Jakarta - Torture and other forms of ill-treatment carried
out by Indonesian police remain rampant despite the government's
efforts to reform the police force, human rights group Amnesty
International said in a report released Wednesday.
The Amnesty report, titled Unfinished Business: Police
Accountability in Indonesia, said criminal suspects including repeat
offenders, drug users and sex workers were subjected to torture and
abuse during arrests, interrogation and detention.
'The police's primary role is to enforce the law and protect human
rights, yet all too often many police officers behave as if they are
above the law,' said Donna Guest, Amnesty International's
Asia-Pacific deputy director.
The report said the government had made efforts to improve police
accountability, but the changes had failed to stamp out cases of
physical abuse and intimidation.
Amnesty said the report was based on interviews with abuse
victims, police officers, lawyers and human rights groups in
Indonesia over the last two years.
Many of those interviewed said police often tried to extract
bribes from them in return for better treatment, according to Amnesty.
The group quoted a 21-year-old prostitute detained by police as
saying that she could get off if she paid 1 million rupiah (96
dollars) or if she had sex with officers.
National police spokesman Abubakar Nataprawira acknowledged there
were cases of abuse of detainees, but said the Amnesty report was
'not entirely true.'
'We received reports of abuse and after checking, some of them
were true but in many cases they were false,' he told the German
Press Agency dpa.
Amnesty urged the government to conduct investigations into every
credible report and bring to justice those found responsible.
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