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Fear, pain and shame in
Aceh
By Lesley McCulloch
In the police
stations of Aceh, in Indonesia's far northwest corner,
fear is the daily diet of the detainees. Not fear of the
outcome of a due legal process, but fear of torture by
Indonesian police to force a false confession.
For several days now information has been
leaking from the Polres (local police) station in the
provincial capital Banda Aceh. The sources are varied,
but most of the information comes from a police officer
who is disgusted by what he says he is forced to
participate in, and ashamed that he feels so helpless to
intervene on behalf of those held there.
Since
the imposition of martial law in Aceh on May 1, the
number of detainees without access to lawyers and
charged with treason has increased exponentially.
Stories from various sources, all of whom must
remain undisclosed, tell of torture, intimidation, sleep
deprivation, overcrowding, and lack of food and water.
The torture is systematic and takes place at all hours
of the day and night.
This past Sunday evening,
there were 37 prisoners in two cells in Polres, each
cell measuring three by four meters. Two small meals are
provided daily but clean water for drinking is in short
supply. Lack of food, dehydration, and the heat caused
by the overcrowded conditions has resulted in many
becoming sick, but a doctor has yet to visit those held
in the Polres hell. The shared toilet has been blocked
for several days, many have open wounds as a result of
torture by the police, the risk of infection in such
unsanitary conditions is very high.
In the past
few days, Amiruddin, 16, has been beaten so badly around
the head that he now has sight in only one eye. There
are several detainees in custody under the age of 18,
all of whom have been beaten. These detainees are,
according to international standards, still classified
as children.
There are several elderly
prisoners, and their senior years have not spared them
from torture. On Monday, Tengku Wahab arrived in one of
the cells, his rib already broken from a beating he
received while in detention at the Brimob station.
Brimob is Indonesia's elite mobile brigade whose
reputation for murder and violence is similar to that of
the dreaded Indonesian military. Tengku Wahab is 63
years old and, as with most of the detainees, he has
been charged with treason.
The
Indonesian government has announced that those suspected
of supporting the separatist movement (GAM) in the
province will be charged with treason. On Monday, there were
16 other inmates in Tengku Wahab's cell, 15 of whom
had been charged with the same offense. The fate of most
of the 20 prisoners in the cell next to Wahab's is
the same. There are two, however, who have been detained
at Polres for five months, and to date no formal charge
has been made against them. One of the inmates is
mentally ill; his charge is also treason.
At 9:30pm on
Sunday a new prisoner arrived. The police were angry,
they were shouting: "You are a member of GAM, do you
think we are stupid? Say you are, say it!" As they
shouted, they slammed his head into the bars of the cell
- again and again. By telephone at 11:30pm, and
obviously in some distress, the police officer who had
opened the door to the Polres torture rooms said:
"Please call the International Red Cross, these people
need help. God forgive me for what I am part of, God
forgive us all."
Information comes not only from
this police officer, but from several sources, including
those who have been released: "Yes, I was beaten, but I
am OK. I don't know why I was released, I guess I am
just lucky. Please help my brothers who are still in
Polres." When asked to identify the instruments of
torture, recently released Saifuddin (not his real name)
said, "They use anything they can to torture the
prisoners. They beat people with guns, rattan poles,
wood, and even heavy books. They kick with their boots,
in the ribs and on the head, and they have burned so
many with cigarettes and with lighters. Sometimes they
forced me to hold a ball pen between my fingers and then
squeezed my fingers together."
The international
community is all but silent on the issue of Aceh, but
has given much more time to the detention of Myanmar
pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. In fact, it is
interesting to note that at a recent Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Ministerial Meeting,
Indonesian Foreign Affairs Minister Hassan Wirayuda was
one of the most vocal critics of the Myanmar government.
Hassan said of the detention of Suu Kyi: "Myanmar is a
setback for the country itself and also a setback for
the region." He was objecting to her detention and the
conditions under which she is being held.
But
his words ring hollow when in May, back home in
Indonesia, the government of which Hassan is part
launched against the Acehnese the biggest military
operation since the 1975 invasion of East Timor. So
many in Hassan's own country are being detained in
conditions that violate all norms and conventions
relating to the treatment of prisoners, and also the
rights of civilians in a war situation.
It is
one thing to fight on the battlefield; it is quite
another for members of the national police force to
torture, maim and kill those detained under dubious
laws. The Indonesian government has interpreted the
relative silence of the international community on the
issue of Aceh as support for its actions in that remote
province.
Why is the Indonesian police force
torturing and maiming children and the elderly in Aceh?
Why, on Saturday, was the body of one prisoner who
succumbed to the ferocity of the torture taken from the
Polres at night? Where is the body now?
Hassan
said the Myanmar government cannot ignore the calls of
the international community to release Suu Kyi. If this
is so, then the solution to the problems in Aceh
described above is quite simple: the international
community need only request that the Indonesian
government prevent its police force from torturing
civilians, including children and the elderly. Could it
really be this simple?
Lesley
McCulloch is a research fellow at the Monash Asia
Institute, Melbourne, Australia.
(Copyright
2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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