FILE PHOTO: A boy walks past a mock cemetery seen as a symbol of the victims of the Suharto's regime, as activists held a tribunal on February 12, 2008, in Jakarta, to judge Suharto's cases before he stepped down in 1998. - AFP
JAKARTA: For Indonesia’s Generation Z, born in the late 1990s and early 2000s, life under the iron rule of the late president Suharto is a condition they did not have to experience directly, as the strongman stepped down in 1998 after 32 years in power.
Yet, memories of Suharto's heavy-handedness in governing the country have been passed down to these twentysomething youths during their formative years. Thus, it has become easier for them to denounce the plan from President Prabowo Subianto's administration to bestow national hero status upon the former general.
