November 13, 2025
JAKARTA – The government’s decision to name former president Soeharto a national hero has drawn largely positive reactions across social media, except on X, despite sharp criticism from human rights groups over his three decades of authoritarian rule.
Soeharto was among ten figures conferred the national hero title by President Prabowo Subianto, his former son-in-law, during a ceremony at the State Palace on Monday to mark National Heroes Day.
The move immediately reignited public debate over how Indonesia remembers its past, particularly the legacy of the late strongman who ruled from 1967 to 1998. Rights groups and historians have long accused Soeharto’s regime of widespread human rights abuses and systemic repression, warning that such recognition risks legitimizing state violence and erasing victims’ suffering.
Throughout his 32-year rule, Soeharto oversaw a series of major rights violations, including the penembakan misterius (mysterious shootings) between 1982 and 1985, in which thousands of suspected criminals were summarily executed by what many believed were state-sanctioned death squads.
His government was also linked to the 1984 Tanjung Priok massacre, the 1989 Talangsari killings in Lampung and the May 1998 riots, which led to hundreds of deaths and the abduction of pro-democracy activists in the final days of his rule.
Read also: Prabowo honors Soeharto, raising fears of authoritarian resurgence
Despite this record, the late leader continues to attract “nostalgia” among segments of the public who associate his era with economic stability and social order, sentiments that have become more pronounced amid today’s rising living costs and political uncertainty, a recent report released by big data consultancy Drone Emprit highlighted.
The report, which based on cross-platform analysis from Oct. 20 to Nov. 7, further found that overall online sentiment toward Soeharto’s national hero title was positive, with Facebook and TikTok showing the strongest approval; 80 percent and 77 percent of posts, respectively, carrying positive tones.
“On Facebook and TikTok, [the conversations] were dominated by emotional narratives that praise Soeharto’s leadership persona,” Drone Emprit founder Ismail Fahmi wrote on X on Sunday. He added that Facebook, in particular, was filled with nostalgia for economic stability and social order under Soeharto’s New Order regime.
Instagram users showed more mixed views, with 56 percent of posts registering positive sentiment, highlighting Soeharto’s contribution to economic and infrastructure development. But some still question his track record and leadership.
Only on X did the conversation turn decisively critical, with 63 percent of posts expressing negative sentiment.
“X remains the most critical space filled with counternarratives. While some members of the public remember Soeharto as a symbol of stability and economic development, others recall him as a figure marked by a long record of human rights violations and corruption,” Ismail went on.
Generational divide?
Drone Emprit analyst Rizal Nova Mujahid said generational factors partly explained the contrasting opinions across platforms, with Facebook’s overwhelmingly positive posts largely coming from older users.
“The age demographics of Facebook users appear to be dominated by the generation that experienced the Soeharto era, contrary to X and Instagram,” Rizal told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
He added that differences in user culture also played a significant role. Instagram and Facebook tend to have fewer critical voices compared to X. “On X, negative sentiments are dominant because the discussions are led by activists and more critical, [politically engaged] users.”
Beyond written posts, X users also expressed their disdain toward Soeharto’s national hero title through memes. One example reworked famed filmmaker Martin Scorsese’s quote “Absolute Cinema” into an image of Soeharto captioned “Absolute Criminal”.
Political analyst Abdil Mughis Mudhoffir from the University of Melbourne cautioned against taking the overwhelmingly positive online sentiment at face value, suggesting that coordinated campaigns or paid online influencers, also known as buzzers, could be shaping the narrative.
“It is very possible that buzzers or just automatic [posts] were mobilized to amplify these posts,” Abdil told the Post on Tuesday.
Read also: ‘Betraying reformasi’: Survivors of human rights cases oppose plan to name Soeharto hero
However, he acknowledged that many younger Indonesians who did not live through the New Order regime might genuinely hold more favorable views of Soeharto because of limited historical understanding of his human rights record.
Political analyst Wasisto Raharjo Jati of the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) said nostalgia for economic stability often resonates more when current conditions feel uncertain, telling the Post that some positive sentiment among younger generations might be “because the current state of the economy they are living in pales in comparison to that of Soeharto’s New Order era”.
Rizal of Drone Emprit, however, said his team found “no indication of buzzers driving positive sentiment” during the monitoring period, noting that most of the high-engagement posts came from “organic accounts.”