Indonesia: Suharto's body returns home for state funeral

The body of former Indonesian president Suharto, who led a military dictatorship for three decades and whose US-backed regime killed hundreds of thousands of left-wing opponents, arrived in his home town today for a state funeral.

A Hercules C-130 carrying Suharto’s body arrived in the city of Solo, 250 miles east of the capital Jakarta, accompanied by two planes used by his family and friends.

“May God bless his soul and forgive his mistakes and sins,” said Agung Laksono, the speaker of Indonesia’s house of representatives, who led a brief ceremony at Suharto’s Jakarta villa.

Suharto, 86, died of multiple-organ failure yesterday after more than three weeks on life support at a Jakarta hospital.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who has declared a week of national mourning, was overseeing the funeral at the Suharto family mausoleum near Solo.

Although he presided over some of the worst bloodshed of the 20th century, Suharto is credited with developing Indonesia’s economy and will be buried with the highest state honours.

A string of the country’s political elite visited Suharto’s family home yesterday to pay respects and pray over his body, in a sign of his lingering importance.

Many also attended the ceremony today, when his family turned Suharto’s flag-draped coffin to the military. Onlookers lined the streets near the Halim Perdanakusuma air force base as a motorcade carrying Suharto’s body drove by.

Suharto ruled with a totalitarian dominance that saw soldiers stationed in every village, instilling a deep fear of authority across the south-east Asian nation that stretches across more than 3,000 miles.

He was toppled by mass street protests in 1998 after more than three decades in power. His departure from office opened the way for democracy in the nation of 235 million people and he withdrew from public life, rarely venturing from his comfortable Jakarta villa.

Suharto loyalists, who run the courts, have called for forgiveness and for his name to be cleared, but survivors of the atrocities that took place under his rule want those responsible to be held accountable.

Since being forced from power, he had been in and out of hospitals after strokes caused brain damage and impaired his speech.

Suharto’s poor health – and continuing corruption, critics charge – also kept him out of court.

The bulk of the political killings occurred during his rise to power in 1965-1966 when between 300,000 and 800,000 alleged Communists were rounded up and murdered. Over the next three decades, 300,000 more were killed, disappeared or starved in the independence-minded regions of East Timor, Aceh and Papua, human rights groups and the United Nations say.

With the court system paralysed by corruption, the country has not confronted its bloody past.

Rather than put on trial those accused of mass murder and multi-billion theft, some members of the political elite consistently called for charges against Suharto to be dropped on humanitarian grounds.