Download Stopping the Torture Trade - Omega Research Foundation

Stopping the torture trade
40
acting under orders to track down organizations trying to
undermine the government, and that they committed
“procedural mistakes” in carrying out their orders. In April 1999,
the 11 soldiers were convicted and sentenced to prison terms.
Lieutenant-General Prabowo Subianto, a former Commander of
Kopassus, was dismissed from the army in connection with the
case for “misinterpreting” a military order.
But responsibility for and complicity in the torture of Pius
Lustrilang spreads much wider than the 11 Kopassus members. It
includes all those who supported them inside and outside
Indonesia: all the individuals, companies and governments that
supplied them with the tools of their trade and trained them.
Journalists and human rights researchers have discovered
that companies based in China, the USA and South Africa
supplied electro-shock weapons to Indonesia. During the 1990s
governments — including those of Australia, Belgium, China,
France, Germany, the UK and the USA — allowed military,
security and police weaponry and equipment to flow to the
Indonesian security forces. Evidence has also emerged that both
the UK and the USA trained members of the Indonesian armed
forces and, in particular, Kopassus. Since 1991, for example, US
Special Forces troops have conducted 41 training exercises with
Indonesian troops, and at least 26 of those were with Kopassus.
While there is no certainty that devices or training from
abroad were involved in the torture of Pius Lustrilang during
those two months in February 1998, it is undoubtedly true that
inadequate international control of transfers of equipment and
expertise to the Indonesian military and security forces
contributed to gross human rights violations in that country.