Indonesia: Reflections on 100 days of Prabowo's presidency

 The first hundred days of the presidency of Prabowo Subianto, the son-in-law of former Indonesian dictator Suharto, have been marked by authoritarian violence.

Since Prabowo's inauguration on October 20, Amnesty International has recorded at least 17 cases of extrajudicial killings by Indonesian police and military personnel. Meanwhile, the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (KontraS) has warned of 136 cases of torture in all its forms.

Some time ago, by chance, I met a former French diplomat with the initials HF. He served in East Timor during the country's transition to independence in the early 2000s, following 24 years of Indonesian military occupation (1975-1999). HF asked me, "How is it possible that in Indonesia, a former war criminal is not tried, but instead elected president?"

This is a very interesting critical question and unfortunately cannot be answered in just a few sentences. To save time, I simply responded with a new question: "What do you think will happen to a country if it is led by a war criminal?" And so our conversation fell into a meditative silence.

"In dubio, pro malo." When in doubt, assume the worst, said the German philosopher Hans Jonas. In the uncertain situation in Indonesia, being pessimistic and cautious seems wiser than being lulled into false optimism about a bright future, under the rule of a questionable leader.

For the record, Prabowo, a senior general during Soeharto's New Order, is suspected of kidnapping and repressing a number of Indonesian pro-democracy activists in the late 1990s. Prabowo's cruelty has been known since he served as a young officer at the beginning of the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. He also has a bad record during the 1996 Mapenduma operation in West Papua. The region occupied by Indonesia since 1963 is still fighting for its independence.