Human Rights A Day

but title. When Indonesia won independence from the Dutch, Achmed Sukarno became the country’s first president in 1945. Twenty years later, when Indonesian communists tried to overthrow the president and his government, the Army’s chief of staff, General Mohamed Suharto, suppressed the coup. From then on, Suharto took ever more control of government operations until on February 22, 1967, President Sukarno relinquished all executive powers to Suharto, saving only his title. Once “elected” president in 1968, Suharto, and his version of a democratic government, stayed in power until March 1998. During Suharto’s three decades of power, anyone who was a communist (along with anyone suspected of being a communist) was either killed, tortured or detained. Suharto also suppressed freedom of the press, politics and speech. In 1975 he invaded East Timor, annihilating roughly one-third of the population there before the country regained its independence in 2000. Suharto was also intolerant of anything “Chinese,” which