Rights group: Indonesian police abuses endemic in Papua

Human Rights Watch said Brimob, Indonesia's paramilitary police force, was responsible for the most serious rights violations, saying it routinely committed extrajudicial executions, torture and rape with impunity - although reports of brutal treatment by Indonesian army soldiers continued to emerge.

In a 93-page report released Thursday, the group documented 14 cases of abuse, including eight alleged killings, two rapes and many cases of ill treatment and torture by police and military officers in the province's highlands since 2005.

A long-running but low-level separatist movement led by the armed Papua Free Movement has simmered in the easternmost Indonesian province since the 1960s, and the Jakarta government restricts journalists and human rights workers from travelling to the troubled region without special permission.

While one Army officer was jailed for eight months in the killing of a 16-year-old boy, "no Brimob or regular police officers have been investigated or prosecuted for their role in the remaining seven killings," the report said. "No officers have been charged in either of the two rape cases in which police were implicated."

The rights group claims it wrote to both the head of the police and the head of the military in Papua asking for information on the cases documented in the report but received no response.

"My teeth fell out," one of the victims said. "Blood flowed out. ... I was kicked in the nose, the mouth. I could not count the number of times." 

"I was beaten with the end of a gun on my back and with fists to my face. My mouth and eyes were smashed and bleeding," another said.

Indonesia won sovereignty over Papua, formerly a Dutch colony in the western half of the island of New Guinea, in 1969 after a UN-sponsored ballot of tribal leaders, which critics have dismissed as a sham.

"Conditions in Papua's Central Highlands are an important test of how Indonesia's security forces perform when political tensions are high and regions are closed to outside observers," said Joseph Saunders, Human Rights Watch's deputy programme director. "The police are failing that test badly."

Human Rights Watch called on the Indonesian government to open Papua to independent observers and to allow independent and transparent investigations of rights abuses

"By keeping the region closed to outside scrutiny, officials in Jakarta are receiving biased and partial accounts of what is taking place," Saunders said.

"Reliable information is essential if officials are genuinely interested in identifying problems and finding lasting solutions," he said.

During a visit to Indonesia last month, Hina Jilani, the UN special envoy for human rights defenders, called for better protection for activists in Papua, saying she was concerned about police and military harassment.//DPA (Deutsch Presse-Agentur)