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Australia's friends in ABRI

Prabowo

As head of the Special Forces and then Kostrad, Lt-Gen. Prabowo has been a key Australian contact in the Indonesian military. During the late 1980s and early 1990s he served in East Timor, where he developed a frightening reputation. He is accused of developing armed "Ninja gangs" which worked at night to terrorise students and independence supporters. Kopassus has also been accused of involvement in the "mysterious killings" of so- called criminals in urban centres during the mid-1980s. Prabowo's forces are widely believed to be behind the most recent spate of disappearances and torture of activists in Jakarta. He is also rumored to have ordered the shootings of students at Trisakti University in Jakarta which sparked Suharto's downfall. He was recently dismissed from his post as Kostrad Commander.

Feisal Tanjung

Feisal Tanjung is currently a minister in the new Habibie cabinet. As ABRI Commander in 1995, Tanjung supervised the expulsion of democracy leader Megawati Sukarnoputri from the leadership of the Indonesian Democracy Party and the raid on its headquarters in July in which scores of people were killed. He also supervised the arrest, torture and trial of student and labour activists, parliamentarians and other opposition figures which has filled Indonesian jails with political prisoners such as Mochtar Pakpahan, Dita Sari, Sri Bintang Pamungkas and Budiman Sudjatmiko.

Wiranto

General Wiranto is the new ABRI Commander-in Chief. He is reported to have pressured Suharto to resign and has established an enquiry into the Trisakti killings, scapegoating a number of officers for the violence as a way of trying to establish a new "clean" image for ABRI. Yet the military he heads is backing the new dictatorship, and will be the greatest obstacle to democracy and reform. The Indonesian military is still torturing and killing East Timorese, and has been accused of causing over 150 deaths in recent months in West Papua. Indonesian jails remain full of political prisoners, and many others remain missing.