Prabowo Subianto
Prabowo's grandfather, Margono Djojohadikusumo, was the founder of Bank Negara Indonesia, the 1st leader of Indonesia's Temporary Advisory Council, and Indonesia's Group for the Preparation of Independence (Badan Penyelidik Usaha Persiapan Kemerdekaan Indonesia).Prabowo's father, Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, was an economist who served as former President Suharto's minister for the economy and minister for research and technology. Sumitro named Prabowo after his own younger brother, a martyr hero who died in a battle against the Dutch in Yogyakarta during the Indonesian National Revolution. Prabowo has two older sisters, Bintianingsih and Mayrani Ekowati, and one younger brother, Hashim Djojohadikusumo. Hashim's pribumi conglomerate business interests stretch from Indonesia to Canada and Russia. Sumitro encouraged his son to attend military academy. One of Prabowo's role models was Turkish military figure Ataturk, and according to peers and observers, Prabowo was talented with a passion for stratagems and had an appetite for political power.
Prabowo married Suharto's daughter, Siti Hediati Hariyadi, 1983. They have a son, Didiet Prabowo who used to live in Boston before settling in Paris to pursue a career in design.
Prabowo enrolled in Indonesia's Military Academy in Magelang in 1970. He graduated in 1974 with others who would gain senior leadership positions such as Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
In 1976, Prabowo was assigned as commander of Group 1 Komando Pasukan Sandhi Yudha, which is part of the Indonesian Army's Nanggala Operation in East Timor. Prabowo, then 26 years old, was the youngest Nanggala commander. Prabowo led the mission to capture the vice president of Fretilin, who was the 1st Prime Minister of East Timor, Nicolau dos Reis Lobato. Guiding Prabowo was Antonio Lobato â€" Nicolau's younger brother. Prabowo's company found Nicolau as he was being escorted in Maubisse, fifty kilometers south of Dili. Nicolau died from a bullet wound to his stomach on 31 December 1978.
In 1983 Prabowo was appointed vice commander of Kopassus's 81 Detachment before going to Fort Benning, in the United States for commando training.
As commander of Kopassus Group 3 in the early 1990s, Major General Prabowo attempted to crush the East Timorese independence movement by using irregular troops and, in main towns and villages, militias trained and directed by Kopassus commanders. Human rights abuses rose. The Army's 1997 campaign was called Operation Eradicate.
In 1996, Prabowo led the Mapenduma Operation in the mountainous terrain of Papua, Indonesia. The primary target of the operation was the release of 12 researchers from the Lorentz expedition, who were captured and taken hostage by the Free Papua Movement. 5 of the researchers were Indonesian, with the remainder being English, Dutch and German. The operation involved a Marine unit, Battalion 330 of Army Strategic Command, and a battalion belonging to the VIII/Trikora Military Area Command.
In the late 1990s, Prabowo was appointed head of the 27,000-strong Army Strategic Reserve Command, the key Jakarta garrison that Suharto had commanded in 1965.
Troops under Prabowo's command kidnapped and tortured nine democracy activists in the late 1990s. In their testimonies, former detainees told of being tortured for days in an unidentified location, allegedly a military camp where most of their time was spent blindfolded, while being forced to answer repeated questions, mainly concerning their political activities. According to the testimonies, they were kicked, punched, terrorised physically and mentally, and given electric shocks.
In early 1998, As the effect of the East Asian financial crisis began to worsen for Indonesians, and social disorder and open resentment of Suharto's administration increased, Prabowo publicly urged Indonesian Muslims to join him to fight "traitors to the nation". In a private conversation with Sofyan Wanandi, Prabowo said he was willing "to drive all the Chinese out of the country even if that sets the economy back twenty or thirty years." and "You Chinese Catholics are trying to topple Suharto". To which Sofyan replied "Only Muslims or the Army are strong enough to do that. It's ridiculous to think that groups as small as Chinese or Christians could do it."
On the 1st day of the May 1998 riots, Prabowo urged armed forces commander, Wiranto, to let him bring his Strategic Reserve units from outside Jakarta into the city. In the previous weeks, hundreds of men trained by Kopassus were flown from Dili to Yogyakarta in chartered planes, and then on to Jakarta by train. On the morning of 14 May, Kopassus troops escorted young thugs from Lampung in south Sumatra into the capital. Thus Prabowo was accused of using his allies and recent command to import minions to create more trouble while Wiranto had declined to give Prabowo's current command, Kostrad, permission to quell the existing trouble, in line with classic Javanese tactic to stir chaos to discredit a rival and/or seize power.
Later investigations into the May riots revealed that violence in Jakarta was the result of an internal struggle within the military elite to become Suharto's successor. Many believed Prabowo, as Strategic Reserve commander, sought to become his father-in-law's successor and coveted the Commander of the Armed Forces position held by General Wiranto, who was favored to succeed Suharto. He was also suspected of organizing the kidnappings of students and activists prior to the 1997 election. Together with Operations Commander for Greater Jakarta (Panglima Komando Operasi Jakarta Raya, Pangkoops Jaya) Major General Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin, Prabowo aimed to terrorize opponents of the government and to show that Wiranto was "an incompetent commander who could not control disorder". During the months of August and September, the fact finding team interviewed Prabowo, Sjafrie, and other military commanders regarding their movements during the Jakarta riots. Prabowo asserted that he was unsure of the precise movements of military forces in the capital and deferred to Sjafrie. In its final report, the fact finding team suspected that, on the night of 14 May, Prabowo met with several Armed Forces and prominent civilian figures at the Kostrad headquarters to discuss organization of the violence. However, this was later refuted by several people who attended the meeting, including prominent human rights lawyer Adnan Buyung Nasution and Joint Fact Finding Team member Bambang Widjojanto. Further testimonies by Prabowo in the years following the investigation contradicted the team's report and led to skepticism of the team's allegations.
On the afternoon following Habibie's inauguration as President on 21 May, Lt Gen Prabowo demanded of Habibie that he be put in charge of the army in place of Wiranto. However, Habibie and Wiranto demoted Prabowo from Kostrad commander instead, and the following day announced Wiranto's promotion to Minster of Defence and Security and to TNI commander. A furious Prabowo went to the Presidential Palace packing a side arm and with trucks of his Kostrad troops. On being blocked from entering the Habibie's office, he instead went to Suharto who rebuked him. He was summoned by Wiranto on the 23rd, and reassigned to a non-active role in Bandung. [check quotation syntax] Following the TNI investigation, Prabowo acknowledged responsibility for the kidnapping of the activists. He was discharged from military service in August. He and Wiranto denied that the discharge was a result of disciplinary action. In August 1998, the Dewan Kehormatan Perwira tried, and found Prabowo guilty of "exceeding orders" in the kidnapping of anti-Suharto activists in 1998. He was discharged from military services, and went into a voluntary exile in Jordan where he knew that country's new young King Abdullah as a fellow commander of special forces. In an interview for Newsweek Magazine in 2000, Prabowo firmly said "I never threatened Habibie. I wasn't behind the riots. That is a great lie. I never betrayed Pak Harto. I never betrayed Habibie. I never betrayed my country."
In 2000, Prabowo became the 1st person to be denied entry into the United States under the provisions of the United Nations Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. A combination of "foreign policy considerations, a reasonable belief that he was involved in the riots which devastated Jakarta in 1998 and coincidental timing" were reason put forwarded for the visa ban.
After leaving the military, Prabowo joined his brother Hashim Djojohadikusumo's business. He purchased Kiani Kertas, a paper pulp and plantation company based in Mangkajang, East Kalimantan. Prior to Prabowo's purchase, Kiani was owned by Bob Hasan, a businessman close to former Presiden Suharto.
Prabowo rebranded Kiani Kertas to Kertas Nusantara. Today, Prabowo's Nusantara Group controls 27 companies in Indonesia and abroad. Prabowo's companies includes Nusantara Energy, Tidar Kerinci Agung (palm oil plantations) and Jaladri Nusantara (fishery industry).
Prabowo was the wealthiest presidential candidate in the 2009 election, with ownership of Rp 1.5 trillion and US$ 7.5 million.
Using Prabowo's connections to President Suharto, he and his brother worked to silencing journalistic and political critics in the 1990s. Hasyim unsuccessfully pressured Goenawan Mohamad to sell his outspoken and banned Tempo magazine to him. As lieutenant colonel, Prabowo invited Gus Dur to his battalion headquarters in 1992 and warned him to stick to religion and to stay out of politics, or face unspecific actions if continued to oppose the President. He later warned the intellectual Nurcholish Madjid to resign from the KIPP, the election monitoring unit set up by Goenawan Mohamad, and which armed forces commander Feisel Tanjung had denounced as "obviously unconstitutional".
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