Human rights groups have called for an immediate investigation into the brutal beating of a young boy by Papua New Guinean police that was caught on film.
A video of the assault was filmed and this week shared widely on social media, showing armed officers hitting the naked 15-year-old boy with sticks, kicking him in the head and groin, and dragging him along rocks.
Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary (RPNGC) Commissioner Gari Baki said he had ordered a full investigation.
“Police brutality continues to be disregarded by a few officers,” he said.
Elaine Pearson, Australian director at Human Rights Watch, said that was just the first step.
“Authorities should ensure that it is independent and transparent, and that police found responsible are prosecuted,” she said. “This is not just a few bad apples. Police abuse in Papua New Guinea is sadly widespread, and it will only end when abusive officers are held to account for their crimes.”
On Thursday, Papua New Guinean police said that the officers had been suspended.
They were from the Port Moresby-based airborne tactical unit, and were in Kimbe, West New Britain Province, to assist with recent upsurges in crime, police said.
Provincial commander John Midi said he was not aware of the incident until he saw it on social media, adding that the boy had allegedly attempted to rob a young woman prior to the police assault.
The matter has been referred to an internal affairs unit, he said.
The director of police internal affairs, Robert Ali, said police management had failed to implement the commissioner’s declared “year of discipline” since last year, covering human rights and police functions, which demonstrated their own issues with personnel and discipline.
Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop said she would speak to her Papua New Guinean counterpart about the incident, which showed the need for Australia’s continuing presence in the country and assistance of the nation’s police force and government.
Papua New Guinean Minister of Police Jelta Wong said he had tasked Baki with taking “appropriate action against the perpetrators.”
“Whether they were in full uniform or not, they abused the privilege and honor of wearing a RPNGC uniform and the government’s one-strike policy still stands,” Wong said.
Papua New Guinean police officers have been accused of, or found to engage in, acts of brutality in the past, including a 2014 incident also caught on film in which officers used police dogs on an unarmed man.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CARTEL ARRESTS: The president said that a US government operation to arrest two cartel members made it jointly responsible for the unrest in the state’s capital Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday blamed the US in part for a surge in cartel violence in the northern state of Sinaloa that has left at least 30 people dead in the past week. Two warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel have clashed in the state capital of Culiacan in what appears to be a fight for power after two of its leaders were arrested in the US in late July. Teams of gunmen have shot at each other and the security forces. Meanwhile, dead bodies continued to be found across the city. On one busy street corner, cars drove
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to