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mnesty International Indonesia has criticized a recent ethics ruling handed down to a number of police officers over the recent fatal shooting of a civilian in Papua’s Deiyai region, describing the lenient sentence as “harmful to justice.”

Last Wednesday, a police ethics panel found four police personnel guilty of engaging in “improper conduct” while dispersing an angry mob that had destroyed the construction camp of a contractor firm near the Oneibo River in Tigi district, Deiyai regency on Aug. 1.

Following the incident, Yulianus Pigai, 28, was found dead with several gunshot wounds to his body and at least nine others sustained injuries.

The ethics panel ordered the four police members to apologize to the hearing and to be demoted, while clearing five other personnel of all charges on the grounds that the five had carried out their duties in line with prevailing procedures and used only rubber bullets to disperse the crowd.

Amnesty International Indonesia director Usman said the ruling would not help end violence in Papua but rather tend to support the longstanding perceived “culture of impunity” in the police force.

“A case that deprived someone of their right to life should be brought to justice, in which criminal court proceedings decide on the case, and not through an internal ethics hearing,” Usman said on Monday in a press release.

He later called for a thorough independent investigation into the case, which sparked a number of protests in Papua and other areas across Indonesia, including Bandung in West Java Gorontalo, Jakarta and Yogyakarta.

Some four weeks ago Usman started an online petition #Justice4Deiyai on change.org demanding the government further investigate the case and calling on President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to show political will to end violence in Papua.

The riot on Aug. 1 was triggered by angry locals after their request to borrow a company car to take a local resident named Ravianus Douw, who was in a critical condition after almost drowning in the Oneibo River, to a hospital, was rejected. The police immediately deployed personnel to the scene, but the mob fought back using stones before the shooting occurred.

A total of nine police officers, including First. Insp. Maing Raini, who was stripped of his position as Tigi Police chief only days after the fatal shooting incident, faced the ethics panel. The eight others were Mobile Brigade unit members who were stationed in Tigi.

Rights group the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) has called for a full investigation into the shooting and an evaluation of the police’s use of weapons, given the allegedly rampant use of firearms by security personnel in Papua in recent years, which has caused several civilian casualties.

Papua, the country’s easternmost region and which continues to be among the poorest areas in the country despite its abundant natural resources, has seen a number of shootings committed by security personnel in the past few years, such as the unresolved shooting of five civilians in Paniai in 2014.

This year alone, at least seven shooting cases have been reported in Papua and West Papua, all of which remain unresolved, including a clash between two soldiers and an armed civilian group that led to the deaths of one soldier and a militant.

Kontras has also recorded 115 cases of physical abuse allegedly committed by police personnel against civilians across the country between June 2016 and May 2017.

Neles Tebay, coordinator of the Papua Peace Network, has called for dialogue to build trust between the Papuan people and the government, arguing that such ethics hearings would not resolve problems in the long run.

“Only through dialogue can we find solutions to ending the violence,” he said.

— Nethy Dharma Somba contributed to the story from Papua.