Lilian Budianto and Mariani Dewi

Non-governmental organizations and churches released Friday The Practice of Torture in Aceh and Papua 1998-2007 report, which details thousand of abuse cases in Aceh and Papua during the past military imposition and in Timor Leste during the occupation of Indonesia from 1975-1999.

The 202-page report was prepared by the Office for Justice and Peace of the Catholic Diocese of Jayapura in Papua, Jakarta-based human rights monitoring group Imparsial, Progressio Timor Leste, the Synod of the Christian Evangelical Church in West Papua and the congregation of Franciscans International.

The report will be submitted to the Geneva-based Committee Against Torture (CAT) as a recommendation before it holds its second review toward human rights progress in Indonesia.

"The government still uses torture as an effective and systematic method to get confessions from suspects," said Poengky Indarty, Imparsial's external relations director.

"Indonesia should not be doing it but torture is carried out not only by police officers, but also by the military.

"The convention is not part of the legal system in Indonesia. Torture is defined in the Criminal Code only as 'force by state officers in investigation' and the punishment is very light," she added.

Indonesia signed the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, Degrading Treatment or Punishment in 1998 and first submitted its rights reports review by the committee in 2001.

The Indonesian government, including its military and police chief leaders, will be in Geneva from May 6-7 to attend the second periodic review by the committee.

A number of victims will also go to Geneva to testify for the committee, which has the power to impose sanctions, including embargoes, on Indonesia if it fails to improve its human rights conditions within the given deadline.

The report provides the breakdown of more than 5,000 cases of torture, extra-judicial killings and injuries sustained in Aceh from 1998 to 2007 during the Military Emergency Phase I and II. It details approximately 242 documented cases of torture in Papua and other cases of abuse by military forces leading to human rights violations, including the large-scale destruction of entire villages.

The report also chronicles the situation of human rights in Timor Leste during the occupation of Indonesia from 1975 to 1999.

The report says the cycle of violence and torture is reoccurring because the government has not taken any effective steps to prevent the military and police from repeating the same brutal violence.

It says torture was used in Timor Leste and Aceh through military operations to instill fear in the people. Today a number of controversial mining companies operate in the regions and issues of separatism by the local residents remain.

In their recommendation to the committee, the NGOs and religious groups also wanted the government to run preliminary inquiries and bring to trial and convict the perpetrators of torture. This includes military commanders and chief police officers who may have given orders to carry out the torture.

Poengky said most of the allegedly involved officers had been acquitted of all charges and had even been promoted to higher positions.

She said the government had failed to fulfill the first committee's recommendations from 2001, saying they only satisfied one out of the 17 recommendations. The only recommendation the government fulfilled was when it invited special rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak to visit Indonesia in 2007.

— JP