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Spoils Of A Massacre
23 Jul 2001
In Indonesia 35 years ago, a military dictator took over,
a million people were killed and a red carpet was rolled out for western capital.
It was the start of globalisation in Asia, a model for the rest of the world,
leaving a legacy of sweatshops and corruption.
Flying into Jakarta, it is not difficult to imagine the city below
fitting the World Bank's description of Indonesia.
A "model pupil of globalisation"
was the last of many laurels the bank bestowed.
That was almost four years ago, in the summer of 1997.
Within weeks, short-term global capital had fled the country,
the stock market and currency had crashed,
and the number of people living in absolute poverty had reached almost 70 million.
The next year, General Suharto was forced to resign after 30 years as dictator,
taking with him severance pay estimated at $15 billion,
the equivalent of almost 13% of his country's foreign debt, much of it owed to the World Bank.
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