Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/torture/EastTimor.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Timor-Leste
(East Timor). Some of these links may
lead to websites that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even
false. No attempt has been made to validate their authenticity or to
verify their content. HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking for
material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on this
page and others to see which aspects of Torture by Authorities are of
particular interest to you. You might
be interested in exploring the moral justification for inflicting pain or
inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment in order to obtain critical
information that may save countless lives, or to elicit a confession for a
criminal act, or to punish someone to teach him a lesson outside of the
courtroom. Perhaps your paper might
focus on some of the methods of torture, like fear, extreme temperatures,
starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, suffocation, or immersion in freezing
water. On the other hand, you might
choose to write about the people acting in an official capacity who
perpetrate such cruelty. There is a
lot to the subject of Torture by Authorities.
Scan other countries as well as this one. Draw comparisons between activity in
adjacent countries and/or regions.
Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper
resources that are available on-line. ***
ARCHIVES *** 2020 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices: Timor Leste U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, 30 March 2021 www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/timor-leste/
[accessed 18 July
2021] PRISON AND DETENTION
CENTER CONDITIONS The prison in Dili
(Becora), the country’s largest, was grossly
overcrowded. It had an estimated capacity of 290 inmates, but in October it
held 540 adult and juvenile male and female convicts and pretrial detainees. Freedom House
Country Report 2018 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/timor-leste/freedom-world/2018 [accessed 12 May
2020] F3. IS THERE PROTECTION FROM THE ILLEGITIMATE USE
OF PHYSICAL FORCE AND FREEDOM FROM WAR AND INSURGENCIES? Police officers and
soldiers are regularly accused of excessive force and abuse of power, though
the courts have had some success in prosecuting them. Public perception of
the police has improved in recent years, as have general feelings of
security. Committee againt Torture considers report of Timor-Leste Committee against
Torture, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights
OHCHR, 23 November 2017 www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22447&LangID=E [accessed 25
November 2017] QUESTIONS BY COUNTRY
CO-RAPPORTEURS
- Turning to recent allegations of torture and ill-treatment, Ms. Gaer drew
attention to dozens of reports of individuals in the Lalulai village in Bacau
district suspected of supporting the rebel KRM group who had been arbitrarily
arrested and tortured by the police to compel them to divulge information
about the whereabouts of members of the group in 2014 and 2015. Ms. Gaer
pointed out to the September 2017 case in Oecussi Special Administrative
Region in which the police had publicly beaten, kicked and whipped a group of
young men for suspected involvement in an illegal Martial Arts Group, which
had been captured on video. Non-governmental organizations alleged that they
had received many additional complaints of that kind involving the police. It
seemed that very few, if any, of those alleged assaults had led to penalties
being imposed. It appeared that the State party’s position was that the
police and military were capable of addressing allegations of torture and
ill-treatment on their own and that the involvement of prosecutorial
authorities was not really necessary. That position was not consistent with
Timor-Leste’s obligations under the Convention. What was the number of
complaints of maltreatment received since 2014, and the number of
investigations into alleged torture and ill-treatment that had been carried
out since 2014? Had the State party carried out measures to ensure that
impartial investigations were carried out into allegations of torture and
ill-treatment? Had the Police Forensic and Criminal Investigations Unit
carried out any investigations into torture and ill-treatment? What was the
size of the unit and how powerful was it? Did it have the power to carry out
investigations on its own initiative? Torture and
Mistreatment by Police Human Rights Watch,
Dili, April 21, 2006 www.hrw.org/news/2006/04/18/east-timor-torture-and-mistreatment-police [accessed 24 January
2013] The 50-page report,
“Tortured Beginnings: Police Violence and the Beginnings of Impunity in East
Timor,” is based on dozens of interviews with witnesses and victims of police
abuse in East Timor. It documents excessive force during arrests, torture and
ill-treatment of detainees by the National Police of East Timor (PNTL).
Several people interviewed had to be hospitalized because of the severity of
their injuries. “We were shocked to
find so many credible accounts of torture and severe ill-treatment by police
officers,” said Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “East Timor
won independence in part because of Indonesia’s horrific record here. Now
some people are saying that the new police force is no better than the old
one, and this should worry the government.” One young man told
Human Rights Watch what happened to him when he was arrested in his village,
near the town of Maliana: “I was arrested by
the PNTL, and put in a cell for two days and two nights. I was continuously
tortured, sprayed with pepper spray, beaten and drenched with water. They
constantly threatened me, saying ‘if you oppose the police then you will know
the consequence.’ Three police officers came into the cell, locked the door,
took off their jackets, then hit me. They were all Maliana PNTL. They were
the night guards, and were wearing PNTL uniforms. On the first night they
beat me at around 1:00 a.m., on the second night they beat me around 3:00
a.m. Both nights were different people, but both times they were beating me.” Police and other
state institutions in East Timor also regularly fail to respond appropriately
to incidents of police abuse. The main internal police oversight body, the
Professional Ethics and Deontology Unit (PEDU), often fails to take cases of
police abuse seriously, to follow up with complaints, or properly discipline
the officers involved. Independent bodies that could take up cases of police
abuse are ineffective and lack sufficient material or political support to
succeed. “East Timor’s
leaders are ignoring police abuse when they should be taking urgent steps to
end it,” said Adams. AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL From an old article -- URL not available Article was
published sometime prior to 2015 Impunity persisted
for crimes against humanity and gross human rights violations committed
during the Indonesian occupation (1975-1999). Security forces were accused of
human rights violations, including ill-treatment and excessive use of force. POLICE AND SECURITY
FORCES
- Security forces faced allegations of ill-treatment and excessive use of
force, sometimes leading to death. Accountability mechanisms for the police
and military were weak. The UN Police presence ended in December. IMPUNITY - Little progress
was made in addressing crimes against humanity and other human rights
violations committed by Indonesian security forces and their auxiliaries from
1975-1999. The mandate of the Serious Crimes Investigation Team ended in
December, having failed to complete around 60 investigations into outstanding
cases of serious human rights violations committed in 1999. In December, the
Dili District Court imprisoned three former Besi Merah Putih militia members for
crimes against humanity committed in the context of the 1999 independence
referendum. Miguel Soares and Salvador de Jesus
were sentenced to nine and 16 years respectively for murder, while Faustino
de Carvalho was sentenced to six years for forcible
transfer of a population and the illegal detention of women and children. The Timorese
authorities failed to implement recommendations of the Commission for
Reception, Truth and Reconciliation and of the bilateral
Indonesia-Timor-Leste Commission of Truth and Friendship. The recommendations
included providing reparation to victims and their families, and taking
effective measures to identify victims of enforced disappearance and children
separated from their families. Search … AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL For current
articles:: Search Amnesty
International Website www.amnesty.org/en/search/?q=east+timor+torture&ref=&year=&lang=en&adv=1&sort=relevance [accessed 31 December
2018] Scroll
Down ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61607.htm [accessed 24 January
2013] 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61607.htm [accessed 3 July
2019] TORTURE AND OTHER
CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – The law prohibits such
practices, and the government generally respected the prohibition against
torture; however, there were incidents of cruel or degrading treatment by
police officers. On January 7, members of the Border Patrol Unit (BPU)
arrested an Indonesian citizen in the enclave of Oecusse
for illegally crossing the border. BPU officers beat and kicked the man, and
did not intervene when members of the community beat him and burned him with
cigarettes. The case was investigated by the PNTL district commander and the
results sent directly to the national police commissioner. No further action
had been taken at year's end. In early March two men and one woman were
arrested without warrant in Cailaco for allegedly
providing food to former anti-independence militia members. PNTL officers
reportedly punched and kicked the men and forced a pistol into one's mouth.
No investigation has been opened for this case. In early June a man accused
of assaulting the wife of a PNTL officer by pulling her hair was arrested
without warrant and beaten and kicked until unconscious. He was then brought
to the police station and beaten again. Following treatment at the hospital,
one of the PNTL officers threatened that they would beat him to death if he
took legal action against the officer who instigated the arrest. The PNTL
investigation unit in Dili opened an investigation but suspended it,
reportedly because members of parliament had begun an investigation. At
year's end there were no known further developments in this case. On July 26, the
PNTL raided the Baucau offices of the Comite Popular de Defesa-Republica
Democratica de Timor-Leste (CPD-RDTL), an
organization that sometimes claimed to be the legitimate government and some
of whose members were accused of criminal activity, and, according to
credible reports, indiscriminately beat and detained members (see section
1.d.). The acting PNTL district commander said that only those persons who
actively resisted the operation were briefly detained. In November
following a traffic incident involving a truck, the minister of interior and
three of his bodyguards, who were members of the PNTL's Rapid Intervention
Unit, pursued the truck and forced it to a stop. The truck driver escaped on
foot, but the minister and two of the bodyguards kicked and beat two
passengers in the truck. According to an eyewitness account, the minister hit
one of the passengers in the back of the head with a rifle butt, reportedly
fracturing his skull. There was one
reported case of illegal law enforcement activity by a member of the
military. In mid-July a captain in the national defense force, Falintil-Forca Defesa Timor Leste (F-FDTL), and military police under him beat and
detained for several days a man who had been involved in an alleged assault
on the captain. The man filed a complaint with the police but by year's end
no investigation was carried out. The district court
in Oecussi convicted a village chief of arbitrary
arrest in the 2003 case in which a police officer reportedly participated in
beating and burning with cigarettes a 16-year-old deaf and mute boy who had
been accused of petty theft. There were no further developments regarding
police involvement in the abuse. All
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ARTICLES. Cite this
webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, "Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance
& Other Ill Treatment in the early years of the 21st Century- Timor-Leste
(East Timor)", http://gvnet.com/torture/EastTimor.htm, [accessed <date>] |
