Problems of references for Suharto Soeharto There is it seems to me a rather important problem which seems to leads to a worrying bias in referencing matters relating to Suharto Soeharto on Wikipedia The problem is easy enough to state it is that English language sources which Wikipedia tends to understandably prefer for references are probably systematically more critical of Suharto Soeharto than are Indonesian language sources which Wikipedia understandably discourages relying on for references On one hand it s easy enough to appreciate the preference for English language references on Wikipedia But on the other hand what does one do when this preference seems to lead to a systematic bias The bias arises if it does indeed arise and I guess there would be different views about this because within Indonesia in the Indonesian language literature there is more sympathy for Suharto Soeharto than in the international literature Certainly the debate about the role and place of Suharto Soeharto in Indonesian history within Indonesia has a quite different flavour to the international debate Recent important books about Suharto Soeharto published within Indonesia both 2011 include a Wiranto 7 tahun menggali pemikiran dan tindakan Pak Harto ISBN 978 602 8112 12 3 and b Mahpudi et al Pak Harto the untold stories ISBN 978 979 22 7131 1 It is true that both books are written by authors who are sympathetic to Suharto Soeharto But on the other hand quite a bit of the international literature is written by authors who are critical of Suharto Soeharto And the latter book by Mahpudi et al provides a remarkable picture of Pak Harto as they refer to him I have no easy solution to this problem The purpose of this current post is simply to note that the bias seems to exist and that there doesn t seem to be an easy solution