Torture "unpunished in Indonesia"

Indonesia has had a history with ill-treatment and torture a seniro UN official said. Manfred Nowak, has spent two weeks inspecting the country's prisons, jail cells and detention centers and said that he has found evidence of detainees being electrocuted, suffering systematic beatings and even being shot in the legs at close range. The BBC's Lucy Williamson, says Indonesia has regularly come under scrutiny for its human rights record. The treatment of the detainees has improved since authoritarian dictator Suharto's regime came to an end in 1998, but abuse has continued and the main culprits, seem to be the police. Level of abuse varied widely between institutions, depending on the personal behaviour of those in charge. Mr Nowak said that in some places there were no reported cases of abuse, in others torture was systematic, with detainees regularly suffering beatings. No one could cite one case in which a police officer was ever found guilty or sentenced by a criminal court for abusing or torturing a detainee. Mr. Nowak called on the government to strengthen the legal safeguards against torture.
If the U.N. has known about the the police in Indonesia torturing and abusing detainees for nine years, then why hasn't anything been done about it sooner. It seems to me that we should have tried to end this when Suhrato's regime ended. We should not just sweep things like police torturing detainees under the rug and hope it will go away. No one should have to be tortured, especially if people are already paying for the crimes they committed. I hope that the U.N. finds a way to put a stop to this or at least make some serious changes.