Background briefing
Pat Walsh1
, November 2023
This briefing offers an international human rights perspective on Prabowo Subianto, a
leading candidate in Indonesia’s 2024 presidential campaign.
The briefing draws particularly on evidence in East Timor’s CAVR truth commission
report, Chega! regarding Prabowo Subianto’s practice of unconventional warfare
during Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor. Based on this evidence, the briefing
asks Indonesian voters to consider whether Prabowo Subianto is fit and proper to lead
their important country at this point in its history.
East Timor was a Portuguese, not a Dutch, colony. Under President Suharto, the
Indonesian military invaded, occupied and waged war against this Portuguese
territory 1975-1999. This intervention was forced, violent, and a violation of
international law and UN resolutions, including the right of the Timorese people to
freely decide their status.
Prabowo served in East Timor at least four times during the occupation. As an officer,
and later commander, in Indonesia’s elite and secretive special forces (Kopassus), his
role was unconventional and made use of his close family connection to Suharto to
operate independently of the regular military. He was once removed from East Timor
for not following orders.
Prabowo was active in East Timor in 1976 soon after the invasion; he commanded the
unit that killed East Timor’s legendary leader, Nicolau Lobato, in 1978; in 1983, he
bypassed a superior officer and undermined a peace process and is accused of
massacres in Kraras the same year; in 1986-7 he developed an anti-Resistance
strategy that was used to foster covert proxy war by pitting locals against locals; he
was associated with stealing Timorese children; he groomed a number of East
Timor’s most violent offenders such as Eurico Guterres; and in the 1990s used
Kopassus to train and direct militias and create ‘ninja’ gangs to terrorise Timorese.
These violations not only failed to deliver East Timor to Indonesia but were counterproductive.
The proxy warfare concept and shadowy role of Kopassus allowed Prabowo to
plausibly deny responsibility for deaths and violations. It enabled him to attribute
these crimes to local in-fighting, or what he called ‘civil conflict’. By accepting
Indonesia’s illegal annexation of East Timor as Indonesia’s 27th province, he could
also claim that he was repressing an ‘insurgency’.
1 The author was an adviser to CAVR (Comissão de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliação), East
Timor’s internationally funded truth commission 2001-2005 and its successor body. He is currently
adviser emeritus to Centro Nacional Chega! (CNC) whose mandate is to facilitate implementation of
CAVR recommendations. He was a pioneer of Indonesian in the Victorian school system, co-founder
of Inside Indonesia magazine and facilitator of extensive NGO and people-to-people relations with
Indonesia. He was awarded an Ordem de Timor-Leste in 2009 and an AM by Australia in 2012.
2
CAVR and several other inquiries, including one by Indonesia’s Human Rights
Commission, found that violations committed by the Indonesian military were crimes
against humanity, war crimes and violations of Indonesian law for which perpetrators
should be held responsible. Kopassus was the worst offender.
Prabowo denies responsibility and has not been tried for these crimes. But as an active
participant, planner and officer with command responsibility, he clearly shares
responsibility in international law for such excesses. They are the reason he was
banned from the US by three presidents, though he has been permitted access since
his appointment as Minister for Defence. Until cleared by an independent tribunal, his
suitability to serve as president of Indonesia must remain in serious doubt.
This paper also references allegations of human rights abuses by Prabowo that were
committed in Jakarta during the tumultuous transition away from the Suharto era in
the late 1990s.
Does post-Joko Widodo Indonesia need to recycle a damaged product of the Suharto
era? In view of his deeply compromised narrative, what is the point of Prabowo and
what principles would underpin a Prabowo presidency? Will not his past dog his
international performance and damage Indonesia’s good name? Is it fair for East
Timorese victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity to have to accommodate
their tormenter as leader of the important neighbour their country needs to work with?
What would his presidency mean for West Papuans?
3
Annex 1
PRABOWO: PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL PROFILE
Prabowo Subianto is a 72 year old, wealthy, former Indonesian military commander
in East Timor, son-in-law of Indonesia’s President Suharto, and a leading candidate in
Indonesia’s 2024 presidential elections.
Born in 1951, he belongs to one of Indonesia’s most powerful families. He is the son
of Sumitro Djojohadikusumo (1917-2001), a noted Indonesian economist. His
mother, Dora Maria Sigar, was a Protestant Christian from Sulawesi (Celebes).
Prabowo married Titiek Suharto, Suharto’s second daughter, in 1983. They divorced
in 1998 during the Indonesian political crisis following Suharto’s resignation. Their
son, Didit Hediprasetyo, is a Paris-based women’s fashion designer and socialite.
Prabowo’s younger brother, Hashim Djojohadikusumo, is one of Indonesia’s
wealthiest entrepreneurs, a philanthropist and Christian. European educated, he has a
wide diversity of interests in forestry, plantations, coal mines, oil and gas from Aceh
to Papua and international interests in Russia and Canada. Hashim is a member of
Prabowo’s Gerindra (Great Indonesia Movement) party, backs Prabowo’s presidential
campaign publically and financially, and argues that his brother is the best qualified
and experienced of the three candidates.
Prabowo has extensive experience in the West and is said to be ‘solidly secular’. He
was educated in London, married in the Netherlands, has had military training in
Germany and the US, and has interests in Jordan.
Wealth
Prabowo is wealthy in his own right. His Nusantara Group has extensive holdings,
particularly in Kalimantan, and is reported to control 27 companies in Indonesia and
abroad. His business interests include palm oil, forestry, fishing, paper, and energy
(coal, gas, oil). He heads a number of national associations, including Indonesia’s
martial arts organisation. Prabowo has a well-guarded 24 hectare ranch near Bogor
that includes a mansion, swimming pool, helipad, library, stable of at least 18
thoroughbred polo horses, vet, exercise track and staff. To launch his 2014 election
bid, he rode a white stallion (estimated worth $300,000) into the stadium.
Military career
Prabowo Subianto has spent most of his professional life in the military viz. 1974-
1998, and in business. He has never served in the legislature or in government. For
most of his time in the military, Prabowo was a member of Kopassus, including as its
commander for three years (1995-1998).
Also known as the Red Berets and Ghost of the Jungle (Hantu Rimba), Kopassus is
the Indonesian military’s secretive ‘special operations’ force. It specialises in
unconventional warfare, counter-insurgency, intelligence gathering and anti-terrorism.
Its basic concept is to use locals against locals in order to gather intelligence, infiltrate
and foster covert, proxy warfare. The strategy gives officials the option of plausible
denial of responsibility for deaths and violations and the additional option of
attributing these to local in-fighting and grievances that Kopassus can even claim to
4
be trying to settle. In plain English, locals are recruited and bribed to do Kopassus’s
dirty work and, if necessary, to take the blame.
The strategy owes a lot to the West. The British employed a version in Malaya and
the French in Indochina in the 1940s. The US, which had used it, inter alia, in its
support of the Contras in Nicaragua, trained the Indonesian military in its use against
communism in the 1960s. As a creation of the Cold War, it depicted communism as a
threat to civilisation so evil that the full spectrum of responses was justified, including
the dark arts of unconventional warfare..
Following tours in East Timor, Prabowo is believed to have used a military study
course in Bandung 1986-1987 to develop a version of the model for use in East Timor
where communism was also used to justify illegal acts.2
Prabowo is known to be quick-tempered and independent-minded. His military
graduation in 1974, for example, was delayed for a year due to disciplinary offences.3
Later, he was removed from East Timor by General Benny Moerdani for failing to
follow orders 4 and in 1999 was dismissed from the military.
In 1996 in West Papua, Prabowo led a Kopassus operation to free a group of WWF
(World Wildlife Fund) researchers who had been taken hostage by the West Papuan
resistance in a bid for independence. Following the release of most of the captives,
Prabowo is alleged to have led his troops in reprisal raids against villages believed to
have supported the guerrillas. Allegations that he used a helicopter with International
Red Cross (ICRC) markings have been denied by the ICRC.
In 1998, Prabowo was appointed chief of Kostrad (Strategic Reserve Command) at
the behest of Suharto, his father-in-law. Shortly after his appointment, and in defiance
of Wiranto, the head of the army, Prabowo had hundreds of Kopassus brought to
Jakarta from East Timor to quell demonstrators who were demanding the resignation
of his father-in-law. Prabowo called them ‘traitors to the nation’.
Prior to that Prabowo organised the kidnapping of 23 student protesters. Some were
released but 13, including the well-known poet Wiji Thukul, are still missing. During
the same period Prabowo demanded to replace Wiranto as head of the army but was
demoted by President Habibie instead. A military council found Prabowo guilty of
2 Based on its examination of violations committed in East Timor in 1999, the joint Indonesia/TimorLeste Commission for Truth and Friendship concluded that there was a ‘structural interconnection
between the TNI (Indonesian military) and militia’ that went back to ‘long before 1999’ and that the
‘evidence showed unequivocally that these groups (militia and other paramilitary) regularly employed
violence to achieve their goals that resulted in gross human rights violations’. Per Memoriam Ad Spem,
Final Report of the Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF) Indonesia-Timor-Leste. 2008, p. xvi.
The CAVR Chega! report arrived at similar conclusions. See Chega! Vol. IV Responsibility and
Accountability, #444-493 (pp. 2367-2378). 3
Dr Ingo Wandelt, Prabowo, Kopassus and East Timor, On the Hidden History of Modern
Indonesian Unconventional Warfare. regiospectra, 2007, p. 123. Dr Wandelt is a German Malaysia and
Indonesia specialist and author of several Indonesian language dictionaries.
4 ‘I sent Prabowo to East Timor to set up long-range patrols,’ Moerdani told Adam Schwarz. ‘He
became obsessed with catching Xanana. He had gone out of control. I heard reports that Prabowo was
beating patrol leaders when they came back empty-handed. I had no choice but to bring him back to
Java.’ Quoted Wandelt, op.cit. p. 132
5
kidnapping the anti-Suharto activists; he was dismissed from the military and went
into voluntary exile in Jordan.
These violations and alleged crimes in East Timor led three US presidents from both
sides of politics (Clinton, Bush and Obama) to ban Prabowo from visiting the US.
However, after President Joko Widodo appointed him Indonesia’s defence minister in
2019, the Trump administration lifted the ban, a decision denounced by some in
Congress and numerous Indonesian and US human rights organisations.
Electoral record
Prabowo is the chair of Gerindra (Great Indonesia Movement Party), a right-wing
populist political party, which he set up in 2008 to serve as a vehicle for his political
ambitions. The party has branches in youth, women, Muslim, Christian, HinduBuddhist, and Chinese sectors.
Prabowo has run for high office in all four of Indonesia’s direct presidential elections.
He failed to secure a party nomination in 2004 and lost as the vice-presidential
nominee in 2009. He has since lost presidential bids twice. His first attempt, in 2014,
was challenged by Indonesian lawyers who called for him to stand trial over
allegations of human rights abuses. It failed. Many NGOs also called for him to step
down, possibly contributing to his loss. Prabowo, however, blamed the loss on
‘massive cheating that is structured and systematic’. Experts, world leaders and
Indonesia’s Constitutional Court all rejected that claim. He also blamed cheating for
his second loss in 2019; again his appeal was rejected by the Constitutional Court.
The claims sparked riots that left eight people dead and hundreds injured.
In addition to his Trump style rejections of election results, Prabowo has also made
outrageous claims such as that studies showed Indonesia would fall apart in 2030 and
that Indonesian terrorists were not Muslims but foreign controlled infiltrators. He has
also been accused of pandering to hard-line Islamists.
Prabowo is also prone to broad, messianic type commitments. According to his
Facebook page, he is promising that, if elected in 2024, he will free Indonesia from
poverty, hunger and malnutrition so that its children will grow up happy, strong and
smart.
Current legal challenges
In response to legal challenges, Indonesia’s Constitutional Court headed by President
Joko Widodo’s brother-in-law, handed down two critical judgements in October. The
first was that, though legally too young at 36, President Joko Widodo’s son, Gibran
Rakabuming Raka, could campaign as Prabowo’s vice-presidential running mate
because of his experience as governor of Solo. The decision was only made after
Gibran’s uncle, the chief justice, attended to vote. Professor Tim Lindsey, Indonesian
law expert at the University of Melbourne, thinks it ‘reeks of political manipulation
and interference’.5
The ruling is currently being challenged on grounds of conflict of
interest.
5 https://johnmenadue.com/a-twist-in-indonesias-presidential-election-does-notbode-well-for-the-countrys-fragile-democracy/
6
The Court also over-ruled a challenge that Prabowo was in breach of Article 169 of
the election law that disqualifies candidates who have betrayed the State, been corrupt
or committed other serious criminal acts. Petitioners argued this disqualified Prabowo
because he had been guilty of kidnapping students in 1997-1998. Their request that
the article be clarified to include human rights violations was rejected. The petition
did not mention Prabowo’s record in East Timor.
Both court decisions favour Prabowo whom President Joko Widodo supports over
Ganjar Pranowo, his own Democratic Party (PDI-P) candidate6
. Why Widodo favours
Prabowo is not clear. Some suggest it is because Prabowo has pledged to continue
Widodo’s signature project of re-locating the capital from Jakarta to Kalimantan.
Prominent Indonesians such as the popular musician Iwan Fals and writer Goenawan
Mohamad, who previously supported Widodo, are publicly condemning the president
for pushing his son to be Prabowo’s running mate.
Conclusion
The picture that emerges from this profile is of a man who has been definitively
shaped by his military and privileged background. The narrative also portrays a hardline, failed, disgraced, ambitious and deeply unconventional individual who is prone
to bending the rules and has been prepared to use military, high-level and far-right
connections to advance his interests and career at the cost of the lives and human
rights of others. Violence has been a feature of much of his professional life. He
continues to face allegations of grave human rights violations committed over many
years in East Timor and in Indonesia. The recent Constitutional Court cases strongly
suggest judicial favouritism and possible corruption on Prabowo’s behalf and do not
bode well for the rule of law if he is elected president. Overall, the picture that
emerges is anything but the image of someone who understands, respects and
complies with the rule of law that is so badly needed in Indonesia and internationally
at this time.
Annex II
PRABOWO SUBIANTO AND EAST TIMOR7
Indonesia invaded, occupied and waged war against East Timor, a former Portuguese
colony, 1975-1999, in violation of international law. Following military and popular
resistance, international advocacy, and the fall of Suharto, East Timor gained its
independence in 1999 through a UN-facilitated referendum.
6 Ganjar, 54, is from the Javanese heartland of Central Java. Though university educated, his
background is far humbler than Prabowo’s. His father was a police officer, his mother a small vendor.
He is described as populist-left. During his time as a PDI-P opposition member of the national
parliament and his two terms as governor of Central Java, the photogenic Ganjar, a user of social
media, has earned a reputation as an anti-corruption campaigner and a pro-people social reformer. 7 Chega! p. 2415 has a summary of Prabowo’s appointments.
7
East Timor’s internationally funded truth commission, CAVR8, concluded that
Indonesia committed crimes against humanity and war crimes during its 24 year
military occupation. Kopassus9
, said CAVR, was the military unit associated with
most human rights violations. A second truth commission that focussed on 1999 and
was conducted jointly with Indonesia (CTF)10 arrived at the same conclusion for the
final year of the occupation. No Indonesian military commanders, including
Prabowo, have been punished or sanctioned for these violations. As he was not in
East Timor in 1999, Prabowo was not indicted by the UN Serious Crimes Unit. Like
other Indonesian senior officers, he has been rewarded with appointments or
honours. His cv includes a long list of awards.
The years of Prabowo’s military service (1974-1998) coincide closely with the years
of Indonesia’s illegal war against East Timor (1975-1999). He served in East Timor at
least four times, most of it with the Kopassus Special Forces.
Prabowo is believed to have arrived in East Timor in March 1976, and to have been a
lieutenant during the height of the war and the devastating famine of 1977-1978.
CAVR reports that Prabowo led the Kopassus Nanggala Unit 28 that located and
fatally wounded Nicolau Lobato, then President of East Timor, on 31 December 1978.
(Chega! pp. 228, 2708n) Lobato is Timor-Leste’s revered hero whose statue stands at
the western entrance to the capital of Dili.
Along with a number of surrenders by Resistance leaders, the death of Lobato was a
triumph for the Indonesian military and Prabowo. It also occurred at a time of mass
surrender of civilians forced out of Resistance control by military-induced starvation.
Undertaken to separate ‘the fish from the water’ (i.e. to isolate the Timorese guerrilla
resistance from the people by forcing them out of the interior), this humanitarian
disaster accounts for most of Timor’s war-related deaths. (Chega! Forced
displacement and famine, pp. 1165-1363). CAVR does not directly associate Prabowo
with the famine, but he was active in the war zone at the time and the strategy has all
the hallmarks of the unconventional warfare in which he and Kopassus specialised.
In 1983, the Timorese governor Mario Carrascalão joined with Indonesia’s military
commander, Colonel Purwanto, to negotiate a ceasefire and talks with the Resistance
leader Xanana Gusmäo. CAVR believes that Prabowo undermined the ceasefire.
Chega! attests that Prabowo, then deputy-commander of a Special Forces unit, was in
the general area at the time and that, following the breakdown of the ceasefire,
Kopassus troops under his command committed massacres in the Kraras area.
(Chega! passim, including pp.250-255, 1288-1290, 1996-1998).
8 CAVR (Comissão de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliação), the Timor-Leste truth and
reconciliation commission, functioned 2001-2005. Its 5-volume report, entitled Chega! (no more!),
documents and attributes responsibility for human rights violations committed on all sides 1974-1999.
Visit TiSA CAVR report (Bishop’s University, Canada) for the full report in English (including index).
9 Kopassus has been known by different names but has had the same role throughout its history. 10 CTF (Commission for Truth and Friendship) was a joint Timor-Leste/Indonesia commission that
functioned 2005-2008. Its report entitled Per Memoriam Ad Spem (through memory towards hope)
focussed on institutional, not individual, responsibility. See Bishop’s University TiSA archive.
8
Denial of responsibility
Prabowo denies responsibility for these killings. In a letter to the Jakarta Post, dated
28 December 2013, he wrote, ‘I was nowhere near the site’.11 Being somewhere else
and denying personally shooting those who had surrendered, however, does not
excuse an officer of responsibility. ‘Under international law it is not only the person
who directly carries out a crime that is responsible, but also that person’s superiors,
especially in the military or government’ (Chega! op.cit. p.119)
- This obligation was
ignored by Prabowo’s commanding officers. Late in 1983, he was promoted from
captain to major, a high rank for a 32 year old.
Proxy warfare
As reported by Dr Wandelt above, Prabowo spent 1986-7 taking courses at a military
institution in Bandung where he worked on the proxy militia concept explained
above. The concept was based on framing the Timor issue as an ‘internal conflict’.13
It shows Prabowo the problem-solver and ambitious careerist at work. He believed the
model would seal Indonesia’s victory in East Timor, enhance his status and absolve
the Indonesian military like him from blame. He implemented the plan on his return
to East Timor in 1989.
14
Chega! highlights the central role of the militia and paramilitary organisations during
the last two decades of the Indonesian occupation. These groups were responsible for
widespread abuse in violation of both international and Indonesian law.15 Prabowo
and Kopassus, records Chega!, engaged in a form of psywar to intimidate and
terrorise the Timor-Leste population, increased military training of civil servants and
university students, expanded the paramilitary teams, and established new militia
organisations.
One of these was a Timorese youth organisation called Gadapaksi16. Prabowo
personally funded its creation in 1995. Initially intended to showcase Indonesian
welfare for youth on the fringes of society, Gadapaksi ‘quickly developed a host of
11 This letter was a reply to the Amsterdam-based Indonesian journalist Aboeprijadi Santoso. In a
letter to Jakarta Post dated 20 December 2013 (in the run-up to Indonesian elections in 2014), Santoso
asked, ‘What ever happened in Kraras, Timor-Leste, ‘Pak’ Prabowo?’
12 See Professor Gerry van Klinken’s detailed account of the Kraras killings entitled Prabowo and
human rights in Inside Indonesia magazine #116, April-June 2014. The article is based on the CAVR
report which devoted 27 pages to these killings. At the time of writing, van Klinken was professor of
Southeast Asian history at the University of Amsterdam. The article is also available in Bahasa
Indonesia.
13 Prabowo’s letter to the Jakarta Post, op.cit. 14 ‘As soon as he arrived, signs of unconventional warfare began to appear in East Timor’s capital,
Dili: In July 1989 […] new covert operations were unleashed in Dili and the urban centres. During this
period hooded gangsters, referred to locally as buffo (clowns), terrorized Dili at night. [… They were, I.
W.] East Timorese collaborators given special training by the Special Forces for intelligence,
interrogation, and assassination work.’ Kammen, Douglas (2001) The Trouble with Normal: The
Indonesian Military, Paramilitaries, and the Final Solution in East Timor. In: Anderson, Benedict R.
O’G., ed., Violence and the State in Suharto’s Indonesia. Ithaca, New York, Cornell University, 160-
- Quoted Wandelt, op.cit. p. 137
15 See Chega! op.cit. pp. 121-123 16 Gadapaksi is short for Garda Muda Penegak Integrasi (Young Guards Upholding Integration).
Wandelt believes the organisation represented the institutional realisation of Prabowo’s 1986 study,
that it was a model organisation of East Timorese ‘contras’ for unconventional warfare. Op.cit. pp.
139-140.
9
illegal or semi-legal smuggling, gambling, and protection rackets’.17 It grew rapidly
and sent hundreds of its members to Indonesia for training by Kopassus. Dressed as
black-clad ‘ninjas’, members roamed the streets of Dili at night terrorising the local
community. The activity, notes Chega!, was similar to the state-sponsored Petrus
killings of some 5000 petty criminals – described by Suharto as ‘shock therapy’ – that
General Benny Moerdani initiated in Java in the early 80s. It also evokes Prabowo’s
abduction of student activists in Jakarta in 1998.
Stolen children
Chega! and other sources18 associate Prabowo with the transfer (also referred to as
‘stealing’) of Timorese children from their families and country. High-level civilian
and military officials, including Suharto, his wife Tien Suharto and their daughter,
Titiek, Prabowo’s wife, were also involved in the practice. Transfers of this nature are
a grave breach of international law. Occupying powers are prohibited from deporting
protected persons.19
One of the roughly 4000 stolen generation was Rozario Marcal, better known as
Hercules, the code name he was given by Kopassus. Hercules, a feared underworld
figure in Jakarta (preman in Indonesian), is unwaveringly loyal to Prabowo. Preindependence, Prabowo bribed Hercules to intimidate nationalist Timorese students
and during Prabowo’s presidential bids in 2014 and 2019, Hercules mobilised his
network of strongmen and vigilantes in support of his patron.
Indicted protégés
East Timor also found itself saddled with a number of other Timorese who could be
described as Prabowo clones. Four examples taken from Chega! follow.
One is Prabowo’s protégé Joanico Cesario Belo, also a Kopassus officer, who headed
up the Team Saka militia in Baucau. (Chega! p. 2657) In 1999, the Saka militia was
responsible for the deaths of 43 Timorese, the destruction of property and
displacement of hundreds of families. Belo was indicted by the UN Serious Crimes
Unit, but not his dalang (puppeteer) Prabowo.
Martinho Fernandes, the district head (bupati) of Viqueque was another. Fernandes, a
former associate of Prabowo and honorary member of Kopassus, strongly supported
the local militias. (Chega! p. 2803)
A third Prabowo clone was Abilio Osorio Soares, the governor of East Timor from
1992 till the end of the Indonesian occupation. Chega! reports that Prabowo was
instrumental in the appointment of Soares to the top job. In 1999, Soares fully backed
the formation of the Sakunar (Scorpion) militias and used his position to secure
funding for militias. (Chega! pp. 295, 2800) A large pro-Indonesia rally held outside
17 Kammen 2001: 168-169. Quoted by Wandelt, op.cit. p. 140. For more on the proxy-organisations
see Greenlees, Don and Robert Garran (2002) Deliverance. The Inside Story of East Timor’s Fight for
Freedom. Crows Nest, Allen&Unwin, 129-136. 18 See Asia Justice and Rights (AJAR) https://stolenchildren.asia-ajar.org/ Also Helene van Klinken
Making them Indonesian, Child Transfers out of East Timor, Monash University Asia Series, 2012. For
a discussion of motives (largely assimilationist), see van Klinken pp. 39-44. 19 See UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. International Criminal Court (2016). CAVR
recommendation on separated children, 11.2 (Chega! p. 2611)
10
Soares office in April 1999 preceded a violent rampage through the capital that
resulted in 13 killings. Soares was indicted by the UN Serious Crimes Unit and found
guilty by the Indonesian Ad Hoc Human Rights Tribunal. It is not known if Prabowo
spoke up for him.
A fourth protégé is Eurico Guterres, whom Prabowo recruited into Gadapaksi. The
most violent and notorious of the militia leaders, Guterres personifies Prabowo’s
impact on East Timor. In 1999, Guterres established his own militia called Aitarak
(thorn). Both prior to and following the UN-facilitated referendum of 30 August
1999, the fire-brand Guterres terrorised the Timorese community and was responsible
for several massacres. These included murders at the home of Manuel Carrascalão
and a massacre at the church in Liquica. As Wandelt notes, ‘He (Guterres) was the
ultimate ‘product’ of Prabowo’s UW (unconventional warfare)’.
20
Having failed in East Timor, Guterres exported his experience in unconventional
warfare to West Papua, where he set up a pro-Indonesia militia group to combat the
Papuan resistance. It also failed. In keeping with the proxy character of Prabowo’s
unconventional warfare model, Guterres, not Prabowo his creator, was found guilty
and sentenced to prison by an Indonesian court for crimes in East Timor.
Conclusion
Prabowo Subianto’s fingerprints are all over East Timor, from the beginning to the
end of the occupation, even – thanks to the Timorese militia he co-created – when he
wasn’t there. Using Kopassus’s specialist function and his family connection to
Suharto, Prabowo could operate independently of local Indonesian commanders. His
shadowy movements have also has made it difficult to attribute particular violations
or events directly to him.
Binding UN Security Council resolutions in 1975 called on Indonesia ‘to withdraw
without delay all its forces from the Territory’.21 Prabowo defied this ruling, and more
generally the rule of law, by fighting and commanding a range of military operations
in East Timor after that time.
Prabowo does not deny that he waged war against East Timor, nor that he agreed with
Indonesia’s illegal annexation in 1976 that the UN rejected. He denies, however, that
this makes him accountable for the crimes against humanity and war crimes
committed during his tours of combat in East Timor that have been documented by
two truth commissions22, several independent inquiries23 and academic studies.
20 Wandelt, op.cit. p. 141 21 UN Security Council Resolution 384 (1975) # 2 22 The two commissions are the Timor-Leste Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation
(CAVR) and the bi-lateral Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF). In 2008, Indonesia’s then
president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), endorsed CTF’s findings.
23 Two UN-authorised investigations, conducted in late 1999, and Indonesia’s Human Rights
Commission concluded that crimes against humanity were committed in 1999, that Indonesian
authorities bore prime responsibility, and that an international criminal tribunal should be established to
investigate and punish those responsible. This tribunal did not eventuate. Indonesia was given the
benefit of the doubt and allowed to conduct its own trials. All those charged were acquitted except for
the notorious Timorese militia leader, Eurico Guterres. The trials were widely condemned as a travesty
of justice.
11
There are four reasons behind this denial.
First, Prabowo maintains that the East Timor issue was an ‘internal conflict’ that
Timorese on one side asked Indonesia to help resolve.24
Second, after Indonesia declared East Timor its 27th province in July 197625, the
conflict could be construed as an insurgency against Indonesia that was Prabowo’s
responsibility as a counter-insurgency specialist to deal with.
Third, Prabowo maintains that Timorese leaders do not hold him responsible. ‘I have
been accepted’, he wrote in 2013, ‘and even photographed in meetings and friendly
conversation with former Timor-Leste president Xanana Gusmão (April 20, 2001),
Lere Anan Timur (November 21, 2008) and Mari Alkatiri (June 20, 2013)….Would
Xanana and other Timorese freedom fighters, our nation’s former enemies, have
befriended an Indonesian officer truly guilty of such despicable crimes against
civilians?’26
Fourth, in his Jakarta Post letter, Prabowo states that the UN has charged him with
human rights violations either. It is true that the UN Serious Crimes process that
functioned in East Timor before full independence in 2002 did not indict Prabowo.
However, its indictments only related to crimes committed between January and
October 1999 and, as mentioned previously, Prabowo was not in East Timor at that
time. As someone with command responsibility in East Timor during the war,
however, Prabowo cannot hide from the principal findings of the CAVR truth
commission on the State of Indonesia and the Indonesian security forces. The 19
paragraphs in question are a profoundly disturbing litany of injustice that demand
accountability. The illegal use of force – against a state, its civilians, culture, property,
women and children – is the feature common to the executions, massacres27,
24 Following Fretilin’s declaration of independence on 28 November 1975, the Timorese parties that
had fled to Indonesian Timor after a civil war petitioned Indonesia (under Indonesian pressure it is
claimed) to support them with personnel and weapons to defeat Fretilin which was depicted as
communist. The latter label was only partly true but, given the Cold War milieu of the time and
Suharto’s positive reputation in the West for his liquidation of communism, the claim affected the
judgement of many, including Suharto, and sealed East Timor’s fate. Though East Timor never
attacked Indonesia proper, Fretilin-led East Timor could easily be depicted as a threat to Indonesia. It
was only when resistance continued in East Timor after the end of the Cold War that the falsity of this
propaganda became clear. Though covert to begin with, Indonesia’s military intervention on 7
December 1975 was overt and a full-scale invasion by air, land and sea by regular troops. 25 Suharto’s attempt to legitimise Indonesia’s integration of East Timor followed a petition from an
Indonesian convened Popular Assembly of some 30 selected East Timorese held in Dili in May 1976.
Most countries declined to send observers to the event and the UN rejected it in Resolution 31/53 (1
December 1976) and called for a genuine act of self-determination. That Assembly closely resembled
the engineered ‘Act of Free Choice’ that Indonesia had held in West Papua only seven years before.
This time, however, most countries would have nothing to do with its Timor iteration.
26 As already mentioned (fn 8) Prabowo’s letter was in response to a letter in the Jakarta Post by the
Indonesian journalist Aboeprijadi Santoso. In a second letter, not published by the Post, Santoso points
out that, as politicians and diplomats, Timorese leaders have had to deal with Prabowo differently to
when he was their sworn enemy. 27 See list of at least 101 massacre sites, Chega! pp. 3104-3105.
12
bombings28, torture, imprisonment, starvation, sham trials, sexual abuse and other
forms of violence that were perpetrated at various points throughout the war.
There is no denying that Prabowo enjoys a teflon quality and Trump-like self-belief.
These attributes have allowed him to deny all allegations arising from his
responsibility as a soldier and commander in East Timor. He is running for the
presidency of Indonesia in the hope that amnesia, the passing of time, an ignorant
electorate (that ironically includes millions of tech-addicted millennials prepared to
live in an alternative universe), are on his side. Prabowo will also find comfort in the
knowledge that a compliant international community is prepared to favour
pragmatism over principle and excuse him from the much trumpeted rule of law.
But as a US Ambassador to Indonesia observed during one of Prabowo’s previous
failed election campaigns, the final arbiter of the claims and counter-claims
surrounding him has to be an independent, properly constituted inquiry or judicial
court, not the court of public opinion. The onus, said the Ambassador, is on Prabowo
to allow the claims and evidence to be tested. The Jakarta Post recently carried a
piece calling on Prabowo to apologise for his human rights ‘mistakes’.29
Until he is cleared of allegations of wrong-doing, Prabowo is not fit and proper to
serve as the president of this great nation. Surely a country of 280 million has other
options.
If Prabowo is elected a dark cloud will settle over Indonesia. Indonesia will be
perceived as regressive, prepared to forget rather than remember and learn, and to
tolerate impunity when, in fact, it could be a beacon of democracy and champion of
the rule of law in a much troubled region and world.
28 Late in 1978, Indonesian bombing of Mt Matebian nearly wiped out the remaining Resistance.
Chega! suggests this bombing included napalm. (p. 227) Research by the Swiss historian, Dr Regula
Bochsler, demonstrates that this napalm was a Swiss product. (See Nylon and Napalm. 2022) 29 Kornelius Purba, Jakarta Post, 6 July 2023.
Australia West Papua Association Adelaide 