Fear,
Pain, and Shame in Aceh
By
Lesley McCulloch
Asia Times
08 July, 2003
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.)