
If they had met, Suharto would have told her to wash his
floor (I can assure that you she wouldn't have).
But even she, with her strong shoulders, could not
possibly have washed away all that blood. That's a task
for a whole society, after Suharto is condemned and
gone.
Then they'll have to get together and resolve to
henceforth keep the floor clean.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Allan Nairn
Duduk - Duduk, Ngobrol - Ngobrol. Sitting Around
Talking, in Indonesia.
http://newsc.blogspot.com/2007/11/duduk-duduk-ngobrol-ngobrol-sitting.html
Sitting around in a house in Indonesia over green agar-
agar (seaweed gelatin) for diarrhea, the talk is of the
"dog" POLRI police, the "sadis" TNI army, the local mob
boss who likes to rape his servants (the servants are
friends of this family), a framed son in prison due to
lack of a well-timed payoff and his own culpable
stupidity, the caterpillars that after house-floods like
to crawl into your ears, the tiny worms that like to
bore into children's feet and then steal food from their
intestines, buying "monja" -- cast-off, used clothes
from rich lands -- and finding money, occasionally, in
the pockets, but, most fundamentally, jobs, wages, a
recent labor outrage, and the question of whether, in
America, you have to pay a bribe to get a job, as you
often do in Indonesia.
By the second hour the air starts stinking slightly of
flood sewage. The thin wood walls have been stripped of
tchotchkes. At first I thought -- wrongly -- that the
little ceramic animals had been sacrificed: sold or
brought to the pawnshop. But it turns out they had
merely been taken down for holiday cleaning. The selloff
involved other things.
You never really own anything if you're poor. Its just a
matter of time. You accumulate a little property and,
then, if you're unlucky, somebody steals it, or the
police escort a bulldozer in, and simply level the
house. But if you're luckier, you're compelled to sell
(or pawn) your property to pay a series of, say,
important bribes for which you actually get something in
return, in this case the right of that locked-up son to
eat soft rice instead of hard rice so that, on the way
down, it doesn't get stuck in his throat and trigger his
fits of fainting asthma. That payoff costs about 70 US
cents per meal, in addition to garbage money, key money,
do-not-break-his-nose-this-week money, let-your-mother -
visit money, toilet visit money, and 11 other kinds of
money, if I counted correctly.
No soft-on-crime liberals, the family said that the kid
deserved to do some time, though the offense was non-
violent, nobody knew it was an offense, and the
conviction flowed from a larger, fake, charge. The boy
had screwed up, embarrassed the family, and now the
predator state had its hooks in. These payoffs were
bringing the family down. They were selling off
everything.
Imagine, someone said, if they were really poor people,
because in local terms, they weren't, yet. The women
rise at 4 am to make and sell mini cakes in the
traditional market, on a good day hoping to clear a
profit of 2 dollars 70 US cents. The men, when there's
work, sell durian fruit by the roadside or do pickup
construction. That makes them "rakyat kecil," literally,
society's small people; essentially, regular folks. But
not really "orang susah" -- people with woes. Those are
the poor people, one family member had explained, when
we met years ago.
She lived in a shack 12 feet off the railroad tracks,
but liked to help the poor. As a Muslim, she would bring
them rice and cooking oil for Ramadhan. Hindu family
members did likewise ( "If I were President of
Indonesia," she once said, "I'd make sure everybody had
a house, and I'd guarantee that all the children would
be able to go to school." She, like others, was
surprised at the news that in some countries schooling
was free.)
But today, in the house, as we all talked, the one they
really felt for was the poor washerwoman down the alley
who makes $18 a month and couldn't pay the bribe to get
her son a cell -- a room about the size of an American
kitchen, which accommodates 30 guys. So the authorities
locked him, squatting, in the toilet -- a very slippery
hole in the floor. That's where he'll live until she
comes across. He'll have a lot of visitors.
Yet things could be worse. In the past year and a half
two household members have died. But, despite the drain
on their patrimony, their locked-up boy is still alive.
Likewise, thankfully, during this past year, none of the
babies have died -- that perhaps due to outside cash
infusions, but such things are a matter of fortune. Of
the two adults who died one was a man in his early
forties, "middle-aged" by rich world standards, "old" in
local terms. The other, a somewhat younger woman, that
lady from by the railroad tracks, was a "tukang baca," a
craftsperson of reading, who was also considered old.
The man went stiff as he was placed in a motorcycle
sidecar. The woman ascended in the midst of a massive,
violent, brain seizure.
In their cases, prolonging their lives might have
required decades of better health care. But if you
ruminate about that notion people look at you and laugh
incredulously.
Four to five decades ago, when most of the "old" people
in this house were kids, there was talk in Indonesia of
revolution, or something like it; for starters, creating
a situation in which thinking about schooling, housing,
and health for all would not be ridiculous. That talk
happened in the '60s counterparts of places like the
mechanic's shop where that late man worked (his 2006
wage of roughly 55 dollars per month led many in the
family to call him a "rich man," but, unfortunately --
everyone says -- he didn't handle money well), and the
rice paddy where that woman was on the evening when she
suddenly died.
The '60s talk was led by a communist party that launched
a byzantine intrigue against the army and that got
obliterated in, in the CIA's words, "one of the worst
mass murders of the 20th century" (declassified US CIA
Directorate of Intelligence research study, "Indonesia
--1965: The Coup That Backfired", 1968). The CIA should
know, since they gave a list of 5,000 targeted people to
the army, but once they murdered the intellectual
leaders, most of the victims were -- as often -- poor
farmers. (See the interviews with US officials by Kathy
Kadane, the American journalist, eg., Kathy Kadane,
States News Service, "Ex-agents say CIA compiled death
lists for Indonesians; After 25 years, Americans speak
of their role in exterminating Communist Party," San
Francisco Examiner, May 20, 1990; also in Washington
Post, May 21, 1990) .
Today there is no talk of revolution, but there's a lot
of bitter complaining. Among poor people I've met, the
terms of art are "dogs" for the POLRI police, and
"sadists" for the TNI army, navy, air force and marines.
Its a term the soldiers have no doubt heard themselves,
since they actually, on their website, ran a photo of
army officers giving gifts to children, over the
memorable caption : "Is It True The TNI Is Sadist?" (
"Benarkah TNI Sadis?", web page: "Tentara Nasional
Indonesia Angkatan Darat, The Indonesian Army, Galeri
Foto, Arsip Foto, Juni, Agustus, Oktober," online as of
September 7, 2005, but later wisely taken down).
But on this afternoon, despite all the talk of payoffs
-- and, another matter of drug dealers supplied from on-
high who are making the neighborhoods unlivable -- the
most agitated discussion is about the cancellation of
the THR (Tunjangan Hari Raya).
This is the holiday season. Muslim Idul Fitri is
wrapping up, and Hindu Deepavali began on Thursday.
Usually, people lucky enough to have a wage job -- and
they are the elite of the poor -- count on an ostensibly
mandatory holiday bonus equal to one month of wages,
known as the THR ("count on" is an optimistic choice of
words, since wage workers frequently go long stretches
without being paid at all. At PPD, for example, a state
bus company in the process of privatization, workers
have gotten nothing for the past five months. Their most
vocal union leaders have been arrested by POLRI, and
blamed for the lack of payment. ["MNC Today," TV news,
October 26, 2007]).
This year, at many factories and construction sites, the
THR was abruptly canceled, this at a time when Indonesia
has made its debut as a site for global speculative
capital, and when the recycling of money from Aceh
relief/ reconstruction is going so well for Indonesia's
real rich people that in this town's streets there are
easy sightings of new Mercedes and BMWs, and within
shooting distance of this tin-roofed house there is
going up a previously unheard-of thing: a world-luxury-
brand hotel that is to be the tallest structure in the
province (another topic of discussion is that
unfortunate young laborer who just fell to his death
from, they say, the seventh floor).
The THR cancellation was a blow to the gut, since if you
want your kids to not be stunted or to not develop slow
brains, you have to budget like a corporate Chief
Financial Officer, you have to maintain cash-flow
consistency. The key is never having more than a couple
of days of hunger in a row, since during the early
brain-development years that's when the damage gets
done. Its rare to enter a poor household, including this
one, that can claim to have always achieved that goal.
When defining the difference between rakyat kecil like
themselves and the really poor people, one mother in the
house explained that rakyat kecil "are people who can
eat every day."
But if you don't, its trouble for the small ones. So
budgeting is huge: 'X' dime-equivalents for cooking oil;
'Y' for cooking kerosene; 'Z' for unhulled rice (four
grades to choose from, depending on your level of
poverty), and then, the big question, rice "pakai apa?,"
rice served with what? Chopped peppers, oil, spices,
onions and garlic only? Maybe a little tofu or tempeh?
But these are the holidays, there should be meat, or at
least some salted mini-anchovies. If a thirteenth of
your yearly income is suddenly snatched its hard to plan
for or have such things, not to mention meeting the
demands of excited kids, counting on gifts of crisp new
1000 Rupiah -- or, if you're richer -- 5000 Rupiah notes
(9 US cents or 45 US cents) and, maybe, a new set of
holiday clothes, a ball, or a set of pencils.
The blame for the yanking of the THR , in the view of
some men who joined the discussion, fell on Vice
President of Indonesia Yusuf Kalla and on the heavily
ethnic-Chinese employers, ethnic thinking being popular
everywhere in the world, but especially encouraged in
Indonesia ever since the army took over during the 1960s
slaughter.
But isn't the whole point of being a big employer to get
what you can from your workers? The old Dutch
colonialists used to draw-and-quarter unruly plantation
hands, and even did the same to one of their own
governors, who was deemed to have gone native. A US
business newsletter once noted Indonesia as a good place
to invest due to labor discipline due to "the underlying
threat of force." When I first showed up in this
neighborhood years ago excited people gathered round,
asking if I was there surveying the ground to build a
factory. They were disappointed when I said no, even
though they had no reason to expect that it would be
other than what we call a sweatshop -- 11 hour days,
toxic air, molestation of female workers by the foremen,
and sporadically paid wages that are not enough to keep
a family eating.
But as the foreign corporate PR people love to point out
-- their lips dripping with friendly cynicism -- local
people LOVE those jobs, or, more precisely, they really
do covet them (what the corporates fail to point out is
that those relatively-higher-than-average coveted wages
are still so absolutely low that they could, say, triple
them, thereby keeping various children alive -- and
still be making a killing).
Anyone who scores a sweatshop job here is considered to
have hit the jackpot, so much so that there's a lot of
griping that you need connections to get one. Likewise,
I can't count the times that younger women here have
asked me about the prospects for obtaining one of those
servants' jobs in Malaysia or Singapore. This despite
the well-known stories of rapes, beatings, confiscated
passports and unpaid wages, fatal falls from strange
high-rise apartments, and the percentage who are
informed by their "calo" (agent/ fixer) upon arrival on
foreign soil that their real job won't be cooking,
cleaning, or cradling foreign babies, but, instead,
having no-choice sex with yet-to-be-determined hundreds
of foreign men.
Some are naive, but many are not. Those foreign wages
are roughly six times higher. So if you want to keep the
family babies away from too many brain-hunger days, as
they used to say in the United States: you pays your
money and you takes your chances (and that is literal,
since you have to pay the agent to get the chance to
become the servant).
One young man -- stick thin, with bulging arm veins,
and, he said, sore and tired from lifting cement bags,
even though he hadn't worked for many days -- mentioned
that there had been a number of demos in response to the
canceled THR. But he wasn't speaking as if the ground
were shaking. The "orang kaya," rich people, still rule,
backed up by all those US/ British/ Australian/ and --
soon -- Russian weapons of the TNI/POLRI.
But there's interesting news coming out of China, and it
concerns the balance of power, the balance of power
between those who merely want more money and those whose
bodies need it.
For the first time in a long time there may now be
upward pressure on world wages, since China's market,
which has been pulling them down, may now be starting to
push them up. (for part of the story see, for example,
Tom Mitchell and Geoff Dyer, "Heat in the workshop: The
'China price' is under upward pressure," Financial
Times, October 15, 2007).
If this is true, and those tsunami-like ripples start
emanating through the global market, when they wash
ashore in Indonesia, and other places, it could make for
interesting times. The creation and distribution of
wealth has long been a cold maneuver. Who gets depends
in large part on who can get, whether they're in
position to do so. Part of that positioning depends on,
to begin with, the crossing of certain thresholds:
enough infant (and prenatal) food to make your brain
quick, enough later food to make you strong, enough
health protection to keep you still strong, enough
education to make you a reader, enough housing to keep
you safe from animals, thugs, and floods, enough
sanitation to drain your emissions, enough clean water
to make you happy and relaxed instead of sick, enough
energy and time to think, and then -- more grandly --
enough of a labor shortage/ wage situation to give you
enough leverage vis a vis the rich so that you can get
enough wealth to cross those thresholds, and then begin
the good stuff.
Its always chancy to rely on outside agency, especially
on something that might not get there (eg., the China
wage current, though fundamental, will be facing pull-
down crosscurrents, like the WTO trade regime, and
rising world food prices due to the increasing use of
food crops and fungible land for biofuel), but the ugly
reality is that if you're spent and drowning, you'll
drown unless somebody (or something) intervenes and
throws you a line.
So if some poor people get lucky and the market finally
temporarily starts to break their way, that fortunate
appearance of some meat on the rice could set the stage
for bigger things, like, say, giving more people a
chance to think and talk about doing more than
complaining.
But one of the points about a pre-civilized world order,
like the one we live in today, is that people are dying
unnecessarily every day, every hour, every minute.
So whatever happens with regard to market wages, and
with regard to willed social change, it will happen too
late for the prematurely dead, too late for the already
stunted, and perhaps even too late for many of the
prematurely dying.
That tukang baca lady who once spoke of arranging houses
and schooling for all is now resting (bodily) by the
riverside, and there are loved ones of hers in this
house who will probably also be gone soon, perhaps by
next holiday season. The question is, which ones? But
nobody speculates on that. They all say its up to God.
"God selects, not us."
But even if that is true, there is the co-existent fact
that today's world has enough liquid capital to prevent
the preventable deaths. There is, in fact, so much
wealth washing around that if a mere fraction of it were
well-shifted, it could bring everyone who needs it above
those bodily thresholds listed above.
Imagine, a world of people whose brains are OK. Who
aren't always sick. Who are strong enough to do a good
job and literate enough to write about it. Its what an
individualist in North America might call a level
playing field. And what the people in this house might
call an implausible paradise.
But rather than being in the hands of people whose
bodies need it, that life-saving/ transforming money in
question is in the hands of people who merely want it.
Those holders of the potentially life-altering money
constitute a relative handful of the world's
inhabitants, and they include not just the rulers, but
also the global middle class.
Among that handful also reside the ones who have made
the unexamined decision to forgo enforcement of the
murder laws when it comes to official actions by
officials, thereby clearing the way for things like
arming armies and police that like to kill civilians.
For those in this rich, controlling, world minority
there are decisions to be made. Decisions like whether
to shift a little cash or let the dying die. And
decisions like whether we're ready to be even-handed in
enforcing the murder laws.
For these rich ones, solving the solvable worldwide
problem of mass, unnecessary death is a matter of some
thinking, some action -- perhaps, for some, various
kinds of sacrifice -- but little risk-of-life to speak
of and, indeed, not even many real encounters with
gratuitous death.
But for the poor majority in the world, those whose
babies' brain-growth clocks are ticking, it is a matter
of some tougher stuff, like occasionally staring down
gun barrels and deciding whether or not to risk your --
and/or your family's -- life, but also, much more
fundamentally, learning how to cope with, and overcome,
the frequent, needless, ridiculous, death that is the
background music of daily life. It can be pretty
exciting and inspiring to be shot at by an oppressor.
But it can tear your soul out from the inside to have a
loved one die too soon.
Earlier this year, before he got locked up and pulled
the family into the vortex, that young man sat in this
very room and tried to console an inconsolable relative.
Evidently tired of the weeping before him, he suddenly
rose from his crouch, and, to the astonishment of
everyone -- this is a very quiet young man -- he
suddenly launched into a declamation on the matter of
death and living. "These eyes can only emit tears," he
said. "They are incapable of emitting blood" (the point
being that crying merely produces tears, which are
useless salty water, as opposed to producing something
useful, like blood, which is the stuff of life). "Do not
be sad! We cannot be crushed by grief! This world still
exists! There are still tasks to be performed" he said.
"We must remember that."
As an answer to grief, it was helpful, but insufficient.
But as a statement of political outlook, the kid
definitely had a point. Article from:  PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd has offered the condolences of all Australians to the people of Indonesia after the death of former president Suharto. Suharto, who ruled Indonesia with an iron fist for over three decades, died from multiple organ failure today aged 86, after being admitted to a Jakarta hospital on January 4.
"On behalf of the government and people of Australia, I extend to the president and people of the Republic of Indonesia our condolences on the passing of former Indonesian president Suharto," Mr Rudd said in a statement.
"Former president Suharto was one of the longest-serving heads of government of the last century and an influential figure in Australia's region and beyond."
Mr Rudd acknowledged the former president's ruling of the world's fourth most populous nation, and its largest Islamic nation, for 32 years.
"Until the catastrophic Asian financial crisis of 1997, he oversaw a period of significant economic growth and modernisation at a time when Indonesia faced fundamental political, social and economic challenges," Mr Rudd said.
"He was influential in the successful development of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and of APEC.
"The former president was also a controversial figure in respect of human rights and East Timor and many have disagreed with his approach."
As the world's third largest democracy, Mr Rudd described Indonesia as Australia's "close friend" and "neighbour", with the two countries sharing "vital political and security interests".
Former foreign minister Alexander Downer said despite his "less than desirable" human rights record, Suharto understood how important Australia was to Indonesia.
"He was a man who despite his human rights record in Indonesia, which was less than desirable, he was committed to a good relationship with Australia and understood the importance of Australia to Indonesia," Mr Downer told AAP from his home in the Adelaide Hills.
"I always appreciated that and he was always very civil in my dealings with him and very responsive to building a relationship between Australia and Indonesia.
"He had a very good vision for building a strong South-East Asian community and a positive view about Australia being part of that."
- AAP
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