http://timor-online.blogspot.com/2007/05/big-man-who-still-calls-shots.html
Big man who still calls the shots Photo: AP Hamish McDonald Asia-Pacific Editor June 1, 2007 THE Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso's affront at having policemen knock on his hotel door in Sydney reflects a lifetime spent mostly on the dark side of the Indonesian military - in effective legal impunity. Mr Sutiyoso, 62, retired from the Indonesian Army as a lieutenant-general after a career that included 23 years in the notorious special forces regiment, now known as Kopassus. This encompassed the numerous black operations mounted under the Soeharto presidency such as the covert invasion of Portuguese Timor in which the Balibo Five died, the fight against separatists in Aceh, or the summary execution of thousands of alleged gangsters in Jakarta. In late career, he won Soeharto's favour as Bogor district commander securing the first APEC summit. Then as Jakarta military commander in July 1996 he supervised the replacement of Megawati Soekarnoputri as head of the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) with a pro-regime stooge. Handily, Mr Sutiyoso had been running a program to "educate" former street hoodlums, known as preman, who were sent to storm pro-Megawati elements holding out in the PDI's headquarters. The ensuing riots were an excuse for a wider crackdown on opposition to Soeharto. Openness was a good thing, Mr Sutiyoso told a forum soon after, but it could "open the door to liberalism and anarchy". None of this held back his career, or his favourable reception by foreign military forces eager to improve ties with their Indonesian counterparts. Training with the British Army's airborne brigade at Aldershot was followed by a long stint at the Australian Army Command and Staff College in Melbourne and Canberra, and then a spell with the US Rangers at Fort Bragg. As an aggrieved Mr Sutiyoso told the Jakarta Post on his sudden return home this week, it was odd that Australia now chose to question him over the 1975 incident when in 1990 he studied as a colonel for a month in Melbourne and then six months in Canberra at the Joint Staff Services College and was not questioned once over the Balibo deaths. David Bourchier, a political scientist at the University of Western Australia who closely tracks Indonesia's armed forces, said Mr Sutiyoso's shock during his Sydney visit "underlines how much people can get away with in the Indonesian military". "This is a reality check for the Indonesian military, that impunity doesn't stretch across international boundaries in the way they probably think it ought to," Dr Bourchier said. Another expert on Indonesia's military, Clinton Fernandes, of the Australian Defence Forces Academy, said Kopassus was not exceptional in its lack of accountability. "As an institution, the TNI [Indonesian National Army], the military, is simply refusing to put itself under civilian control," Dr Fernandes said. "Kopassus is simply the most pure expression of the TNI." A joint Truth and Friendship Commission, set up in 2005 by Indonesia's President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and East Timor's former president, Xanana Gusmao, has recently heard senior Indonesian leaders and officials say the mayhem surrounding the independence vote in 1999 was everyone else's fault. The then Indonesian defence minister, Wiranto, a military academy classmate of Mr Sutiyoso who has been indicted by United Nations prosecutors and is barred from the United States, claimed "there was no policy to attack civilians, there were no systematic plans, no genocide or crimes against humanity". Mr Sutiyoso was installed as governor of Jakarta in the last months of Soeharto's rule. To the shock of her own party, Ms Megawati supported him for a second term in 2002. Now, despite the flooding this February that brought misery to Jakarta's 14 million people - caused in part by illegal clearing of mountain forests to let military and other well-connected individuals build villas - Mr Sutiyoso thinks he has a chance at the presidency in 2009. Like General Wiranto, who was humiliated in the 2004 presidential election, he may find that power doesn't equal support in a democracy. Publicada por Malai Azul em 20:23 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
