Indonesia: Reports reveal police, army abuses

An Amnesty International report published on June 24, Unfinished Business: Police Accountability in Indonesia, said beatings, torture, extortion, and even murder are still habitually carried out by Indonesian police, although some improvements have been made to police culture in recent years.

Very poor often homeless criminals who bolak balik — repeatedly offend — are said to be sometimes summarily executed.

The second report, What Did I Do Wrong?, published on June 25 by the New York-based Human Rights Watch, detailed cases of brutality by Indonesian special forces, Kopassus, in the town of Merauke in West Papua.

Twenty people were interviewed and six cases were looked at in detail, all involving almost random, spur of the moment, acts of violence by Kopassus soldiers, not directed against Papuans thought of as "separatists", but for ordinary law and order matters, primarily public drunkenness, or other, obscure reasons.

In April 2008, five Kopassus soldiers raided the home of Nicolaas, 27, apparently because he had held a party the night before. They took him and two of his friends, Andrew, 25, and Bert, 26, to the Kopassus mess hall. Thereafter, the men claim they underwent a two hour ordeal of beatings, torture and humiliations.

It is said that the complaints of ordinary people against Kopassus soldiers are ignored by the police, who in any case have no jurisdiction over Kopassus soldiers. Police are said to be fearful of retaliation should they report cases to military police.

[Abridged from a June 30 post at Indonesiamatters.com.]

From GLW issue 801