Fears for drug users and many others after Indonesia’s presidential election

Indonesia appears to have chosen an authoritarian-minded former general with a harrowing human rights record as its next president. Preliminary results of the February 14 election gave Prabowo Subianto a commanding lead over his rivals, with an outright majority of votes. Counting continues, but if official results confirm this in March, he will take office on October 20 as the eighth president of the word’s fourth most-populous country.

Prabowo quickly declared victory. The other two candidates have not conceded, but have asked the Indonesia’s legislature to investigate electoral irregularities or potential fraud.

Prabowo is the son-in-law of former President Suharto, whose dictatorial rule from 1968-1998 was characterized by systemic human rights abuses. As a senior military commander under Suharto, Prabowo was implicated in a number of atrocities. He has also made comments suggesting he would like to rule Indonesia as a dictator. His rise to power could have devastating consequences for the diverse country’s most marginalized people—including people who use drugs, even given a brutal current drug war.

Prabowo entered the picture during the most notorious events of recent Indonesian history. From 1975 to 1999, Suharto’s regime invaded and occupied the island of East Timor, perpetrating torture, extrajudicial killings, massacres and sexual crimes in what is widely considered genocide.

Prabowo took part in this genocide when commanding Indonesian forces. According to journalist Allan Nairn in the Intercept, who interviewed Prabowo, the future president participated in a 1983 massacre in Kraras, and personally tortured people. Nairn, himself a survivor of another massacre in East Timor, also relates how in 1998, Prabowo tried to suppress protests in the last days of Suharto’s rule, by abducting and “disappearing” 13 democratic activists, while also encouraging killings and other crimes against ethnic Chinese Indonesians.