Prabowo Subianto

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Prabowo Subianto bigraphy, stories - Indonesian general and politician

Prabowo Subianto : biography

17 October 1951 –

Prabowo Subianto

Military career

Prabowo enrolled in Indonesia’s Military Academy in Magelang in 1970.Conboy, Ken (2003). Kopassus: Inside Indonesia’s Special Forces. Equinox Publishing 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 (Kopassandha), 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 and kill the founder and vice president of Fretilin, who was the first Prime Minister of East Timor, Nicolau dos Reis Lobato. Guiding Prabowo was Antonio Lobato – 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 (hooded "ninja" gangs dressed in black and operating at night) 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.John G. Taylor, East Timor: The Price of Freedom (New Yrk: St. Martin’s Press, 1999; 1st ed., 1991), p. xv. (in Friend (2003), p. 433.

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.http://majalah.tempointeraktif.com/id/arsip/2004/01/12/NAS/mbm.20040112.NAS109326.id.html 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 (Kostrad), the key Jakarta garrison that Suharto had commanded in 1965.Friend (2003), p. 325

Business career

After leaving the military, Prabowo joined his brother . He purchased Kiani Kertas, a paper pulp and plantation company based in Mangkajang, East Kalimantan.http://www.watchindonesia.org/Kiani_eng.htm 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 (oil and natural gas, coal), Tidar Kerinci Agung (palm oil plantations) and Jaladri Nusantara (fishery industry).http://www.asiaviews.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=775:headlinealias775

Prabowo was the wealthiest presidential candidate in the 2009 election, with ownership of Rp 1.5 trillion (about US$ 150 million) and US$ 7.5 million.

Fall from grace

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".Friend (2003), p. 315 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."Adam Schwartz, A Nation in Waiting (Boulder: Westview Press, 2nd ed., 2000), pp. 346–347, 496n133; interview, Sofyan Wanandi, 21 Oct 98 (both in Friend (2003), p. 315 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."