LIANE HANSEN, host:
In Jakarta, Indonesia today, former dictator Suharto died after a long illness. He was 86.
NPR's Michael Sullivan has more on the man who ruled Indonesia with an iron fist for 32 years before being ousted in 1998.
MICHAEL SULLIVAN: The year General Suharto seized power, Lyndon Johnson was in the White House, Malcolm X was assassinated, and the first U.S. combat troops landed in the Southeast Asian nation of Vietnam. Thirty-two years later, Suharto was forced to step down amid massive street protests over his alleged abuse of power, including corruption and human rights abuses on a massive scale.
In the year 2000, he was charged with embezzling more than $600 million during his rule, but Suharto never saw the inside of a courtroom. His lawyers and doctors saw to that, arguing that a series of strokes had left Suharto unable to stand trial.
Professor Dewi Fortuna Anwar of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences.
Professor DEWI FORTUNA ANWAR (Deputy Chairman for Social Sciences and Humanities, Indonesian Institute of Sciences): In the short term, people will probably remember the negative impacts more. But in the long term, people will be more detach while still be very critical about the lack of civil liberties, the human rights abuses and the chaos that ended his rule.
SULLIVAN: In the beginning, Anwar says, Suharto deserved credit for many things.
Prof. ANWAR: Suharto has been very, very instrumental in bringing Indonesia from the rank of one of the least-developed countries into the rank of the developing country, a middle-level income country. He brought Indonesia into modern world.
SULLIVAN: Sidney Jones, senior Asia adviser for the International Crisis Group, agrees.
Ms. SIDNEY JONES (Senior Adviser, Asia Program, International Crisis Group): He actually did bring a lot of people out of poverty. He increased the education, substantially lowered the illiteracy rate, increased life expectancy in Indonesia, did a lot with family planning program. So on a number of counts, he actually did serve to improve the country substantially.
Many people said that had Suharto stay in power only for two terms, he will be remembered in a sweet memory of the people because he did great things.
SULLIVAN: Long-time Suharto watcher Ambassador Salim Said.
Ambassador SALIM SAID: I remember I was a young man at the time. I remember how our economy fastly improved because of the policy of Suharto. But then, the second part of Suharto, he really became personal ruler in which he enriched his family as well as his crony. That is the black part, the dark part of Suharto.
SULLIVAN: The dark stain of corruption, Said says, was only part of it. The human rights abuses were another - in Papua, in Aceh and in East Timor, among others. And many accused Suharto of unleashing one of the greatest mass killings of the 20th century - the deaths of more than half a million suspected Indonesian communists and ethnic Chinese between 1965 and '67 - human rights abuses that Salim Said says were largely ignored both at home and in the West.
Ambassador SAID: At that time, nobody talked about it. We didn't even know there were human rights at the time. For The west at that time, you can do everything as long as you are not pro-communist. There were some critics - more critic at that time, but I don't even remember there were any serious discussions about death.
SULLIVAN: Nor is there likely to be any now. And Suharto's critics, who wish to see him held accountable, have been thwarted. Again, Dewi Fortuna Anwar.
Prof. ANWAR: Personally, we'd have preferred that Suharto had stood trial a few years ago when he was still lucid. And then, after that, acknowledging mistake that he made and punishments be meted out. And then after that, the country would forgive him.
SULLIVAN: That chance has passed now that Suharto is gone.
Michael Sullivan, NPR News, Jakarta.