Keating's Eulogy

Well, Keating has written a glowing tribute to Suharto in The Age, which I've linked to here. He regards him as Indonesia's saviour in the dark days when Communist forces were gathering on Australia's doorstep. As well as battling the Red Menace, he says that Suharto held back the tide of Islamic fundamentalism that otherwise would have seen boatloads of suicide bombers alighting on Australia's northern shores and trekking southwards to the big cities. It is a fulsome, silly article.

For a more balanced view of Suharto's legacy, I've linked to an interesting article in The Sydney Morning Herald by Hamish McDonald who wrote a book about Suharto in 1980. My opinion of the guy is determined largely by my feeling that he orchestrated the events of 1965 that led directly to the deaths of perhaps a million Indonesians. Now that he's gone, I think more evidence will come to light about that watershed event in Indonesian history.

I remember reading Time Magazine's account of the killings when I was in Year 12 and the stories left an indelible impression on me. From that time on, I vowed that I'd never set foot on Indonesian soil. Well, my resolve obviously waned over the years and I've ended living in the very place that I never wanted to visit. More than forty years on however, I still want to get to the bottom of what really happened.