Suharto
Suharto was an Indonesian military officer and politician who served as the second and longest-serving president of Indonesia from 1967 to 1998. Widely regarded as a military dictator by international observers, Suharto led Indonesia as an authoritarian regime from 1967 until his resignation in 1998 following nationwide unrest. His 31-year dictatorship is considered one of the most brutal and corrupt of the 20th century: he was central to the perpetration of mass killings against alleged communists and subsequent persecution of ethnic Chinese, irreligious people, and trade unionists.
Suharto was born in Kemusuk, near the city of Yogyakarta, during the Dutch colonial era. He grew up in humble circumstances. His Javanese Muslim parents divorced not long after his birth, and he lived with foster parents for much of his childhood. During the Japanese occupation, Suharto served in the Japanese-organized Indonesian security forces. During Indonesia's independence struggle, he joined the newly formed Indonesian Army and rose to the rank of major general some time after full Indonesian independence was achieved. An attempted coup on 30 September and 1 October 1965 was countered by Suharto-led troops. The army subsequently led a nationwide violent anti-communist purge. In March 1967, the MPRS appointed Suharto as acting president, and he was appointed president the following year. When Suharto came to power, inflation was running at over 650%. He appointed an economic advisory group that implemented free market policies, and by 1969 the country entered a period of price stability. Suharto ordered an invasion of East Timor in 1975, followed by a 23-year occupation of the country and genocide.
Under his "New Order" regime, Suharto established a strong, centralised government dominated by the military, evolving from an initial oligarchic military dictatorship into a deeply authoritarian state centred on a cult of personality that elevated him as the nation's undisputed leader. His staunch anti-communist stance and ability to maintain political stability across Indonesia's vast and diverse archipelago secured significant economic and diplomatic backing from Western powers, particularly the United States, during the Cold War. During much of his presidency, Indonesia underwent rapid industrialisation, sustained economic growth improved education, and a rise in domestic entrepreneurship, developments that led the People's Consultative Assembly to name him "Father of Development" in 1982. In 1986, he was awarded the Ceres Medal by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization for achieving self-sufficiency in rice production. However, by the 1990s, his regime's increasing authoritarianism and widespread corruption fueled public dissatisfaction, which reached a breaking point during the 1997 Asian financial crisis that plunged the country into economic turmoil and widespread unrest. Under immense pressure, Suharto resigned in May 1998 after more than three decades in power.
Suharto died in January 2008 and received a state military funeral with full honors. The Indonesian government declared a week of national mourning. Suharto's 32-year presidency and legacy are highly divisive, and he remains a controversial figure within the Indonesian general public. He has been praised for making Indonesia into an economic success story, bringing stability to the region particularly during the Cold War period, and leading Indonesia when it played a significant role in international affairs. Others denounce his authoritarian rule, widespread corruption, and extensive human rights violations.
Name
Like many Javanese, Suharto had only one name. The spelling "Suharto" reflects modern Indonesian orthography, although the general approach in Indonesia is to rely on the spelling preferred by the person concerned. At the time of his birth, the standard transcription was "Soeharto", and he used the original spelling throughout his life. The international English-language press generally uses the spelling "Suharto", while the Indonesian government and media use "Soeharto".After completing the Hajj in 1991, he was given the Islamic name "Mohammad" by King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and received the honorific title Hajji. Throughout the 1990s and until his death, Suharto used the name "Haji Mohammad Suharto".
Early life and family
Suharto was born on 8 June 1921 in a plaited-bamboo-walled house in the hamlet of Kemusuk, a part of the larger village of Godean, then part of the Dutch East Indies. The village is west of Yogyakarta, the cultural heartland of the Javanese. Born to ethnic Javanese parents, he was the only child of his father's second marriage. His father, Kertosudiro, had two children from his previous marriage and was a village irrigation official. His mother, Sukirah, a local woman, was distantly related to Hamengkubuwono V by his first concubine. Five weeks after Suharto's birth, his mother suffered a nervous breakdown; he was placed in the care of his paternal great-aunt, Kromodirjo as a result. Kertosudiro and Sukirah divorced early in Suharto's life and both later remarried. At the age of three, Suharto was returned to his mother, who had married a local farmer whom Suharto helped in the rice paddies. In 1929, Suharto's father took him to live with his sister, who was married to an agricultural supervisor, Prawirowihardjo, in the town of Wuryantoro in a poor and low-yielding farming area near Wonogiri. Over the following two years, he was taken back to his mother in Kemusuk by his stepfather and then back again to Wuryantoro by his father.Prawirowihardjo took to raising the boy as his own, which provided Suharto with a father-figure and a stable home in Wuryantoro. In 1931, he moved to the town of Wonogiri to attend the primary school, living first with Prawirohardjo's son Sulardi, and later with his father's relative Hardjowijono. While living with Hardjowijono, Suharto became acquainted with Darjatmo, a dukun of Javanese mystical arts and faith healing. The experience deeply affected him and later, as president, Suharto surrounded himself with powerful symbolic language. Difficulties in paying the fees for his education in Wonogiri resulted in another move back to his father in Kemusuk, where he continued studying at a lower-fee Schakel Muhammadiyah in the city of Yogyakarta until 1938. Suharto's upbringing contrasts with that of leading Indonesian nationalists such as Sukarno in that he is believed to have had little interest in anti-colonialism, or political concerns beyond his immediate surroundings. Unlike Sukarno and his circle, Suharto had little or no contact with European colonisers. Consequently, he did not learn to speak Dutch or other European languages in his youth. He learned to speak Dutch after his induction into the Dutch military in 1940.
Military service
Japanese occupation period
Suharto finished middle school at the age of 18 and took a clerical job at a bank in Wuryantaro. He was forced to resign after a bicycle mishap tore his only working clothes. Following a spell of unemployment, he joined the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army in June 1940 and undertook basic training in Gombong near Yogyakarta. With the Netherlands under German occupation and the Japanese pressing for access to Indonesian oil supplies, the Dutch had opened up the KNIL to large intakes of previously excluded Javanese. Suharto was assigned to Battalion XIII at Rampal, graduated from a short training course at KNIL Kadetschool in Gombong to become a sergeant, and was posted to a KNIL reserve battalion in Cisarua. Following the Dutch surrender to the invading Japanese forces in March 1942, Suharto abandoned his KNIL uniform and went back to Wurjantoro. After months of unemployment, he then became one of the thousands of Indonesians who took the opportunity to join Japanese-organized security forces by joining the Yogyakarta police force.In October 1943, Suharto was transferred from the police force to the newly formed Japanese-sponsored militia, the Defenders of the Homeland in which Indonesians served as officers. In his training to serve with the rank of shodancho he encountered a localised version of the Japanese bushido, or "way of the warrior," used to indoctrinate troops. This training encouraged an anti-Dutch and pro-nationalist thought, although toward the aims of the Imperial Japanese militarists. The encounter with a nationalistic and militarist ideology is believed to have profoundly influenced Suharto's own way of thinking. Suharto was posted to a PETA coastal defense battalion at Wates, south of Yogyakarta until he was admitted for training for chudancho in Bogor from April to August 1944. As company commander, he conducted training for new PETA recruits in Surakarta, Jakarta, and Madiun. The Japanese surrender and Proclamation of Indonesian Independence in August 1945 occurred while Suharto was posted to the remote Brebeg area to train new NCOs to replace those executed by the Japanese in the aftermath of the failed February 1945 PETA Revolt in Blitar, led by Supriyadi.
Indonesian National Revolution
Two days after the Japanese surrender in the Pacific, independence leaders Sukarno and Hatta declared Indonesian independence and were appointed president and vice-president respectively of the new Republic. Suharto disbanded his regiment under orders from the Japanese command and returned to Yogyakarta. As republican groups rose to assert Indonesian independence, Suharto joined a new unit of the newly formed Indonesian army. Based on his PETA experience, he was appointed deputy commander, and subsequently, a battalion commander when the republican forces were formally organized in October 1945. Suharto was involved in fighting against Allied troops around Magelang and Semarang and was subsequently appointed the head of a brigade as lieutenant-colonel, having earned respect as a field commander. In the early years of the war, he organized local armed forces into Battalion X of Regiment I; Suharto was promoted to Major and became Battalion X's leader. The arrival of the Allies, under a mandate to return the situation to the status quo ante bellum, quickly led to clashes between Indonesian republicans and Allied forces, i.e. returning Dutch and assisting British forces.Suharto led his Division X troops to halt an advance by the Dutch T Brigade on 17 May 1946. It earned him the respect of Lieutenant-Colonel Sunarto Kusumodirjo, who invited him to draft the working guidelines for the Battle Leadership Headquarters, a body created to organize and unify the command structure of the Indonesian Nationalist forces. The military forces of the still infant Republic of Indonesia were constantly restructuring. By August 1946, Suharto was head of the 22nd Regiment of Division III stationed in Yogyakarta. In late 1946, the Diponegoro Division assumed responsibility for the defence of the west and southwest of Yogyakarta from Dutch forces. Conditions at the time are reported by Dutch sources as miserable; Suharto himself is reported as assisting smuggling syndicates in the transport of opium through the territory he controlled, to generate income. In September 1948, Suharto was dispatched to meet Musso, chairman of the Indonesian Communist Party in an unsuccessful attempt at a peaceful reconciliation of the communist uprising in Madiun.
In December 1948, the Dutch launched "Operation Kraai," which resulted in the capture of Sukarno and Hatta and the capital Yogyakarta. Suharto was appointed to lead the Wehrkreise III, consisting of two battalions, which waged guerrilla warfare against the Dutch from the hills south of Yogyakarta. In dawn raids on 1 March 1949, Suharto's forces and local militia recaptured the city, holding it until noon. Suharto's later accounts had him as the lone plotter, although other sources say Sultan Hamengkubuwono IX of Yogyakarta, and the Panglima of the Third Division ordered the attack. However, General Abdul Nasution said that Suharto took great care in preparing the "General Offensive". Civilians sympathetic to the Republican cause within the city had been galvanised by the show of force which proved that the Dutch had failed to win the guerrilla war. Internationally, the United Nations Security Council pressured the Dutch to cease the military offensive and to recommence negotiations, which eventually led to the Dutch withdrawal from the Yogyakarta area in June 1949 and to complete transfer of sovereignty in December 1949. Suharto was responsible for the takeover of Yogyakarta city from the withdrawing Dutch in June 1949.
During the Revolution, Suharto married Siti Hartinah, the daughter of a minor noble in the Mangkunegaran royal house of Solo. The arranged marriage was enduring and supportive, lasting until Tien's death in 1996. The couple had six children: Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana, Sigit Harjojudanto, Bambang Trihatmodjo, Siti Hediati Hariyadi, Hutomo Mandala Putra, and Siti Hutami Endang Adiningish. It was characteristic of a military family's life that three of their children were born when Suharto was on duty and away from his family. Their first child was born when Suharto was fighting in a guerrilla war outside of Yogyakarta. He did not see their first daughter for three months after her birth. Their second child, a son, was born while Suharto was serving in South Sulawesi. Another, their fifth child, was born when he was leading the Mandala Command for the Liberation of West Irian.