Canadian Prime Minister : Stephen Harper
By James Winter
Tell me if you find any irony or hypocrisy in this: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced from Indonesia, where he was attending APEC, that he will be unable to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government summit in Sri Lanka next month, owing to that country’s “unacceptable human rights violations?”
Put your hand up if you are aware of Indonesian history?
No? Well, have you seen any good documentary films lately, such as, The Act of Killing, which screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in September?
Indonesia, from whence the prime minister announced his boycott, is infamous for two genocides. The first was in 1965, when General Suharto overthrew President Sukarno. During and following that purge, it is estimated that more than a million people were killed. The purge was ostensibly aimed at communist leaders, and party members. Ultimately, paramilitary gangs devastated opposition parties, the labour movement, teachers, student leaders, and others.
In a June 2013 film review of Joshua Oppenheimer’s film about these killings, The Observer’s Mark Kermode wrote, “Many of the killings — and the persecutions that followed — were carried out by gangsters who have not only escaped prosecution, but are now heralded as local heroes” in Indonesia.
“We shoved wood in their anus until they died,” Adi Zulkadry, a death squad leader, says in the film as he is shown shopping in a mall in the capital Jakarta with his wife and daughter. “We crushed their necks with wood. We hung them. We strangled them with wire.
We cut off their heads. We ran them over with cars. We were allowed to do it. And the proof is, we murdered people and were never punished. The people we killed, there’s nothing to be done about it. They have to accept it. Maybe I’m just trying to make myself feel better, but it works. I’ve never felt guilty, never been depressed, never had nightmares.”
The second genocide was conducted by Suharto in an invasion of East Timor in 1975, wherein his troops slaughtered a quarter million Timorese, one-third of the population, in five years. U.S. president Gerald Ford and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger infamously visited Suharto in Jakarta the day before Suharto’s invasion of East Timor. Kissinger encouraged Suharto to “act quickly,” to succeed and to avoid criticism.
This was the same autocratic General Suharto who was protested at the APEC meetings in Vancouver in 1997, where the police infamously pepper sprayed and strip-searched peaceful Canadian protesters.
The Indonesian leadership, which was responsible for these atrocious crimes, has never been brought to account. Nor have the other governments which supported them, such as the U.S. and Canada.
Oppenheimer’s film documents the complicity of some of the lower-level Indonesians responsible. The film is brilliant and horrific. And, it makes no mention of the political leadership of any of the countries which were responsible.
Hope you enjoyed your time in Indonesia, Prime Minister Harper. Take pride in your bold boycott against Sri Lanka, in support of Human Rights. My question is: how do you choose your friends and enemies?
Dr. James Winter is a professor at the University of Windsor.
By James Winter
Tell me if you find any irony or hypocrisy in this: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced from Indonesia, where he was attending APEC, that he will be unable to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government summit in Sri Lanka next month, owing to that country’s “unacceptable human rights violations?”
Put your hand up if you are aware of Indonesian history?
No? Well, have you seen any good documentary films lately, such as, The Act of Killing, which screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in September?
Indonesia, from whence the prime minister announced his boycott, is infamous for two genocides. The first was in 1965, when General Suharto overthrew President Sukarno. During and following that purge, it is estimated that more than a million people were killed. The purge was ostensibly aimed at communist leaders, and party members. Ultimately, paramilitary gangs devastated opposition parties, the labour movement, teachers, student leaders, and others.
In a June 2013 film review of Joshua Oppenheimer’s film about these killings, The Observer’s Mark Kermode wrote, “Many of the killings — and the persecutions that followed — were carried out by gangsters who have not only escaped prosecution, but are now heralded as local heroes” in Indonesia.
“We shoved wood in their anus until they died,” Adi Zulkadry, a death squad leader, says in the film as he is shown shopping in a mall in the capital Jakarta with his wife and daughter. “We crushed their necks with wood. We hung them. We strangled them with wire.
We cut off their heads. We ran them over with cars. We were allowed to do it. And the proof is, we murdered people and were never punished. The people we killed, there’s nothing to be done about it. They have to accept it. Maybe I’m just trying to make myself feel better, but it works. I’ve never felt guilty, never been depressed, never had nightmares.”
The second genocide was conducted by Suharto in an invasion of East Timor in 1975, wherein his troops slaughtered a quarter million Timorese, one-third of the population, in five years. U.S. president Gerald Ford and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger infamously visited Suharto in Jakarta the day before Suharto’s invasion of East Timor. Kissinger encouraged Suharto to “act quickly,” to succeed and to avoid criticism.
This was the same autocratic General Suharto who was protested at the APEC meetings in Vancouver in 1997, where the police infamously pepper sprayed and strip-searched peaceful Canadian protesters.
The Indonesian leadership, which was responsible for these atrocious crimes, has never been brought to account. Nor have the other governments which supported them, such as the U.S. and Canada.
Oppenheimer’s film documents the complicity of some of the lower-level Indonesians responsible. The film is brilliant and horrific. And, it makes no mention of the political leadership of any of the countries which were responsible.
Hope you enjoyed your time in Indonesia, Prime Minister Harper. Take pride in your bold boycott against Sri Lanka, in support of Human Rights. My question is: how do you choose your friends and enemies?
Dr. James Winter is a professor at the University of Windsor.
