Suharto, Hadji Mohamad

Suharto, Hadji Mohamad (b. 8 June 1921). President of Indonesia 1968–98 Born on the island of Java, he trained as a bank clerk and joined the Dutch colonial army in 1940. After the Japanese invasion he became a policeman, and in 1945 joined the republican forces in central Java to fight the Dutch. After independence, he rose within the ranks of the Indonesian army to become commander of the forces which occupied West Irian in 1962. In 1965, he was responsible for defeating the Communist coup. In its aftermath, he purged the government and administration of Communists and other possible opponents to the state, and dismantled Sukarno's power. In 1967 he became Acting President himself, and in 1968 formally succeeded Sukarno. He headed a nepotist and corrupt regime, which remained ruthlessly anti-Communist. This earned him assistance from the USA, despite the brutality of the government, not only in occupied areas like East Timor but in Indonesia itself, where, according to Amnesty International, hundreds of thousands of opponents of the regime had been killed. Despite a modest relaxation of repression during the 1990s, he failed to create a popular base, relying on military support instead. Ultimately, Suharto lost the support of the military, and was forced to resign. Suharto continued to have powerful supporters in the political and administrative elites, however, so that investigations into his corrupt regime proved slow to yield results.