Who is Prabowo Subianto?
Prabowo Subianto Djojohadikusumo, known as Prabowo, was confirmed as president-elect of Indonesia on 20 March 2024. A social media sensation, Prabowo is also implicated in human rights violations in Indonesia and Timor-Leste and has taken a relatively pro-Russia line on the conflict in Ukraine. In some ways he follows the template of a right-wing elected authoritarian leader, but as a former general he is deeply involved in the rights violations of the New Order regime of President Suharto (1967-98). Furthermore, he is not anti-establishment, but hails from Indonesia’s elite.
Prabowo has a pattern of misdirection and the use of psychological warfare along with more blatant human rights violations during and after his military career that may influence how he acts as president. He has served in cabinet but has never previously held elected office.
Personal background.
Prabowo is the grandson of Margono Djojohadikusumo, member of an aristocratic family in Indonesia’s most populated island, Java. Margono was a civil servant in the Dutch colonial administration, then joined the Republic of Indonesia as it fought for independence from the Netherlands (1945-49), serving as first Governor of the Bank of Indonesia.
Prabowo’s father, Sumitro Djojohadikusumo (also spelled Joyohadikusumo), was the first Indonesian to earn a Ph.D. in economics and headed the Republic of Indonesia’s finance operations before going on to be finance minister and later trade minister in independent Indonesia. Sumitro joined and bankrolled a rebellion against President Sukarno in 1957, with support from the United States (including the CIA), Australia and Great Britain. Canada did not back the rebellion. Sumitro returned to office in President Suharto’s cabinet and was “godfather” (along with Canadian economist Benjamin Higgins) of the generation of technocrats who supervised Indonesia’s economic growth during the Suharto years.
His son (and Prabowo’s brother) Hashim Djojohadikusumo became a billionaire based on natural resource sector investments. Prabowo himself is also wealthy from business investments. He married Siti Hediati Hariyadi, also known as Titiek, the daughter of President Suharto, herself one of Indonesia’s wealthiest people. The couple separated in 1998 but she continued to back his political aspirations. In other words, Prabowo is a consummate insider due to family background and connections.
Military background.
Prabowo graduated from the Indonesian Military Academy in 1974 (after a year’s delay due to his disciplinary infractions). He soon entered the Kopassus “red beret” special forces, known for its counter-insurgency operations and for extensive human rights violations during the period of military rule (1965-98). Kopassus is noted for secretive operations designed to divide local people and use the subsequent violence to justify military intervention. Prabowo rose through the ranks to become commander of Kopassus in 1995.
In 1998, he was promoted to become commander of the Kostrad military reserve. Kostrad was commanded by General Suharto in 1965, when he used the position to crush a coup attempt and become the military leader of Indonesia (he ruled until 1998). Prabowo considered use of Kostrad in the events around Suharto’s fall from power in 1998 but army command blocked him from intervening.
In 2019, Prabowo resolved his differences with President Joko Widodo, who twice defeated him in presidential elections, and accepted an appointment as minister of defence. This enabled him to pose as the continuity candidate in 2014, with Widodo’s son as his running mate. It also ensured him a stake in the country’s military, which is still powerful 25 years after the end of its guaranteed place in power.
Human rights: Timor-Leste.
Prabowo has been credibly implicated in severe violations of human rights in Timor-Leste, in West Papua, and in crimes against pro-democracy activists during the 1998 transition of power. Prabowo served four terms in Timor-Leste during the period of military occupation (1975-99) and one in (West) Papua, the former Dutch colony governed by Indonesia since 1963 that is home to an active pro-independence movement. Indonesian occupation of Timor-Leste claimed more than 100,000 lives and was accompanied by crimes against humanity, as the Indonesian government has acknowledged in the period of democracy and reform (1998-present).
The Timor-Leste truth commission report, entitled Chega! (Enough, in Portuguese) contains 19 references to Prabowo. He spent his first tour of duty there in 1976, soon after joining Kopassus, and was a lieutenant during the warfare and the famine of 1977-1978. He made his name by commanding Kopassus Unit Nanggala 28, which killed Timorese leader Nicolau Lobato on 31 December 1978. (Lobato’s statue stands just outside Dili’s airport.) His second tour in Timor-Leste, as a lieutenant in 1978-79, came during what Chega (228) calls “the greatest humanitarian tragedy in Timor-Leste’s history,” a state-engineered famine. After a visit to the territory in 1978, Canadian ambassador Glen Shortliffe reported that Timorese were “in deplorable condition. They are starving in many cases: they are desperately ill; they need help in terms of immediate relief — food, clothing, basic medical care” (report at Library & Archives Canada).
Prabowo returned for another tour of duty in Timor-Leste in 1983-84, where he was a Captain and commanded the Kopassus Chadraca 8 unit. This is the unit responsible for the Kraras massacre. The year 1983 was a hopeful period, when Indonesian forces and Timorese guerrillas negotiated a six-month ceasefire and held peace talks. Prabowo entered Timor-Leste without the permission of the local Indonesian army commander, who lacked authority over Kopassus. He worked to undermine the ceasefire, and troops under his command carried out the killings at Kraras. There, a coordinated military operation saw village men “gathered and shot in the area of Tahuben” with a second shooting nearby and death toll estimates running from 80 (official figures) to 200 (Timorese contemporary estimate). Kraras is still known as “the village of widows” (Chega, 254).
In 1995-98, Prabowo was a Brigadier-General in command of Kopassus troops in Timor-Leste. The period after 1995 saw increasing repression after a relatively liberal period of Indonesian rule. In particular, there was a renewed crackdown on the youth-based urban protest movement, with increased use of torture. Prabowo was linked to the issue of Timorese “stolen children” when his wife Titiek Suharto requested to be given a Timorese child to take home. Up to 4,000 Timorese children were “stolen” by Indonesian officers during this period. There is an active campaign by human rights groups to locate them. Prabowo “initiated psychological operations to intimidate and terrorise the Timor-Leste population, increased military training of civil servants, expanded the paramilitary teams, and established new militia organizations” (Chega, 360).
Links to unofficial militias were especially significant in the run-up to the independence referendum of 1999, when mass violence saw many deaths and hundreds of thousands of displaced people. The first was Gadapaksi (young guards upholding integration), launched by Prabowo in 1995 to target clandestine Timorese youth activists. This thousands-strong militia group had links to organized crimes and received military training in Java. It again showed the Prabowo hallmark of secretive, deniable operations that sowed dissent and allowed the army to pose as a stabilizing force. Prabowo helped coalesce militia groups by 1999 into a powerful, apparently lawless force that could terrorise pro-independence forces and UN referendum officials without implicating the army directly.
Militia violence aimed to derail a 78% vote for independence in the August 1999 referendum and led to an international intervention involving Canadian forces (Operation Toucan, 1999-2001), an interim UN administration (1999-2002), and finally the restoration of Timor-Leste independence (2002). The UN’s Serious Crimes Unit in Timor-Leste indicted several of Prabowo’s protégés.
Human rights: Indonesia.
In 1996, Prabowo commanded a special mission to free hostages in the Papua conflict zone. Reprisal raids after the hostages were freed led to several deaths and reportedly involved forces under Prabowo’s command painting helicopters with Red Cross markings. His civilian business interests now include palm oil plantation investments in Papua, linked to deforestation.
Prabowo has admitted to violations of the rights of pro-democracy protesters in Indonesia proper during the democratic transition of 1998. He reportedly engineered the kidnapping of 23 pro-democracy activists, including the poet Wiji Thukul, who is still missing. Calling pro-democracy forces “traitors to the nation,” Prabowo led Kostrad troops into Jakarta to try to save the rule of his father-in-law, President Suharto. An Indonesian tribunal found him guilty of kidnapping and he was removed from his command by the new president, B.J. Habibie.
Under the Bush and Obama administrations, Prabowo was banned from entering the United States on human rights grounds, a ban lifted by President Trump when Prabowo became a minister.
Foreign policy positions
Prabowo is considered to be a conservative politician in the neo-authoritarian mold. His previous campaigns for president featured militaristic imagery, with the candidate campaigning on horseback. In his lastest campaign, he harnessed social media to win youth votes by presenting himself as a “cuddly” grandfather figure. He has harnessed populist and anti-Western rhetoric in his campaigns. In this he echoes the populist first president of Indonesia, Sukarno, with nationalist and anti-foreign language that may presage a shift in foreign policy.
At the same time, Prabowo has sought Indonesia’s economic advantage. For instance, though Indonesia is not a US free trade partner, he proposed a special deal on critical minerals. This seems to indicate a pragmatic, transactional approach. It also underlines Indonesia’s ability to nimbly seek cordial relations with both Washington and Beijing while quietly asserting the country’s own interests. Indonesia’s historical policy of non-alignment has tacked between major powers over the decades while using development funds to increase the country’s own bargaining power.
Prabowo undermined his own government’s pro-Ukraine foreign policy in 2023 when he proposed a peace plan that accepted much of the Russian position by proposing a demilitarized zone and referendums in parts of Ukraine claimed by Russia. Although Indonesia’s foreign minister rejected this plan, Prabowo displayed a desire to act as an international influencer and freelance on the spot. This may indicate that the predictability and low profile of the Widodo presidency will give way to a more active, more nationalist and less predictable foreign policy. Prabowo’s dislike of environmental pressure, such as European Union deforestation policies, also signals a more nationalist stance. He will be, at best, an unpredictable partner for other governments.
- Backgrounder by Dr. David Webster, Bishop’s University, Canada