Nicholas Ryan Aditya, Ihsanuddin, Jakarta – The Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) has released findings showing that there are still many incidents of torture being committed by law enforcement institutions from the police to correctional institutions (Lapas).
Over the period July to August, for example, there were nine incidents of torture. Eight of these were committed by the National Police (Polri) while one incident occurred in a correctional institution.
"At least within the time period of three months from June to August 2024, we found at least nine incidents involving two institutions, namely the police and correctional institutions", said Kontras research and documentation division head Helmy Mahendra during a press conference at the Kontras offices in Central Jakarta on Monday August 12.
Mahendra said that the torture committed by police resulted in 28 people being injured and one person dying. At correctional institutions meanwhile, the violence was committed by a driver and resulted in one person being injured.
Kontras also reported that 15 of the torture victims were underage children.
"So if it's averaged out, Kontras monitoring found at least 10 people to be victims of torture every month in the June-August 2024 period, showing a symptom of the normalisation of violence by the authorities", explained Mahendra.
Furthermore, Kontras highlighted that the number of acts of violence or torture by the police is evidence that the institution has a large amount of homework (PR) that must be completed seriously.
Moreover, Kontras suspects the high torture rate within a period of three months involving the police was triggered due to errors in detention procedures.
"This needs to be an important note and it's as if every year we just always repeat the same old stories and there's no significant change made by the police as an institution", he said.
Meanwhile, continued Mahendra, the one act of torture by a warden does not rule out the possibility of other cases that were not published.
In addition to this, Kontras admitted not to finding any incidents of torture by the TNI (Indonesian military). Nevertheless, Kontras has its own reasons as to why over this period it did not find any cases of torture by the TNI.
"But it should also be known, and as we always emphasise, the acts of torture that occur always represent a tip of the iceberg phenomenon where not all of them are able to come to the surface because there are several things, maybe because fear on the victim's part or maybe because of the lack of openness of the related institutions", he said.
"That's why we have not yet found any TNI involvement in the practice of torture and so on", he added.
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was "Kontras Ungkap 28 Orang Terluka dan 1 Meninggal karena Disiksa Polisi selama Juni-Agustus".]
