Indonesians still waiting for justice
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the former general Suharto’s 1998 resignation
Almost every week Asih Widodo attends a vigil outside Indonesia’s presidential palace, seeking justice for his son who died in an orgy of violence after the fall of dictator Suharto.
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the former general’s 1998 resignation at the height of the Asian economic crisis as Indonesia was paralysed by riots, food shortages, a plunging rupiah currency and mass unemployment.
More than 1,000 people are estimated to have been killed in riots and protests shortly before and in the months after Suharto’s autocratic regime collapsed.
Widodo’s son, engineering student Sigit Prasetyo, died in a hail of army gunfire aimed at protesters.
“I was at work when I got a phone call that my son was in a hospital — I knew immediately in my heart he was gone,” Widodo told AFP at a recent vigil alongside other bereaved parents demanding answers. “My son was murdered by the army.”
In the past two decades the country of 260 million has undergone what many see as a remarkable transition to democracy but Southeast Asia’s biggest economy still grapples with rampant corruption and inequality.
Suharto — who grabbed power in 1967 following the massacre in 1965-6 of hundreds of thousands of alleged communist sympathisers and ethnic Chinese — died in 2008.
He was never held to account for the suspected looting of billions of dollars from state coffers or rights abuses during his threedecade rule.
And the violence linked to his government’s collapse is another dark chapter which Indonesia has yet to address in any meaningful way. Ethnic Chinese Indonesians bore the brunt of the bloodshed in the last days of Suharto, with women cowering in their homes for days as rape squads — purportedly led by army thugs — roamed the streets.
But Widodo, who rides a motorbike emblazoned with the words “My son was murdered by the army”, will keep demanding answers.