Thread by @redfishstream

On this day in Indonesian history, the US-backed right-wing dictator Suharto was overthrown by a student-led mass uprising in 1998.

In 1965, CIA-backed General Suharto took power & oversaw the political genocide of up to 2 million Indonesian communists, trade unionists and other leftists, the jailing of 1m more, the banning of Marxism and destroying the largest communist movement outside of the USSR & China.

Fearing a communist revolution, the US, UK and Australia supported Suharto in pushing aside the leftist nationalist Sukarno and establishing a 33-year repressive military dictatorship on the dead bodies of executed communists.

Suharto's regime led a Western-sponsored counter-revolution, effectively ending "the threat" of democracy by demolishing the mass-based political vehicles of the poor and throwing the riches of the country open to foreign investors.

The counter-revolution was so successful that it became a template for anticommunist terror which would be exported abroad, with the slogan "Jakarta Is Coming" appearing in countries like Brazil and Chile.

In 1998, after decades of growing discontent over rising inequality, corruption and other grievances, a financial crisis wrecked the economy triggering strikes, riots and demonstrations across the 13,000 island archipelago.

On 12 May, 6 student protesters at Trisakti University were shot dead by security forces, leading to an escalation. Protests & riots overwhelmed the capital, as the urban poor & working class joined the struggle. After 10 days Suharto was toppled.

A revolutionary situation opened up, but the forces of moderation and reform held back the revolutionary movement whose tradition and organizational structure was decapitated in the 1960s and was only starting to be rebuilt.

Though the uprising of 1998 started a new chapter in the nation's history, Suharto was never brought to justice and many of his cronies stayed in power with many of the structures still intact.