Politics

Beat Them and They'll Still Join You

By Diane Farsetta

As he campaigns to become Indonesia's next president, Prabowo Subianto is often asked about his past. Prabowo was a commander in Indonesia's notorious military special forces unit, Kopassus, under the dictator Suharto. But he's found "a novel way of deflecting concerns" about his role in serious human rights abuses: "he has hired some of the activists abducted and beaten by his troops as campaign workers and legislative candidates." Pius Lustrilanang, now a legislative candidate with Prabowo's Gerindra party, was kidnapped by Kopassus forces in 1998. "They interrogated me, tortured me and I was beaten," he recalled. "They held me for about two months." Lustrilanang admitted that "the wealth behind the Prabowo campaign was a factor in [his] joining the party." Prabowo has also been "accused of orchestrating multiple abuses during Indonesia's occupation of East Timor and playing a role in the looting of Chinese businesses and the mass rape of Indonesian-Chinese women in Jakarta" in 1998. Yet, with his party's "slickly produced TV ads," Prabowo is considered "a dark horse" in Indonesia's July 2009 presidential elections.

Full post as published by PR Watch on February 26, 2009 (boomark / email).