ndonesian denied yesterday that any of its security forces trained in the US had a history of human-rights violations as alleged in a report released by a US congressional investigative office.
The US Government Accountability Office said in the report issued on Friday that the US violated US law by training 6,900 Indonesian, Filipino and Thai police without determining beforehand whether they had a history of human-rights violations. The police officers were trained by the US Justice Department with State Department law enforcement assistance between 2001 and last year at a cost of US$265.7 million, the report said.
Among the 4,000 Indonesians trained in civil-military relations and human-rights issues were 32 trainees "from a notorious special-forces police unit previously prohibited under State [Department] policy from receiving US training funds because of the unit's prior human-rights abuses," the report said.
But National Police Spokesman Brigadier General Sunarko Danu Artanto said the report was aimed at derailing efforts to reform his department. The police have received the bulk of US training in recent years because of a long-standing US ban on providing assistance to the military.
"We deeply regret such accusations which are blown up by some parties who do not want to see our personnel become professional," he said, adding that none of the officers trained had human-rights violations.
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