Great resemblance: This silhouette of Soeharto in the main gallery space bears an odd likeness to another famous head-of-state, Winston Churchill
Fifteen years after the fall of former president Soeharto's New Order regime, how is he being remembered? At the 'smiling general's' hometown museum near Yogyakarta, the answer is resounding and unequivocal: as the nation's savior-in-chief.
Near the back wall of the museum ' officially named the HM Jendral Besar Soeharto Museum and located in his childhood home in Kemusuk, Yogyakarta ' sits a rather unremarkable well.
It's old-fashioned and shallow, the bucket-and-pulley type, just 5 meters deep. On a sunny day, coins can be seen glinting in the water below, despite signs telling visitors not to toss them in.
According to a security guard, who was the only employee around that Tuesday afternoon, this well has preternatural endurance.
He said that although others in the area dried up during periods of drought, 'this one never had and probably never would'.
It's a fitting metaphor for Soeharto, whose legacy continues to shape conversations about Indonesia nearly 15 years after the end of his rule.
Spread over 3,630 square meters, some 25 minutes west of Yogyakarta city proper, the museum was built by Soeharto's half-brother, Probosutedjo and opened in March last year. Admittance to the complex is free.
'Big General' is not a formal title. It was bestowed upon Soeharto as an honorific in 1997, in the waning months of his rule. The name does not mislead, as a better part of the museum is dedicated celebrating to his role as the warden of the young republic and the protector of its founding philosophy, Pancasila.
Curiously, although sitting on the site of Soeharto's childhood home, the museum hardly touches on Soeharto's adolescence.
Apart from the 'magic well' and a statue at the entrance of what seems to be a young Soeharto riding a water buffalo through a rice paddy, there is no mention of Soeharto's life prior to joining the Army. It's as if Soeharto's life only really began the day he became a soldier.
The heart of the museum is contained within a single gallery. Long on documentation and short on artifacts, the exhibit examines three major military actions spearheaded by Soeharto: the March 1, 1949 offensive in Yogyakarta, the integration of Papua and the failed coup of 1965. All the information is presented in the Indonesian language, without subtitles.
Visitors enter the main exhibit hall to digital projections of rocks and swaying green shoots on the ground, creating the impression of strolling through a rice paddy. Above and on either side, images of Soeharto's early Army days are plastered on dinner-platter-sized rolls of film arranged in the shape of a tunnel.
Emerging from the tunnel, visitors arrive at a touchscreen that has distilled the exhibit down to a few dozen swipeable pages of documents, maps and historical interpretations.
The arguments here are, perhaps unsurprisingly, immune to revisionist history that questions, among other things, Soeharto's leading role in the March 1 offensive, the validity of the referendum that brought Papua into the Indonesian fold and the vilification of the PKI as the sole actor behind the attempted 1965 coup.
In semi-darkness, visitors walk past dozens of blown-up documents and miniature dioramas that bring these events to life. Studious attention is given, for example, to the 1962 New York Agreement that ended the standoff between the Netherlands and Indonesia over the administration of Papua and the Supersemar memorandum, in which then president Sukarno, facing unrest in the streets of Jakarta, granted Soeharto emergency authority to restore order, inadvertently providing the general with the legal means to supplant him as president.
The museum saves its most uncompromising language for the failed coup of 1965, using words like 'savage' to describe the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), which it blames for the murder of six generals and which, after a wave of retaliatory violence claimed up to a million Indonesians, Soeharto officially dissolved in 1966.
On the walls hang grisly images of the corpses of the six generals and still-shots of the Jakarta home where they were allegedly tortured before being dumped down a well near Halim Air Force Base. The squeamish are advised to avoid this section of the exhibit.
The final section of the exhibit, although billed as a look at Indonesian development, consists mainly of snapshots of Soeharto schmoozing with other heads-of-state on one wall and an overview of the presidential elections ' when every five years during his term Soeharto was elected president indirectly by the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) ' on the other. Though political scientists today view these elections as far from free and fair, at the museum they establish Soeharto's commanding popularity.
The rest of the museum comprises a pendopo, which is normally used to house large student groups on field trips for the screening of a special documentary on Soeharto's life, and a joglo (traditional Javanese home), where Soeharto's family members occasionally spend holidays.
Though visitors are not allowed inside the joglo, they are permitted to sit on the porch and leaf through a slew of biographies.
The most impressive of these is a lengthy, six-volume work that reads like a diary, providing a day-to-day record of what Soeharto did, whom he met and what he accomplished during his tenure.
Overall, the museum makes a passionate case for Soeharto's ability to hold the young nation together, delivering it like a sermon to a congregation of believers.
It does not seek to convert the unbelieving because it does not acknowledge any of the popular criticisms: namely that his leadership was repressive, corrupt, nepotistic and opportunistic.
While here his status as national hero is fixed, it is worth noting that nearly seven years after his death, Soeharto has yet to be added to Indonesia's National Hero list.
Exiting the museum, the ubiquitous T-shirts of Soeharto, waving hello with the words, 'Piye kabare, penak jamanku tho?' (What's up, it was better when I was around, yeah?), came into view, on sale.
Coming on the heels of such an all-knowing museum, it was liberating to be confronted with an invitation to think critically.
' Photos by Cory Rogers
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