Kontras, Amnesty International criticize justice system
Kontras, Amnesty International criticize justice system
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The watchdog group National Commission on Missing Persons and
Victims of Violence (Kontras) is of the opinion that torture,
especially during the interrogation of suspects in the country,
will not end if the state fails to thoroughly improve the
criminal justice system.
Kontras co-founder Munir said on Monday that no current laws
or regulations are directly applicable against torture nor can
any be used to control the behavior of the police, state
investigators or the military and security forces.
The government has only begun to concentrate on creating legal
prohibitions against torture in the draft of the revised Criminal
Code which is not yet complete, but will be debated in the House
of Representatives when they reconvene.
Munir argued that such a condition, inevitably, gives impunity
to those responsible for human rights abuses in the course of
interrogations.
"Even though Indonesia has signed the international convention
against torture in 1998, which has been stipulated in our
Criminal Code and Criminal Procedure Code, it doesn't mean that
our national laws are automatically enforceable to end the
abuses.
"Those laws have no support from other laws, such as the
military law or clauses in the procedure code controlling the
investigators. Therefore, the logical result is, they give
impunity to the perpetrators of torture," he told The Jakarta
Post.
Munir made the remarks in response to Amnesty International's
suggestion, whose press release was made available to the Post,
which stated that to explicitly prohibit torture in the Criminal
Code is the first and most basic step that should be taken by
Jakarta to end torture.
Amnesty's statement was made in conjunction with the current
meeting of the United Nations Committee against Torture which is
reviewing periodic reports from the governments of Indonesia,
Israel, Ukraine, Zambia and Benin.
A team of 10 independent experts, who chaired the session in
Geneva, Switzerland, questioned Jakarta's commitment, after
reading reports of ill-treatment carried out by the security
forces in many forms.
Amnesty revealed that its documented cases of torture included
criminal suspects and individuals involved in land and labor
disputes, who are often beaten, burnt with cigarettes or matches,
threatened with death, or raped by interrogators.
However, National Police deputy spokesman Brig. Gen. Edward
Aritonang argued that his force had taken firm actions against
policemen who were in violation of the laws which prohibit
torture of suspects.
He also stated that suspects would, in the future, always be
accompanied by their lawyers during interrogation -- the police
will provide lawyers if the suspects cannot afford them -- so the
suspects can file a protest should there be any torture.
"The existing laws clearly state that those responsible for
torture will be punished. However, I cannot say that there is no
torture during interrogation, but we work diligently to avoid it.
We have even brought some of our men to the military court for
torturing suspects," he told the Post.