AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORT 2016/17

Detachment-88 counter-terrorism unit. In
May, two members of Detachment 88
received administrative sanctions after an
internal police hearing.
In August, officers of the Mobile Brigade
(Brimob) shot dead a Papuan teenager in
Sugapa, Intan Jaya regency, Papua Province.
Otianus Sondegau and four others created a
road block to ask for money and cigarettes
from passing traffic. Police attempted to
disperse the blockade violently and fired
shots at the five teenagers at which point they
threw stones at the police. Five officers were
found guilty of “misusing firearms” after
internal disciplinary hearings; four served 21-
day prison sentences and another was
sentenced to a year in prison related to the
shooting.
In October, members of the Madiun
Infantry 501 Raider Battalion attacked a
journalist from NET TV who was covering a
brawl between members of a military unit
and a martial arts group in Madiun, East Java
Province. They beat him, destroyed his
camera’s memory card and threatened him if
he reported the incident. Despite promises by
the Armed Forces chief to investigate the
attack, no one had been held to account at
the end of the year.
PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE
At least 38 prisoners of conscience remained
in detention, many for their peaceful political
activism in Papua and Maluku. Prison
authorities delayed access to adequate and
free medical treatment to Johan Teterissa and
Ruben Saiya who were suffering long-term
health conditions. The two men were among
at least nine prisoners of conscience from
Maluku held in Java, more than 2,500km
from family and friends. Steven Itlay,
imprisoned in Timika, Papua, suffered ill
health as a result of poor conditions and was
granted only limited access to his family and
lawyer. 8
In May, three leaders of the Millah
Abraham religious group were arrested and
detained by the Indonesian National Police
and were charged with “blasphemy” under
Article 156a of the Criminal Code and
“rebellion” under Articles 107 and 110.
TORTURE AND OTHER ILL-TREATMENT
Reports of torture and other ill-treatment
continued. In September, Asep Sunandar
died in police custody in Cianjur, West Java
Province. He had been arrested, with two
others, without a warrant, by three officers of
the Cianjur Resort police. He was taken to an
undisclosed location and later reported dead.
His family said that when they visited the
hospital, they saw multiple gunshot wounds
to his body and his hands still tied behind his
back. No investigation into the death is
known to have been carried out.
Cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment
Caning was used as a punishment under
Shari’a law in Aceh for a range of criminal
offences including selling alcohol, consensual
relations, and being alone with someone of
the opposite sex who was not a marriage
partner or relative. At least 100 people were
caned during the year. The law was applied
to non-Muslims for the first time in April
when a Christian woman received 28 strokes
of the cane for selling alcohol. 9
In October, the House of Representatives
ratified Government Regulation in Lieu of Law
(Perppu) No.1/2016, which amended Article
81 of Law No.23/2002 on the Protection of
Children. The revised law imposed forced
chemical castration as an additional
punishment for those convicted of sexual
violence against a child under 18. According
to the revised law, chemical castration would
be carried out for up to two years after the
expiry of the offender’s prison term. The
Indonesian Doctors’ Association stated that it
would refuse to administer the procedure.
DEATH PENALTY
In July, one Indonesian national and three
foreign nationals were executed, three of
them while their appeals were pending. Ten
other prisoners who had been moved to Nusa
Kambangan Island, where the executions
took place, were given last-minute stays of
execution to allow for a review of their cases.
190 Amnesty International Report 2016/17