Prosecuting Ex-Despots Can Backfire by Causing Others to Cling to Power

WASHINGTON — A new specter is haunting Asian rulers: the fear that they--or their aides or family members--may someday be called to account or prosecuted for any abuses that took place during their time in power.

When former South Korean President Chun Doo Hwan and his successor, Roh Tae Woo, stand in court in Seoul next week to hear the verdict at their criminal trial, you can bet that authoritarian leaders elsewhere in Asia will be watching almost as carefully as the South Korean people.

Chun and Roh once lived amid the pomp and splendor of the Blue House, South Korea’s version of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Now, if they are found guilty of sedition and corruption charges as expected, they could face years in prison. Indeed, prosecutors have asked for the death penalty against Chun, though it seems improbable that such a sentence would be carried out.

Other Asian leaders probably want to know if the same sort of thing could happen to them. The best example is Indonesia, where President Suharto is trying to figure out whether, or when, he should relinquish the power he has held for three decades.

Until now, Asian despots have managed to stave off the trend that has swept through other regions of the world, where former leaders have been questioned or put on trial for past transgressions after repressive regimes have given up or been forced from power.

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That certainly has been true in many of the countries in Eastern and Central Europe. A recent book, “The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism,” by Tina Rosenberg, shows how some former Communist leaders such as East Germany’s Erich Honecker were put on trial for actions such as the order to shoot Germans fleeing the country. Others, such as Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the former Polish leader, were intensively grilled by parliamentary commissions about actions such as his decision to impose martial law in 1981.

Latin America’s new democracies also have had their own ways of reckoning with history. In Argentina, military commanders were tried and convicted for carrying out the “dirty war” in which thousands of people disappeared during the late 1970s and early ‘80s. Chile set up a commission to investigate repression and human rights abuses. Even though many of the leaders found responsible for abuses in these countries were ultimately pardoned or granted immunity, at least there was an effort to come to grips with the legacy of repression.

Why do this? A country emerging from dictatorship to democracy has a responsibility to seek some justice for victims or the families of people who were tortured or killed. In addition, writes Rosenberg, a new democracy has an obligation to its future: “to ensure that dictatorship never returns.”

The issue of accountability for the past isn’t talked about in Asia much, perhaps because leaders who hold absolute--or near-absolute--power don’t want to think about giving it up.

But you can get a glimpse of the potency of this submerged issue in Indonesia, where Suharto’s regime in recent weeks has carried out a series of arrests and other repressive actions to crack down on the political opposition.

Suharto faces a decision on whether to hold on to power for yet another five-year term as president when his term runs out in 1998. Thus the underlying questions unsettling Indonesia are who might succeed him and whether Suharto might be willing to open up his nation to at least a greater degree of democracy.

“If he [Suharto] does step down, he wants firm guarantees that his successors will not turn on him in the way that is happening now in South Korea, where two former presidents are being impeached by the public as well as their successor president,” Juwono Sudarsono, vice governor of Indonesia’s National Defense Institute, observed in a recent interview with an Asian newspaper.

Even if Suharto were promised that he would never be prosecuted, those assurances might not be granted to his family. Suharto’s children have managed to make use of their family ties to grab control of many sectors of the Indonesian economy. They would seem to be prime targets for any future inquiry into corruption or abuses of power.

Suharto is certainly not the only Asian leader worried about the implications of the prosecutions in Seoul.

* Myanmar (formerly Burma): The military junta known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council has one of the world’s ugliest records. It has resorted to force to put down demonstrations seeking democracy, refused to abide by the results of democratic elections and then jailed leaders of the opposition group that won those elections.

If the opposition forces led by Aung San Suu Kyi came to power, at least some of the leaders of the SLORC might well be questioned or prosecuted for their past brutality.

* North Korea: Confronted by food shortages and other economic miseries, the leaders in Pyongyang are trying to figure out how the North Korean regime can survive. One possibility is to open the way for economic or political reform, and another (which to be sure is farfetched now) is to work out some sort of deal for reunification with South Korea.

But North Korean leaders may well be terrified that if they give up power, they will be prosecuted for their decades of abuse against their own people.

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The example North Koreans often pay close attention to is Germany, the once-divided country that was reunited after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the newly reunited country, Erich Mielke, the former head of the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police, was put on trial for offenses dating to 1931, when Communists and Nazis were battling on the streets. Would South Korea, which is now putting its own former leaders on trial, be any more lenient to the tyrants in Pyongyang?

The examples of Indonesia, Myanmar and North Korea illustrate an important paradox in Asian politics now: If you want to bring about more democratic or pluralistic political systems, the only way to do so short of a revolution is by persuading dictators or authoritarian regimes to yield power. Yet despots aren’t likely to step aside if they think the end result is that they will be thrown into jail--or, in the case of South Korea’s Chun, threatened with the death penalty.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that these leaders should be granted immunity from being called to account for what they have done.

It is especially important to establish the rule of law in Asian countries such as South Korea, where, in the past, Confucian traditions have meant that power and authority were based on personal loyalties rather than abstract principles. If former leaders such as Chun and Roh have broken the law, then it is important that they be held to the same standards as other South Koreans, so long as the prosecutions are fair.

Yet it is also hard to see what purpose would be served by subjecting Chun to the death penalty. Indeed, doing so might actually hurt the cause of democracy by causing other leaders in Asia to cling to power even more tightly than they already do.

After all, the process of opening up South Korean politics began under Chun. In 1987, when he was president, Chun cleared the way for the country’s first presidential election.

He did so, to be sure, only under tremendous pressure, both from within South Korea and from the United States. At the time, the Reagan administration was pressing the case for democracy in South Korea a lot more forcefully than the Clinton administration is now pushing Suharto to open up Indonesian politics.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher recently said the United States hopes to see “an orderly transition of power” in Indonesia that “expresses the popular will.” However, the administration has rejected suggestions that it should suspend arms exports to Indonesia or take some other tough action in response to Suharto’s crackdown.

If Chun is sentenced to death as a result of the democratic processes that he helped initiate, then other authoritarian leaders in Asia such as Suharto aren’t going to be willing even to start down the path of political pluralism. What kind of an outcome is that?

“The line between whitewash and witch hunt, amnesty and amnesia, is often a blurry one,” Rosenberg writes. “Justice must be done--but too much justice is also injustice. Drawing this line has become one of the most important new human rights challenges of our time.”

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Over the coming years, Asia is going to have to find its own way in dealing with abuses of the past, just as the people of Eastern Europe and Latin America already have. Chun and Roh are the first former leaders in the dock, but there may be others elsewhere. We can only hope that the process is fair and that the end result will be fewer despots rather than more of them.

The International Outlook column appears here every other Monday.