Former Indonesian Dictator Suharto Dies at 86

[SilverOrchid]

Former Indonesian Dictator Suharto Dies at 86

Sunday, January 27, 2008


Former dictator Suharto, an army general who crushed Indonesia's communist movement and pushed aside the country's founding father to usher in 32 years of tough rule that saw up to a million political opponents killed, died Sunday. He was 86.

"He has died," Dr. Christian Johannes told The Associated Press, adding that he died at 1:10 p.m.

Dozens of doctors on Suharto's medical team had been rushed to the Pertamina Hospital in the capital, Jakarta, after his blood pressure fell suddenly Saturday night. Suharto had slipped out of consciousness for the first time in more than three weeks of treatment, doctors said.

Suharto had been in intensive care with lung, heart and kidney failure since he was admitted to the hospital on Jan. 4. Over the past week his physicians had spoken of a recovery, but by Sunday that had changed dramatically.

Suharto, who led a regime widely regarded as one of the 20th century's most brutal and corrupt, has lived a reclusive life in a comfortable villa in downtown Jakarta for the past decade.

He had been in and out of the hospital several times since being toppled by a pro-democracy uprising during the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis for heart problems and internal bleeding.

Historians say up to 800,000 alleged communist sympathizers were killed during Suharto's rise to power from 1965 to 1968. His troops killed another 300,000 in military operations against independence movements in Papua, Aceh and East Timor.

I never heard of this guy, was he really the worst?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,325851,00.html

[Sonnabend]

I never heard of this guy, was he really the worst?

Believe it.

He was.

[SilverOrchid]

I never heard of this guy, was he really the worst?

Believe it.

He was.

Worst then Saddam? That is the only mass murderer that I knew of.

[Lisa]

I never heard of this guy, was he really the worst?

Believe it.

He was.

Worst then Saddam? That is the only mass murderer that I knew of.

Saddam was not, by any means at all, the only mass murdering leader.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. Hope he's meeting his victims in hell right now.

[Ptarmigan]

Actually most of the killings were carried out by Communists themselves. Suharto had some role, but was not totally involved. Suharto may have been brutal, but he made Indonesia an Asian Tiger, like what Park Chung-hee did for South Korea. The biggest irony of all is the biggest anti-Communist killers are communists themselves. Stalin purged many Trotskyists in the Soviet Union. In Indonesia, the so-called mass killings of millions of communists (PKI-Indonesia's Commuist Party) in 1965 was carried out by communists themselves to cover up their own communism, especially in Bali.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Indonesia

[JohnMatrix]

I never heard of this guy, was he really the worst?

Believe it.

He was.

Worst then Saddam? That is the only mass murderer that I knew of.

are you serious?

[SilverOrchid]

I never heard of this guy, was he really the worst?

Believe it.

He was.

Worst then Saddam? That is the only mass murderer that I knew of.

are you serious?

Well, in my lifetime anyway.