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JAKARTA: Former President Suharto, who ruled Indonesia with an iron
fist for more than three decades, died Sunday at age 86, his family
and police said at a Jakarta hospital.
“Father has returned to God,” Suharto’s
eldest daughter, Siti Hariyanti “Tutut” Rukmana, told reporters
breaking down in tears.
“We ask that if he had any faults, please
forgive them . . . may he be absolved of all his mistakes,” she
said.
His death came more than three weeks after he
was admitted to hospital with heart, lung and kidney problems,
although he had surprised his doctors by his resilience despite
being in a critical condition.
His team of doctors said earlier Sunday that
Suharto had suffered multiple organ failure overnight, and had been
resuscitated but remained unconscious.
“Our former President HM Suharto has passed
away around 13:10 [2:10 p.m. in Manila],” Dicky Sondani, the
sub-district police chief, told reporters at the hospital.
Suharto was a ruthless dictator whose success
presiding over huge economic progress was overshadowed by a legacy
of bloodshed, human rights abuses and corruption on a colossal
scale.
Suharto’s tenure was marked by repression,
from the killings of at least half a million communists and their
sympathizers after the abortive coup that saw him seize power in
1966, to invading East Timor and quelling separatist movements in
Aceh and Papua.
Although he steered this sprawling archipelago
nation through an economic boom, making it notably self-sufficient
in rice, billions of dollars ended up in the hands of friends and
relatives as cronyism and corruption ran riot.
He eventually stepped down in 1998 amid deadly
riots and mass pro-democracy protests that were sparked by the 1997
Asian economic crisis.
Opinion on his rule remains divided in
Indonesia.
After leaving office he dropped out of public
view and avoided criminal trial for massive corruption allegations
by citing poor health. Doctors have said two strokes left him with
some permanent brain damage.
Attempts to bring him to justice for alleged
human rights atrocities in East Timor, which he invaded in 1975, as
well as Aceh and Papua, have also been stymied by a lack of
evidence.
“We could not have expected a leader for
Indonesia worse than Suharto. But he was no Pol Pot,” said Asmara
Nababan, head of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in
Jakarta.
A doctor who treated Suharto, Munawar, said:
“We have worked our best . . . God has decided otherwise.”
“At around nine or 10, the condition of the
heart and blood pressure remained up and down and we, to be
truthful, were already beginning to give up, because the condition
of his brain, was already very serious . . .,” he told El Shinta
radio.
“At 11, we already told the family,” that
Suharto was dying, he said.
All of Suharto’s six children had gathered on
Sunday at his bedside, the former President’s close aide,
Moerdiono earlier said.
-- AFP
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