bron: Gulf Times (Verenigde Arabische Emiraten/United Arab Emirates)
Indonesian police said yesterday they will investigate allegations that members of a US- and Australian-backed anti-terror unit have tortured political activists in the eastern province of Maluku.
The Detachment 88 counter-terror squad allegedly tortured 12 suspected separatists who were arrested last month for possessing an outlawed South Maluku Republic (RMS) flag.
The allegations came as another Maluku separatist, Yusuf Sipakoly, died in custody on Monday from injuries his family says were sustained during torture.
Sipakoly was arrested in 2007 for unfurling the outlawed flag and performing a traditional war dance in front of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Police in Ambon, the capital of Maluku province, denied that his death was the result of kidney failure stemming from torture, and dismissed allegations that he had been denied medical treatment for years.
But police spokesman Marwoto Soeto said in Jakarta that allegations against Detachment 88 officers related to the suspects arrested between August 1 and 7 would be the subject of a “thorough investigation”.
“If the allegations are true, the officers could face charges… Torture is a criminal act which carries a maximum penalty of nine years in jail,” he said.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported on Monday that members of Detachment 88 had beaten the detainees for up to a week, brought them close to suffocation with plastic bags, stabbed them with nails and forced them to eat raw chillies.
Detachment 88 receives millions of dollars in funding and support from Australia and the US, which helped establish the unit in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks and the 2002 Bali bombings.
Keen to foster ties with a mainly Muslim emerging economic power, the US announced in July that it would resume ties with Indonesia’s Kopassus special forces unit, which is also accused of atrocities and torture.
Australia resumed ties with Kopassus in 2003 after severing ties in 1999 over the force’s role in alleged crimes against humanity in East Timor.
An Australian foreign affairs spokesman said Canberra was “concerned” about the allegations against Detachment 88 and embassy officials had made inquiries with the Indonesian police, including during a recent visit to Ambon.
Indonesia is a signatory to the UN Convention Against Torture but it has no corresponding law against the practice, which is widespread throughout the country’s prisons and police forces.
The UN special rapporteur for torture visited Indonesia in 2007 and found that police used torture as a “routine practice in Jakarta and other metropolitan areas of Java”, the most populated island in the archipelago.
Indonesia has fought numerous separatist insurgencies throughout the sprawling archipelago – including an ongoing but low-level conflict in Papua – and remains extremely sensitive to breakaway movements.
Jakarta crushed the RMS shortly after its declaration of independence in 1950 but the movement was revived following the fall of authoritarian president Suharto in 1998. AFP
