Indonesian police are still frequently involved in the torture and abuse of suspects and perpetrators are rarely brought to justice, Amnesty International said in a report yesterday.
The London-based rights group recognized attempts in the last decade to make police more professional and accountable, but said these had failed to stamp out widespread problems.
“In some cases, abuses can be directly linked to police attempts to accept bribes from suspects,” Donna Guest, Amnesty’s Asia-Pacific deputy director, told a news conference, adding that those who were unable to pay often received worse treatment.
Even though the top echelons in the government and the police had made commitments to change, this had not yet permeated down to many police officers, Guest said.
The report found that drug users, repeat offenders and women, including sex workers, were particularly vulnerable to abuse.
VICTIMS
Amnesty said it had spoken to abuse victims, police officials, lawyers and rights groups over the last two years while compiling the report.
It said that disciplinary mechanisms within the police were unable to effectively deal with complaints over police behavior, while victims often did not know where to report abuses.
Amnesty urged the government to acknowledge publicly the prevalence of abuses and to ensure prompt, impartial and effective investigations into allegations.
DEFENSE
Police spokesman Abubakar Nataprawira defended the record of the force of 371,000 personnel.
“By 2010, we aim to be an institution loved, and not feared, by the people,” adding that a police restructuring was still in progress and that a mechanism had also been put in place to punish officers taking bribes.
Indonesia is consistently rated one of the most corrupt countries in the world, which is seen as a key deterrent for foreign investment.
Transparency International Indonesia in January rated the police as the most corrupt institution in the country.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RSS