[Kabar-indonesia] Letter to U.S. Ambassador Hume on His Condolences on Death of Suharto

[John M Miller]

East Timor and Indonesia Action Network
West Papua Action Team
c/ o PO Box 21873, Brooklyn NY 11202


January 29, 2008

Ambassador Cameron R. Hume
U.S. Embassy
Jakarta, Indonesia
Via e-mail

Dear Ambassador Hume,

As U.S. organizations that care deeply about human rights, as well as 
the image of the
United States in Indonesia and within the international community, we 
find your statement regarding the death of the dictator General 
Suharto appalling. We are deeply dismayed that your condolence 
statement on behalf of the U.S. government fails to even acknowledge 
the extraordinary crimes of this brutal and corrupt dictator. You 
must be aware that these crimes include the extra-judicial killing of 
hundreds of thousands of his own citizens, the murder of more than 
100,000 civilians in East Timor, the imprisonment of hundreds of 
thousands of political prisoners, and the theft of billions of 
dollars from his country's coffers.

His legacy is a country that suffers under an unaccountable military 
that continues to commit egregious human rights violations and a 
judicial system incapable of affording justice to victims of the 
ruling military and corporate elite to which his regime gave birth. 
His legacy is a political system shorn of its best and brightest, 
literally, by the sword.

Finally, no U.S. statement could credibly have addressed these 
failings without acknowledging that it was the U.S. which made 
Suharto's brutal reign possible. U.S. intelligence agents provided 
lists of those who were killed in 1965. U.S. air-to-ground attack 
aircraft and other weaponry facilitated the invasion and subjugation 
of East Timor. U.S. weapons and training transformed the Indonesian 
military under Suharto into the widely-feared machine which 
kidnapped, tortured and killed. U.S. diplomatic action prevented 
effective UN action to address the Indonesian invasion of East Timor 
as an act of aggression. Suharto's military remains unrepentant and 
unaccountable. It is his military which continues to repress civilian 
populations in West Papua and elsewhere. And it is his military which 
the current U.S. administration plans to continue to train and arm.

Your failure to acknowledge the enormous harm done to the people of Indonesia
and East Timor by this dictator, and your unwillingness to admit the 
central role the U.S. played in empowering and encouraging this 
tragedy, is a travesty of history. It is a shameful view of Suharto 
from which we feel compelled to disassociate ourselves.

Sincerely,


John M. Miller, National Coordinator, ETAN
Ed McWilliams, West Papua Advocacy Team

Cc: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill
Members of Congress

[The original statement by Amb. Hume can be found at 
http://jakarta.usembassy.gov/press_rel/January08/Condolences.html ]