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Indonesia's Killing Fields
The exact events surrounding the overthrow of President Sukarno remain
shrouded in mystery. The official account has Suharto stepping in to save
the nation from a coup planned by leftist officers backed by the PKI.
Others have suggested that those events may have been orchestrated by
Suharto to generate support for his seizure of power. There is less
ambiguity, however, about what followed: the brutal elimination in the
space of few months of masses of suspected communists and ethnic Chinese.
The carnage left Suharto firmly entrenched in power, his strongest
opponents physically eliminated and the broader population cowed into
submission. For 31 years, challenges to the strongman have been few and
isolated, as the country -- Suharto's immediate family more than most --
enjoyed the fruits of rapid economic growth under his firm tutelage. But
with the economic bubble burst and the country once again teetering in
turmoil, Suharto's wheel may have come full circle. The passing of the Cold
War renders unlikely a repeat of the massacres of three decades ago, but
one outcome of the present turmoil may be that Indonesia finally gets to
reexamine the most brutal chapter of its modern history.
Photo Essay: Indonesia Burns
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