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Genocidal General Declares Victory in Indonesian Election
Prabowo Subianto "is the most notorious massacre general in Indonesia, and he's also the general who was closest to the U.S. as he was carrying out his mass killings," said journalist Allan Nairn.
Feb 14, 2024
Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto—a former U.S.-trained general in an army unit implicated in genocidal violence—declared victory Wednesday after polls closed in the archipelago nation's presidential election, although no winner has officially been announced.
Unofficial results showed Prabowo, of the right-wing populist Gerindra party, with nearly 60% of the vote. His two rivals—former Jakarta Gov. Anies Baswedan of the Coalition of Change for Unity and Ganjar Pranowo of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P)—have not yet conceded defeat. In order to avert a runoff, Prabowo needs more than 50% of all votes and at least 20% in each of the nation's 38 provinces.
"We should not be arrogant. We should not be proud. We should not be euphoric. We still have to be humble," Prabowo told jubilant supporters in a packed Jakarta stadium Wednesday. "This victory must be a victory for all Indonesian people."
U.S. journalist Allan Nairn explained in a Tuesday interview with Democracy Now! how Prabowo ran a "two-pronged" campaign that involved "pressuring and coercing the poor with threats to their well-being" as well as a "PR campaign that portrays the general as a cuddly cartoon character."
Nairn added that "none of it would be possible" without the support of popular incumbent PDI-P President Joko Widodo, whose son Gibran Rakabuming Raka is Prabowo's running mate.
In addition to concerns about potential democratic backsliding, critics noted Prabowo's bloody past.
"Gen. Prabowo is the most notorious massacre general in Indonesia, and he's also the general who was closest to the U.S. as he was carrying out his mass killings, abductions of activists, and systematic tortures," said Nairn. "He was also the son-in-law of the former dictator of Indonesia, Gen. Suharto."
Prabowo, who trained at Fort Benning in Georgia, joined the elite Kopassus commando unit in 1976, shortly after then-U.S. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger greenlighted the genocidal Indonesian invasion of East Timor after the former Portuguese colony declared independence.
Over the following two decades, around 200,000 people—approximately a quarter of East Timor's population—were killed or died from starvation or disease.
"He is the general, most importantly, who led many of the massacres in East Timor after the Indonesian army invaded," Nairn said of Prabowo. "In one case, in the village of Kraras, Prabowo and his forces killed hundreds of fleeing civilians. He later was involved in other massacres and directing assassinations of political activists in Aceh and West Papua."
Nairn and Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman witnessed and survived a 1991 massacre of hundreds of East Timorese pro-independence demonstrators in Dili. Nairn was also briefly jailed by Indonesia's military in 1999 and subsequently deported.
Prabowo also allegedly orchestrated the worst atrocity of the period immediately preceding Suharto's 1998 fall from power. Kopassus troops under Prabowo's command led the mass rape and murder of at least 160 Chinese-Indonesian women and girls—many of whom were reportedly burned to death after being sexually assaulted—and the slaughter of hundreds of other Indonesians of Chinese origin.
The Clinton administration cut ties with Kopassus in 1999 and banned Prabowo from entering the United States the following year. However, in 2010 the Obama administration, citing the unit's improved human rights record under a democratic Indonesian government, resumed cooperation. This, despite reports that Kopassus was still committing atrocities against Christians in independence-minded West Papua.
In 2020, then-U.S. Defense Secretary Mike Esper invited Prabowo to the Pentagon as the Trump administration sought to bolster ties with Indonesia to counter the rise of China.
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'This Is How a Torturer Ended Up Running the CIA': Biden Reportedly Hopes to Avoid Probes Into Trump Crimes
Mirroring Obama's choice to "look forward" not back, one critic said this a "preview of an epic failure" by the President-elect
Nov 16, 2020
Taking cues from former Presidents Gerald Ford and Barack Obama--who pardoned or ignored their predecessors' crimes in the name of national unity and healing--President-elect Joe Biden has privately signaled to advisers that he is unlikely to pursue federal investigations of the Trump administration's policies and actions, NBC Newsreported Tuesday.
"One way to definitely get another Trump--or just Trump again--is to pretend like he didn't spend four years doing crimes."
--Jamelle Bouie, journalist
According to the report, the president-elect has expressed concerns that investigating President Donald Trump or holding members of his administration accountable for wrongdoing would further divide a nation already deeply riven by political tensions, and that focusing on Trump would distract Biden from his forward-looking agenda.
Biden is said to be especially wary of probing Trump's taxes or trying to undo any immunity the president may grant to his associates during his final weeks in office.
Put simply, one adviser said Biden "just wants to move on."
"He's going to be more oriented toward fixing the problems and moving forward than prosecuting them," another Biden confidant told NBC News.
Progressive critics, however, took the news report as a warning signal, not a sign of political wisdom on Biden's part.
\u201cJoe Biden is dead set on making the same mistake as Barack Obama - setting up return of either Trump or a smarter version of Trump in 2024 (and Speaker McCarthy in 2022) https://t.co/nSYTkbK9JW\u201d— Murshed @murshedz@mstdn.social (@Murshed @murshedz@mstdn.social) 1605622252
\u201cPreview of an epic failure with lasting impact for the country and party https://t.co/h24W2TVmK7\u201d— Matt Browner Hamlin (@Matt Browner Hamlin) 1605625002
"His overarching view is that we need to move the country forward," an aide said. "But the most important thing on this is that he will not interfere with his Justice Department and not politicize his Justice Department."
One adviser stressed that while Biden and his Justice Department will likely not go after Trump, their decision does not affect state-level investigations such as Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.'s probe of Trump's tax returns.
\u201cone way to definitely get another Trump \u2014 or just Trump again \u2014 is to pretend like he didn\u2019t spend four years doing crimes\u201d— b-boy bouiebaisse (@b-boy bouiebaisse) 1605626118
Biden's position, which was widely anticipated, drew comparisons with his former boss Obama, who while campaigning for president in 2007 and 2008 pledged to investigate the Bush administration officials responsible for CIA and U.S. military torture and to hold accountable the Wall Street bankers and other capitalists whose criminal actions helped cause and exacerbate the 2008 global economic crisis.
However, once in office Obama not only declined to prosecute any of the Bush war criminals, his administration actively protected and promoted them--one of whom, Gina Haspel, now directs the CIA. And while not one Wall Street criminal was sent to jail by the Obama administration for the kind of fraud that led to the economic collapse, many top financial executives ended up in the Obama White House to shape and guide economic policy.
"We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards," Obama said in regard to investigating and prosecuting CIA torturers shortly before taking office in January 2009. "At the CIA, you've got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe. I don't want them to suddenly feel like they've got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders and lawyering."
Biden's apparent rejection of federal accountability for Trump's actions also evoked memories of Ford's 1974 pardon of his former boss and close friend Richard Nixon in the name of ensuring "domestic tranquility" and avoiding "ugly passions [that] would again be aroused" in the wake of the "long national nightmare" of Watergate.
According to the Biden advisers interviewed by NBC News, the president-elect believes that investigating Trump would arouse plenty of ugly passions in a nation whose people are arguably more divided than they've been in half a century--or, according to some observers, since the Civil War.
Americans wanting to see Trump--only the third U.S. president to have ever been impeached--face justice must now pin their hopes on state prosecutors as Biden prioritizes being "a president who seeks not to divide, but unify" over holding his predecessor accountable.
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The Night the Candidates Were Speechless
The convergence of Tuesday night's broadcast interruption during the first game of the World Series - caused by an electronics failure and power outage -- and Wednesday night's Republican presidential debate brings to mind one of the most memorable TV snafus in history: the 27-minute loss of audio during the first presidential debate between incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford and Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter.
Oct 29, 2015
The convergence of Tuesday night's broadcast interruption during the first game of the World Series - caused by an electronics failure and power outage -- and Wednesday night's Republican presidential debate brings to mind one of the most memorable TV snafus in history: the 27-minute loss of audio during the first presidential debate between incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford and Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter.
I was in Philadelphia that night, September 23, 1976, working as the publicist for what was then called The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, now the PBS Newshour (in those days, I also worked as the publicist for Bill Moyers Journal).
Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer broadcast special debate coverage from the studio of Philadelphia's public television station WHYY ("Wider Horizons for You and Yours"). This space was the original home of Dick Clark and American Bandstand during the fifties and early sixties. I shuttled back and forth between the station and the Walnut Street Theatre where the actual debate was being held - a space in the basement had been reserved for the national press corps and I was busy handing out news releases touting the MacNeil/Lehrer coverage, which would feature the first instant poll of how the candidates had performed that night. Although now a thread-worn feature of all debate coverage, our survey was a newfangled notion back then.
This was the first presidential debate between the two major parties had been held since the famous Kennedy-Nixon confrontations of 1960. In the election years since, either one or both party candidates have refused to participate, or equal time rules for third-party and independent candidates have been a problem. But as the front page of the September 3, 1976, edition of The New York Times reported, the FCC had decided "to allow stations to carry debates without having to offer equal time to candidates who were excluded so long as the stations broadcast the debates in their entirety and took no part in organizing them."
This is where the League of Women Voters came in. The nonpartisan, non-profit, good government group became the official organizer of the '76 debates, and the networks were invited to cover them. That's how the equal time rules were circumvented, although there were legal challenges almost to the last minute.
The league's producer was a public television executive named Jim Karayn, and its TV director was Jack Sameth, who had also worked as a director and executive producer for Bill Moyers. Because I knew both of them, I had free rein to scoot in and out of the theater without interference from the Secret Service or other security. These were simpler times.
Interest was high that night, but the big event failed to deliver any drama until more than an hour into the debate, when the sound suddenly disappeared just minutes before the conclusion. Informed that the nation wasn't hearing what they had to say, the two men stopped and awkwardly stood behind their podiums, not uttering a word.
I had to return to the studio, and by the time I arrived, the audio was still out and would continue for nearly half an hour. MacNeil and Lehrer bravely soldiered on and vamped their way through the long minutes. A sign language interpreter signed everything they had to say, although because she was superimposed against the TV image of a mute Carter and Ford, it seemed more than a little odd.
Years later, Carter told Jim Lehrer, "I watched that tape afterward, and it was embarrassing that President Ford and I stood there almost like robots. We didn't move around; we didn't walk over and shake hands with each other. We just stood there." Ford added, "I suspect both of us would have liked to sit down and relax while the technicians were fixing the system, but I think both of us were hesitant to make any gesture that might look like we weren't physically or mentally able to handle a problem like this."
Ultimately, sound was restored, although many claimed those 27 minutes were the finest in presidential debates. Journalist Sander Vanocur later described the incident as "an unnatural act between two consenting candidates."
And the cause of the screw-up? The failure of a tiny electrolytic capacitor in the amplifier system costs about twenty-five cents to a dollar.
Two more Carter-Ford debates followed. In the second, President Ford prematurely liberated Poland from the Soviet Union, and in the third, Jimmy Carter discussed the lust in his heart he had revealed during a Playboy magazine interview.
But at that first big showdown nearly 40 years ago, silence made the headlines.
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