Torture of Aceh prisoners continues

Torture of Aceh prisoners continues

Tiarma Siboro, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A leading rights watchdog has called on the next Indonesian
president to reopen cases of alleged abuse and torture against
Acehnese prisoners, saying the military and police were using
violence to extract baseless confessions from those accused of
having links to the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) rebel group.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) also urged the
Indonesian Military (TNI) leadership to take all necessary
measures to immediately end the torture and mistreatment of
detainees and conduct thorough investigations into alleged rights
abuses committed by its personnel.

The watchdog makes the calls in its latest 50-page report
titled Aceh at War: Torture, Ill-treatment and Unfair Trials,
which documents how the military, police and judicial authorities
perpetrate horrific persecution, arbitrary arrests and unfair
trials against Acehnese prisoners, and how the military
authorities have maintained impunity for the security services.

"The war in Aceh is an internal conflict and not an
international war so that people captured will not be named as
prisoners of war. But, laws of war do apply generally in an
internal conflict," HRW deputy director for the Asia division
Saman Zia-Zarifi said on Monday.

Article 3 of the Geneva Convention says that people who are no
longer fighting must not be mistreated, and this includes
prisoners.

"And of course, Indonesia has signed the convention against
torture," he said.

Electric shocks, cigarette burns, beatings, skinning and other
forms of torture are routinely used by Indonesian security forces
on detainees suspected of supporting the secessionist movement in
Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, says the report, which is based on
interviews with 35 adult and child prisoners from Aceh currently
being held in five prisons in Central Java.

The watchdog was not allowed to visit Aceh, making it
difficult for its investigators to directly interview hundreds of
other prisoners currently being held in various places across the
province.

"They took me to the Polres (district level police) and before
I had got out of the car one of the soldiers straight away hit
me. For one week I was beaten and ordered to admit that I was GAM
but I did not confess it ... I was accused of a murder, but it
was not me ... They were wrong in who they arrested ... I was
burnt on my chest and my shirt was taken off and poked with
cigarettes. My body was burnt with matches. They also skinned me
with a knife. I was also kicked, hit with a gun butt until I was
bruised and vomited blood," an Acehnese prisoner is quoted by the
report as saying.

The military has denied the allegations.

The security forces claim they have killed more than 2,200 GAM
members since the military launched an all-out offensive against
the rebels in May 2003. Rights groups, however, say many of the
dead are civilians.

Hundreds have been tried in martial law courts and convicted
mostly on treason charges. According to the 35 prisoners
interviewed for the report, none of them was ever shown an arrest
warrant or informed in writing of the charges against him/her at
the time of arrest.

The watchdog says the scale of the torture and failure of due
process makes it clear that these are systematic failures, not
the actions of rogue security force members or untrained judicial
officials.

It suggests that the government invite both the U.N. Special
Rapporteur on Torture and Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment
or Punishment, and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the
Independence of Judges and Lawyers to investigate and report on
the alleged abuses in the hope that these could provide
recommendations to the newly elected government on how to stop
them.

"We are expecting the next president, be it the incumbent,
Megawati Soekarnoputri or Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, to speak
about Aceh and how to move forward on the Aceh issue because it
is now the real problem. The number of deaths is still very high,
the military operation is not producing clear results and it is a
black mark on Indonesia's record in the eyes of the international
community," Zarifi said.