JAKARTA (UCAN): “We must acknowledge honestly that torture has become part of a culture in prisons across Indonesia,” Petrus Selestinus, a Catholic and chairperson of a lawyers’ group, said on April 20 in the wake of a report by several rights groups, sent to the United Nations special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, which was made public on April 18.
Selestinus said that Law and Human Rights minister, Yasonna Laoly, needs to address what is contained in the report and not ignore it.
Rights groups have called on the UN to pressure the Indonesian government into overhauling a prison system they say is so poor that it abuses the rights of inmates.
The groups, including the Legal Aid Foundation and Imparsial, represent the families of seven prisoners who died in a September 2021 fire at a prison in Tangerang, near Jakarta, killing 49 inmates. Those in charge of the prison are on trial for negligence in connection with the blaze.
Fadhil Alfatan, the groups’ coordinator, said that the fire, where many of the prisoners who died were found still locked in their cells, was a gross human rights violation, as was the torture of inmates and overcrowding in prisons across the country.
Instead of receiving understanding, the Tangerang families were threatened by officials from the Law and Human Rights Ministry when they reported the fire case to the National Commission and Human Rights
Fadhil Alfatan
According to the Law and Human Rights Ministry, about 252,400 inmates in Indonesia are crammed into a prison system that only has the capacity to house 135,700.
Indonesia has 525 prisons, of which 404 are hugely overcrowded, according to Alfatan.
“The Indonesian government needs to seriously commit to making improvements in prisons, not only in Tangerang but also across Indonesia,” he said.
He said his group had outlined to the UN special rapporteur how the prison system was plagued by overcrowding, an insufficient number of warders, torture and general bad management.
“The fire was caused by the bad system and we want to ensure justice for the victims’ families and improve the prison system,” Alfatan said.
“Instead of receiving understanding, the Tangerang families were threatened by officials from the Law and Human Rights Ministry when they reported the fire case to the National Commission and Human Rights,” he said, stressing that prison management must be reformed and inmates’ rights respected and this is the responsibility of the Law and Human Rights Ministry.
“Inhuman treatment and punishment aren’t in line with international laws,” Alfatan said.
In one case in March 2019, Indonesian prison authorities came under fire from rights groups after a video emerged in which a group of shackled Indonesian prisoners were filmed crawling, shuffling and being dragged across gravel by prison guards as they were being transferred between prisons in Bali.
