Indonesian Military and Torture. Blog 4

The U.S. Defense Secretary has stated that Indonesia has made important military improvements since the fall of Suharto over the last decade. The Military of Defense in Indonesia stated on a public announcement to protect the human rights of their people and to suspend or remove any military officials that have been accused of any type of human rights abuses. Although this statement has been publicly known, the military is not following through. This is proven by the light sentences given to three soldiers that were caught on video torturing citizens. The video that was shot with a cell-phone shows one of the soldiers kicking one of the men in the face and chest, burning his face with a cigarette, and applying burning wood to his genital area. The soldiers also threatened to kill the other man while holding a knife to his neck. In a later interview, the men stated that the torture went on for three days, with the soldiers beating them, suffocating them with plastic bags, crushing their toes with pliers, and cutting their face and head and smearing the wounds with chilies. Only three of the six soldiers in the video were charged and the only offense they were charged with was disobeying orders, the military prosecutors didn’t include anything along the lines of torture and no commanding officer has been charged. In a speech to the military and police made by the President, he stated that this case was no major violation to human rights and just a small incident. From the past, it has been proven that Indonesia’s military prosecutors fail to properly handle cases of human rights abuses taken place by soldiers and officers. What makes this situation worse is that this was the second violation made by the same battalion in the past few months. It is unclear why there hasn’t been further investigation of this battalion. It is clear that the Indonesian military is not taking torture into serious account when prosecuting. It is a huge violation of your rights to be tortured by authority figures that are in their place to keep you safe. It is even worse when those figures that break the rules are not punished accordingly.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/indonesia/110208/indonesian-military-torture