Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto has been accused of whitewashing the country’s history through a concerted effort to glorify the late dictator Suharto.
This week, Prabowo honoured Suharto as a “national hero”, citing the ex-leader’s contribution to Indonesia’s independence struggle, while overlooking allegations of corruption, nepotism and human rights abuses during his three-decade rule, which ended in disgrace.
Naming Suharto a hero was a “blatant whitewashing of history and historic crimes under Suharto’s authoritarian leadership,” said Amnesty International’s executive director Usman Hamid, describing it as a “systematic effort”.