Prabowo is "somebody who is perhaps the greatest violator of human rights in contemporary times among the Indonesian military."

The list of likely candidates in the Indonesia's 2014 Presidential election includes Lt. General (ret) Prabowo Subianto, leader of the "Great Indonesian Movement Party" (Gerinda). His candidacy has generated concern over the future of democracy in Indonesia, because of the retired General's well-documented record of human rights violations and his admitted role in a coup attempt.

Prabowo, was forced out of the Indonesian army in August 1998 following revelations of his role in the kidnapping, torture and murder of peaceful democratic activists in 1997-98 and due to his apparent central role in sparking May 14, 1998 anti-Chinese riots in Jakarta and several other major urban areas.

Prabowo has confessed his role in the kidnappings, but told foreign journalists that his "conscience is clear." In 2000, Prabowo became the first person to be denied entry into the United States under the UN Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Robert Gelbard, former United States Ambassador to Indonesia, described Prabowo as "somebody who is perhaps the greatest violator of human rights in contemporary times among the Indonesian military. His deeds in the late 90s before democracy took hold, were shocking, even by TNI standards."

Prabowo's rapid rise to power was based on nepotism. He married the dictator Suharto's youngest daughter, Titiek Suharto. Prabowo's father, Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, was a cabinet minister under both President Sukarno and Suharto. Although, he financed an armed rebellion against President Sukarno in 1957-58. His son's career also benefited from close ties to the United States military, which trained him in the US and provided the forces he commanded special training and access to US military technology.

Prabowo's military record, early on, demonstrated a disregard for human rights. In 1976, Prabowo was a commander of Group 1 Komando Pasukan Sandhi Yudha and took part in the Indonesian army's Nanggala Operation in East Timor. He led the mission to track down Nicolau dos Reis Lobato, a founder and vice president of Fretilin, who became the first Prime Minister of East Timor after the declaration of independence in November 1975. Lobato – who had become East Timor's second President – was shot in the stomach and killed after Prabowo's company found him on 31 December 1977. The Indonesian military reportedly decapitated the body and sent Lobato's head to Jakarta.

Prabowo was appointed vice commander of Kopassus's Detachment 81 in 1983 before receiving commando training at Fort Benning, GA, in the US. As commander of Kopassus Group 3, Prabowo attempted to crush the East Timorese independence movement. To terrorize the population, he employed militias trained and directed by Kopassus commanders and hooded "ninja" gangs, who operated at night dressed in black. In East Timor, Prabowo "developed his reputation as the military's most ruthless field commander. [1]

While Prabowo's notorious reputation is based, to a significant extent, on his 1998 anti-democratic and inhumane exploits and his role as a butcher in East Timor, less is known of the key role he played in West Papua. In 1996, Prabowo led the Mapenduma Operation to secure the release of 12 researchers from the World Wildlife Fund's Lorentz expedition taken hostage by the OPM several months earlier. While five of the researchers were Indonesian, the others were English, Dutch and German. The presence of Europeans among those abducted drew international attention to the obscure struggle for self-determination in West Papua.

Prabowo seized upon the crisis as a means to enhance his reputation domestically and with the international community. He devised a plan whereby the hostages would be released via negotiations between himself and their captors. After lengthy negotiations mediated by the local office of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the OPM commander Kelly Kwalik agreed to turn over all hostages in exchange for a military promise of no reprisals and an ICRC pledge to establish a network of health clinics in the remote Mapenduma area. The deal fell through at the last minute.

The Indonesian military's version of events, quickly accepted by Jakarta-based embassies which were monitoring developments, was that Kwalik had had an inexplicable "change of heart" and had fled the village of Geselema where the transfer of hostages was to take place. There followed a clumsy Indonesian military attack on the village (already evacuated by Kwalik) which killed up to eight civilians. The foreign hostages eventually escaped their captors and reached Indonesian military encampments.

However, in separate interviews with the author of this article, the two most senior ICRC officials provided an entirely different account of events.

On the eve of the transfer, the senior ICRC official involved in the negotiations was summoned by Prabowo to his military headquarters in West Papua. There, an enraged Prabowo told the ICRC official that Suharto's elder daughter, "Tutut," was planning to fly to West Papua the following day to officiate at the hostage transfer in her capacity as Indonesian Red Crescent chairperson. This, Prabowo told the ICRC official, would rob him of the credit for the hostage rescue. Prabowo pressed the ICRC official to telephone Jakarta and press for Tutut to abort her mission. The ICRC official made the call but learned that Tutut was already enroute. Prabowo, according the two ICRC senior officials who spoke with this author, then moved to scuttle the transfer. This was done by conveying to Kwalik through a source Kwalik trusted that the Indonesian military had been acting in bad faith all along and would immediately target Kwalik and his personnel once the transfer had taken place. This, the ICRC officials claimed, was the reason for Kwalik's last minute "change of heart."

The aborted hostage transfer led to a brutal campaign of reprisal attacks by the Indonesian military (largely Kopassus) against highland villages thought to be sympathetic to the OPM. The campaign began with the assault on Geselema using an Indonesian military helicopter disguised to look like the helicopter that ICRC mediators had been using for several months. The ICRC officials told the author that the disguised helicopter and the use of the Red Cross insignia constituted a "perfidy" about which the ICRC could have protested, but did not. The consequence was to so damage the reputation of the ICRC with Papuans as to limit its effectiveness in West Papua for many years. (The Indonesian government subsequently forced the ICRC to close its office in Jayapura, an action unrelated to the Geselema affair.)

The reprisal campaign executed by Prabowo and Kopassus represents only a portion of Prabowo's long record of involvement in West Papua, but is perhaps among the most important considerations for Papuans as they consider the prospect of a Prabowo presidency.

[1] Joseph Nevins, A Not-So Distant Horror, Mass Violence in East Timor, Cornell University Press, 2005. p. 61

[WPAT's Edmund McWilliams is a retired US Foreign Service Officer who served as the Political Counselor at the US Embassy in Jakarta. 1996-1999. He worked closely with sources cited in the following account.]