Suharto children's assets facing freeze
Stephen Fitzpatrick
/ Indonesia Media
 INDONESIAN prosecutors have begun documenting the wealth of former president Suharto's children and will apply to have their assets frozen ahead of the corruption cases being brought against the family.
With the death of Suharto a week ago, an existing civil case for misuse of funds in a charitable foundation that were supposed to be used for education programs will now target the children.
Six similar cases are being prepared by the Attorney-General's office.
"If we have details about their assets - including personal assets, whether it's houses, shares, vehicles, land - we will apply to have that listed as a guarantee," Yoseph Suarda Sabda, director of civil prosecutions in the prosecutor-general's office, told The Weekend Australian.
Mr Sabda said prosecutors would call a family representative on Tuesday to appear in the matter, which has been running for several months, over the misuse of funds from the Supersemar foundation.
Prosecutors are asking for 11.5trillion rupiah ($1.4 billion) in returned money and damages in the Supersemar case.
"If they refuse to appear, the hearing can go ahead without them - just as it has been all along," Mr Sabda said.
He said the Suharto children, ranging in age from 59 to 45, could try to avoid responsibility for the lawsuits by denying the inheritance due from their late father. "If my father has a debt and my father dies, then I inherit that debt," Mr Sabda said.
"They can try to reject being the inheritors but there's a process they must follow. They would have to go to court and specify what the conditions are under which they reject the inheritance. If it makes no sense, the court can reject their application."
Suharto family lawyer Juan Felix Tampubolon poured scorn on the prosecutors' intentions, saying they "don't make sense" and were "excessive".
However, Mr Sabda said the plan would ensure the Suharto family assets - which, according to world investigations body Transparency International, could be worth more than $15billion - "could not be sold or transferred into another name".
Debate on the vexed question of whether to grant Suharto national hero status continued yesterday, with former parliamentary speaker Akbar Tandjung saying he supported the proposal but that the corruption cases should be dealt with first.
"He (Suharto) proved himself," said Mr Tandjung, the long-time chairman of Suharto's former ruling Golkar party.
"During the war of independence, in his command of the operation to free Irian Jaya (in 1962), right up to 1965-66 when he eliminated the PKI Indonesian Communist Party."
But the correct procedures should be followed, he said. There have been protests against the calls - largely voiced by Golkar - for Suharto to be officially made a national hero.
The Indonesian National Commission on Human Rights is expected to soon complete a study on human rights violations during Suharto's rule.
"Even though he's dead, it doesn't mean that the cases are closed. We are continuing our study into those violations of human rights and this is expected to be completed in early March," commission chairman Ifdhal Kasim told Antara news agency.
He said that despite Suharto's death, many who carried out the worst abuses of his regime were still alive and should be held responsible.
The commission had a particular focus on five large cases, which have been left untouched.
Mr Kasim cited the prison labour camp of Buru island, where thousands of alleged communists and sympathisers were jailed without trial after a 1965-1966 crackdown, and the extrajudicial killing of street criminals in the 1980s, as examples of cases to be looked into.
The massacre of Muslim protesters at Jakarta's Tanjung Priok port in 1984 and special military operations against separatist rebels in Aceh and Papua provinces were the two other major cases studied, he said.
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