Opposing Suharto

Opposing Suharto presents an account of democratization in the world’s fourth most populous country, Indonesia. It describes how opposition groups challenged the long-time ruler, President Suharto, and his military-based regime, forcing him to resign in 1998. The book’s main purpose is to explain how ordinary people can bring about political change in a repressive authoritarian regime. It does this by telling the story of an array of dissident groups, nongovernmental organizations, student activists, and political party workers as they tried to expand democratic space in the last decade of Suharto’s rule. This book is an important study not only for readers interested in contemporary Indonesia and political change in Asia, but also for all those interested in democratization processes elsewhere in the world. Unlike most other books on Indonesia, and unlike many books on democratization, it provides an account from the perspective of those who were struggling to bring about change.

These essays investigate institutionalized violence in New Order Indonesia and the ongoing legacy Suharto's dictatorship has conferred on the nation. The collection includes papers on East Timor, Aceh, Biak, the police, and the Indonesian military, among other topics.

Publisher Description

This revised third edition provides an analysis of Suharto's New Order from its inception to the emergence of B.J. Habibie as President. The author reassesses the New Order's origins and its military roots and evaluates the considerable economic changes that have taken place since the 1960s. He examines Suharto's politics and, in a new chapter, the reasons behind the crisis and Suharto's fall.

In the early morning hours of October 1, 1965, a group calling itself the September 30th Movement kidnapped and executed six generals of the Indonesian army, including its highest commander. The group claimed that it was attempting to preempt a coup, but it was quickly defeated as the senior surviving general, Haji Mohammad Suharto, drove the movement’s partisans out of Jakarta. Riding the crest of mass violence, Suharto blamed the Communist Party of Indonesia for masterminding the movement and used the emergency as a pretext for gradually eroding President Sukarno’s powers and installing himself as a ruler. Imprisoning and killing hundreds of thousands of alleged communists over the next year, Suharto remade the events of October 1, 1965 into the central event of modern Indonesian history and the cornerstone of his thirty-two-year dictatorship. Despite its importance as a trigger for one of the twentieth century’s worst cases of mass violence, the September 30th Movement has remained shrouded in uncertainty. Who actually masterminded it? What did they hope to achieve? Why did they fail so miserably? And what was the movement’s connection to international Cold War politics? In Pretext for Mass Murder, John Roosa draws on a wealth of new primary source material to suggest a solution to the mystery behind the movement and the enabling myth of Suharto’s repressive regime. His book is a remarkable feat of historical investigation. Finalist, Social Sciences Book Award, the International Convention of Asian Scholars

"This book provides an introduction (from the perspective of Chan/Zen Studies) to the teachings of the key figure of Yuan-dynasty Chan: Zhongfeng Mingben. Zhongfeng was a leading student of Gaofeng Yuanmiao. At Gaofeng's death, Zhongfeng left the mountain and for many years resided in various small mountain hermitages (often called "Dwelling-in-the-Phantasmal Hermitages"). On occasion, he chose to live on a houseboat. He drew students from all over East Asia: Yunnan, Turfan, Mongol officials; Koreans, Japanese, and so forth. The primary focus is on illustrating Zhongfeng's Chan style via translation of selected works in his Chan records. The texts selected from his Chan records include the standard genres instructions to the assembly and dharma talks; the miscellany Night Conversations in a Mountain Hermitage (which covers such topics as the nature of the huatou; the relationship between the bodhisattva stages and Chan; numinous knowing versus false knowing, and so forth); one-hundred poems in imitation of the well-known collection Hanshan's Poems (Poems of Cold Mountain); admonitions on cross-legged sitting Chan, and so forth. Zhongfeng's wider social world, cultural context, and idiosyncratic calligraphy are addressed only in passing"--

This book responds to the critical need of policymakers, practitioners, and scholars for current research on Indonesia.

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