Suharto
Suharto ruled Indonesia for thirty-one years, presided over rapid growth and mass killing, and fell in the Asian financial crisis. Born in 1921 in a village near Yogyakarta to a Javanese peasant family, he was shuttled between relatives as a child, joined the Dutch colonial army, then served under the Japanese occupation, and fought in the independence war. On the night of 30 September 1965 six generals were murdered in a coup attempt blamed on the Communist Party. Suharto, commanding the strategic reserve, took control of the army within hours and destroyed the movement. The killings that followed, carried out by the army and by religious and nationalist militias it armed, are estimated to have taken between five hundred thousand and a million lives, with hundreds of thousands more imprisoned for years without trial. Western governments supplied lists and gave approval. He displaced Sukarno and took the presidency formally in 1968, calling the system the New Order. He opened the economy to foreign investment and Western aid, and the results were substantial: rice self-sufficiency by the mid-1980s, a fall in poverty from over half the population to about eleven per cent, and near-universal primary schooling. The politics were closed. Only three parties were permitted, elections were managed, dissent was suppressed, and his family and associates took a share of every significant business — Transparency International later ranked him the most corrupt leader of the modern era. He invaded East Timor in 1975; perhaps a fifth of its population died over the occupation. The 1997 crisis destroyed the rupiah and the banking system, and mass protests forced his resignation in May 1998. He died in 2008, never tried.
- Lived: 1921 CE – 2008 CE
- Nationality: Indonesian
- Roles: military_dictator, president
