Torture 'unpunished in Indonesia'
BBC 2007/11/23 12:24:50 GMT
The police are rarely punished for the abuse, Mr Nowak says

Indonesia has a "culture of impunity" in the face of ill-treatment and torture, a senior UN official has said.

Manfred Nowak, special rapporteur on torture, has spent two weeks inspecting the country's prisons and police and military detention centres.

Mr Nowak said he found evidence of detainees being electrocuted, suffering systematic beatings and even being shot in the legs at close range.

He called on the government to make torture a separate crime under the law.

The BBC's Lucy Williamson, in Jakarta, says Indonesia has regularly come under scrutiny for its human rights record. Mr Nowak's visit is the third by a UN human rights monitor this year. Safeguards call He conceded that treatment of detainees had improved since authoritarian dictator Suharto's regime came to an end in 1998.
But the envoy said abuse had continued, and the police appeared to be the main culprits.

Mr Nowak toured several regions of the country.

"The problem of police abuse appears to be sufficiently widespread as to warrant immediate attention," he said.

The level of abuse varied widely between institutions, depending on the personal behaviour of those in charge, he said.

In some places there were no reported cases of abuse, in others he said torture was systematic, with detainees regularly suffering beatings.
"In all the meetings with government officials nobody could cite one case in which a police officer was ever found guilty and sentenced by a criminal court for ill-treatment or other abuse of a detainee," he said.

He called on the Indonesian government to strengthen the legal safeguards against torture.

He said there should be a separate offence of torture, a reduction in the time people spend in police custody and an independent complaints system.

Mr Nowak, who will deliver a full report to the UN Human Rights Council, visited institutions in Jakarta, Papua, South Sulawesi, Bali and Yogyakarta.
© BBC MMVII

Indonesian freedom elusive for some
Aljazeera.netTUESDAY, MAY 27, 20085:18 
Freedom was the rallying call of the mass protests in Indonesia that toppled Suharto from the presidency in 1998.Many of the thousands of political opponents imprisoned under his rule were released after his fall, but 10 years on, people are once again being jailed for expressing their opinions.

Al Jazeera's Step Vaessen gets exclusive access to interview a man sentenced a few weeks ago to life in prison for waving a separatist flag. 

Locked up for life for waving a flag, independence activist Johan Teterissa is Indonesia's latest political prisoner. The 45-year-old Ambonese man managed to get past heavy security when Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia's president, visited the island last June and unfurled the Ambonese independence flag in his face.

Teterissa was immediately arrested, charged with subversion and sentenced to life in prison.And pictures indicate he was not treated kindly."I was seriously beaten up, they even put a grenade in my mouth. They treated me as if I was a dangerous killer," Teterissa says.

But Teterissa is only one of Indonesia's modern political prisoners. For the last 60 years a small group has been demanding independence for Ambon and in eastern Indonesia, more than 40 people are in jail for raising the independence flag. The government denies any crackdown on political opponents. Mohammad Nuh, the minister of communication, said Indonesia does have "freedom of expression now". "But if people are fighting to separate from Indonesia special laws apply. That is a very sensitive issue for us," he added.'

Half-hearted democracy
'Students, the heroes of Indonesia's struggle for democracy in 1998, are also feeling the pressure. Fahrur Rohman, now 20, was convicted of insulting the president during a demonstration and sent to prison for three months last year.Teterissa says he was beaten and had a grenade put in his mouth.
"Our democracy is only half-hearted. Disguised as democracy the government is still using an iron fist against political opponents," he says.
Some feel democracy has brought unprecedented freedom. Political activist Budiman Sudjatmiko was among those released after Suharto was forced from power. A new, more democratic Indonesia has given him the chance to join one of the country's many political parties and he is campaigning for elections next year. 
"Democracy has given me liberty, I was sentence to 13 years and if Suharto had not stepped down I would still have been in jail," he says.
But locked up for life, things look very different to Johan Teterissa. "There is no justice. We are sentenced as separatists. Can they prove this? We never took up arms, the only thing we did was to show a flag."