For decades, he was feared as a U.S.-backed dictator whose regime oversaw a bloody Cold War massacre and accused of misappropriating vast sums of state funds to boost his family’s rise to luxury and political power.
On Monday, he was posthumously named Indonesia’s national hero, an award that historians say sparked an outcry from human rights groups and victims who accused it of whitewashing a repressive regime that has left hundreds of thousands of people dead.
Former President Suharto was awarded the title at a ceremony by Indonesia’s current leader Prabowo Subianto. He is Suharto’s former son-in-law, and a divisive figure himself as a former general who faced allegations of human rights abuses during his time in military uniform.
“General Suharto, a prominent figure in Central Java and a hero of the independence struggle, has been outstanding since the independence era,” the announcer said at the award ceremony, according to Reuters.
But Suharto’s legacy is far from simple, with that characterization hotly debated, as the heated debate shows.
Born in 1921, when Indonesia was still a Dutch colony, Suharto assumed power after Indonesia gained independence in 1949 and rose through the military ranks to become a five-star general.
Then came bloodshed in 1965, caused by a failed coup d’état and the killing of a number of generals in the army.
President Suharto blamed the communists for the coup, expelled then-President Sukarno, the country’s first leader after independence, and authorized the investigation of those responsible.
What followed was a nationwide purge of suspected communists under the supervision of Suharto’s powerful military, with human rights groups and historians estimating that between 500,000 and 1 million people were killed.
According to official documents declassified in 2017, the US supported the massacre of anti-communists and provided lists of senior Communist Party officials, equipment and funds to the Indonesian military.
In a document from late 1965, the U.S. embassy in Jakarta sent a cable to Washington calling the crackdown “an amazing transformation in just 10 weeks” and estimating that 100,000 people were massacred, according to the Associated Press.
Many argue that the targets of the purge were not communists but overseas Chinese or those with left-wing views.
In 2016, the International Tribunal in The Hague found that the United States, Britain and Australia were all complicit in the 1965 genocide, which was considered a crime against humanity.
Suharto remained in power for 31 years, during which time he cracked down on critics and political opponents and enforced his rule over territories including East Timor, Aceh, West Papua and the Maluku Islands.
Some of these territories were invaded with the tacit support of Western allies seeking to install anti-communist leaders at a time when proxy conflicts sponsored by the United States and the Soviet Union were raging across the Global South.
He has been praised by some for policies that have fostered rapid economic growth and relative political stability. But at the same time, he siphoned vast sums of money from the national treasury, providing for his family’s lavish lifestyle and inciting public anger.
Suharto’s rule finally came to an end in 1998, after the Asian financial crisis plunged the country into economic turmoil, sparking widespread protests and forcing Suharto to resign. It was one of the last people power movements to sweep Southeast Asia and replace Cold War dictators with democracies.
The following year, Suharto’s children were indicted and the youngest was convicted of corruption. In 2015, the Supreme Court ordered Suharto’s family to repay millions of dollars in embezzled funds to the state.
However, Suharto himself did not give any answers to the victims. Due to health problems in his later years, he died in 2008 without being brought to trial. Until his death, he denied any wrongdoing, at one point calling the embezzlement allegations “slander and defamation.”
Many people have not forgotten that Suharto was given a posthumous honor by Prabowo, who was a long-time supporter of the Suharto regime and once belonged to a powerful family.
Mr. Prabowo married Mr. Suharto’s daughter in 1983, but they divorced after Mr. Suharto was ousted from power.
Prabowo was also a military commander under Suharto and served in controversial operations in West Papua and East Timor, raising questions about his human rights record. He is accused of kidnapping activists during the 1998 mass protests that led to the ouster of Suharto.
Prabowo has always denied the allegations that led to his dismissal from the military in 1998, the same year Indonesia was liberated from Suharto’s authoritarian rule.
Mr. Prabowo was elected president in 2024, and Mr. Suharto’s former party, Golkar, supported his candidate. In his victory speech, Prabowo paid tribute to Suharto and expressed gratitude to his ex-wife.
At the time, some human rights experts expressed concern that his presidency risked rolling back democratic gains since Suharto’s dictatorship.
Since then, Prabowo has expanded the military’s role into areas previously considered civilian, a move that has been heavily criticized by civil society groups who say it will return Indonesia to Suharto-era militarism and authoritarianism.
Beyond Prabowo’s involvement, there are still many Suharto supporters in Indonesia. His political successors have also spent the past decade trying to rehabilitate his image, portraying him instead as a strong leader who brought stability to the country.
In places like Kemsuk, the village near Yogyakarta where he was born, his image is everywhere, from museum memorabilia celebrating his life to souvenir T-shirts emblazoned with his smiling face.
Discussion of his rule remains taboo in Indonesia, and there are varying opinions about his legacy.
Ahead of Monday’s ceremony, activists gathered in Jakarta last week to protest the action, holding placards that read “human rights violators” and “Suharto is no hero.”
Human rights groups slammed the choice, with Amnesty International describing it as an attempt to rewrite history and pointing to Prabowo’s family ties to Suharto.
Andreas Harsono, Indonesia researcher at Human Rights Watch, also condemned the move.
“The failure to hold Mr. Sokharto and the generals responsible for his abuse to account only reinforces the fabrication and distortion of history that is currently taking place under Prabowo’s government,” he said in a statement.
“This will make it more difficult for Indonesian authorities to end impunity for serious human rights violations, now and in the future, and to seek justice for victims and their families.”
This title is particularly poignant for the many who survived violence and persecution under the Suharto regime, as well as the families of his victims.
Bejo Untun told The Associated Press that he was “shocked, disappointed and angry at the government’s absurd decision.” Untong was imprisoned without trial from 1970 to 1979 on suspicion of communist ties, during which time he was tortured and his family faced hardship and discrimination.
“It feels very unfair. We live with the suffering to this day,” he added.
Suharto’s defenders take a different view.
“We ourselves don’t have to defend it… nothing is hidden,” Suharto’s daughter Siti Hardijanti Rukmana told reporters after Monday’s ceremony.
“We expressed our gratitude to the president for naming my father a national hero, probably because he is also a military man and knows what my father did,” she added.
