Obituaries

The ruthless dictator who ruled Indonesia for 32 years

Suharto

1921-2008

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Suharto, the leader of Indonesia for 32 years, liked to say, “I am only a simple soldier, I hope a good one.” But his tenure as head of the world’s fourth most populous nation, though marked by rapid economic growth, was distinguished mainly by brutal repression and flagrant corruption. Out of power for a decade, he died this week of multiple organ failure.

Suharto—who, like many Indonesians, used only one name—was born in Dutch-ruled Java to a family so poor that it could not afford to buy him a school uniform, said the London Independent. During World War II, “he joined the Dutch colonial army and thereafter won promotion in the puppet military forces controlled by the occupying Japanese.” After the war, he rose steadily through the army’s ranks, becoming a general under the newly independent Indonesia’s first president, Sukarno. In 1965, “after a group of Communist-backed army officers attempted a pre-emptive coup” against Sukarno, Suharto took advantage of the turmoil and, through guile and ruthlessness, maneuvered into the presidency in 1967.

As many as 500,000 people were killed in the “mass bloodletting” that brought Suharto to power, said The New York Times. In the ensuing years, he added to the body count, brutally annexing the territories of Papua and East Timor and crushing the independence movement in the province of Aceh. It’s estimated that a million people were killed during his rule. But as “a bulwark against communism in Asia,” Suharto became a valued ally of the United States, which furnished him with more than $4 billion a year in aid. And with U.S. help, he undertook a crash program to bring his bankrupt country into the 20th century. By exploiting Indonesia’s rich natural resources, especially oil, and channeling the revenue into public works, Suharto boosted the economy, drastically lowered the poverty rate, and increased life expectancy and literacy. Although “many Indonesians benefited from his programs,” the main beneficiaries were Suharto, his wife, and his six children. Last year, the United Nations and the World Bank estimated that he stole between $15 billion and $35 billion.

Suharto kept up a pretense of democracy with rigged elections every five years, said The Washington Post. “What ultimately brought him down was the weakness of the political system he created and his own hubris.” First, the 1997 financial panic that swept through Asia brought a groundswell of popular discontent. Then, in May 1998, as the value of the Indonesian currency, the rupiah, plummeted, protesters took to the streets, sparking riots that claimed more than 1,000 lives. Suddenly, the man who had been dubbed “Father of Development” and “the Smiling General” was a pariah. Graffiti read, “Suharto must be thrown out like a dog.” When his own Cabinet abandoned him, and his chief of staff declared he could no longer guarantee his security, Suharto said, “Well, that’s it, then,” and resigned the next day.

Suharto, who lived out his days isolated in Jakarta, was never called to account for his crimes. Following his death, Indonesia’s president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, called for a week of mourning to “pay the highest respect to one of the best sons of the nation.”

The Mormon leader who oversaw his church’s rapid growth

Gordon Hinckley

1910-2008

As the smiling, indefatigable leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Gordon Hinckley was the public face of Mormonism in the U.S. and abroad. He devoted his life to expanding the once-mysterious religion and bringing it into the American mainstream. Under his leadership, membership swelled by 37 percent to more than 12 million—making the LDS Church, by some estimates, the fourth largest in the country.

Hinckley’s Mormon roots ran deep, said the Los Angeles Times. Born in Salt Lake City to a father who taught at the Mormons’ business college, he had a grandfather who had personally known Joseph Smith, Mormonism’s founder. Hinckley graduated from the University of Utah and planned to attend Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Instead, “he was called by the church to serve a two-year mission in England,” where he “spent his time preaching from a portable stage in London’s Hyde Park.” Upon his return, Hinckley worked at the church’s headquarters in Salt Lake City. He held many church positions in the ensuing decades; “in 1961, he was appointed to the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, a group that answers only to the president and his two counselors, known collectively as the First Presidency.” In 1995, Hinckley was ordained as the church’s 15th president.

Though 84 at the time, Hinckley emerged as an “energetic, globe-trotting leader,” said the Salt Lake City Deseret Morning News. As the LDS president, he “traveled nearly a million miles and spoke to hundreds of thousands of members in at least 160 nations.” He authorized the construction of some 400 buildings a year worldwide, including 75 temples on six continents. He also employed “his mastery of electronic media to bring unprecedented press attention to the church,” especially to help allay the fears of those who thought Mormonism a strange cult. “We are not weird people,” he told Mike Wallace in a 1995 60 Minutes interview.

“No one took a stronger lead in the church’s political efforts,” said The Salt Lake Tribune. In 1998, Hinckley’s “Proclamation on the Family” made clear the church’s support of family and chastity. “In 2000, the LDS Church defended the Boy Scouts’ right to exclude gays from leadership positions, and the church gave time and well over $1 million to thwart same-sex marriage initiatives.” Hinckley also made common cause with other Christian denominations that shared these beliefs. “What’s a church for if it isn’t to fight for values,” he asked. “To take a stand and face up to these moral issues?”

Hinckley received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 2004. Married to Marjorie Pay for 67 years before her death in 2004, he is survived by five children, 25 grandchildren, and 38 great-grandchildren.