Click to expand Image Demonstrators hold placards depicting the late Indonesian President Suharto during a rally against a government proposal to name him a “national hero,” in Jakarta, Indonesia, November 6, 2025. © 2025 Kyodo via AP Images Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto declared 10 people “national heroes” on November 10, which Indonesia celebrates as Heroes Day. Among them was the late President Soeharto, who ruled Indonesia from 1965 to 1998. More than 80 public figures, including historians, have written a letter protesting the “hero” title for Soeharto, who presided over three decades of military dictatorship and systematic human rights violations. Soeharto’s rule included media censorship, tight restrictions on freedom of association and assembly, a highly politicized and controlled judiciary, widespread torture, attacks on the rights of minorities, massacres of alleged communists, and numerous war crimes committed in East Timor, Aceh, West Papua, and the Moluccan islands. He also led a notoriously corrupt regime in which he, family members, and cronies amassed billions of dollars in ill-gotten wealth; funds that could have addressed Indonesia’s widespread poverty and social problems.President Prabowo’s choice of Soeharto as a national hero sends a deeply troubling message to Indonesians and to the rest of the world. Prabowo has been implicated in serious human rights violations and war crimes while a general under Soeharto’s command, and was dismissed from the Indonesian army in 1998 for kidnapping student activists. As president, Prabowo has supported amendments to the 2004 Armed Forces Law that significantly expands the military’s role in civilian governance and weaken legal checks on abusive officers.Giving a “national hero” award to Soeharto is not without consequence. Soeharto never faced charges for the crimes he oversaw and to date there has been virtually no accountability for the widespread abuses committed during his rule.The failure to hold Soeharto and his abusive generals to account facilitates the whitewashing and distortion of history that is now taking place under Prabowo. This will make it even harder for Indonesian authorities now, and in the future, to end impunity for serious human rights violations and obtain justice for the victims and their families.