Arghea Desafti Hapsari, Jakarta – The police's arbitrary discretion has come under public criticism again following the arrest and detention of nine people for alleged subversion by planning a rally to demand the release of political prisoners.

The Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) said Tuesday it had received reports saying the arrests of the nine people had been made without informing their families using arrest warrants.

The commission's deputy coordinator Haris Azhar said the nine were among those who had planned to stage a rally during President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's visit to an international sailing event, the Sail Banda, in early August.

The planned rally, which was dropped after the arrests, was to demand the release of Alifuru (indigenous people of Maluku) and Papuan political prisoners. The police took the nine activists in its custody but later released two, saying it had made wrong arrests.

Haris said the local police special Detachment 88 had made the arrests, using as evidence posters and copies of a report on political prisoners in the country authored by NGO Human Rights Watch.

"The posters and copies of the report were to be used in the planned rally. But those are just means to express their demands. Using them as evidence in the police's arrests are just [violating] freedom of expression, which should have been guaranteed in a democracy," he added.

The police, he said, had also violated the prisoners' rights by postponing or even not giving them access to legal aid.

"From the latest information we've got, only one prisoner by the name of Benny Sinay had been given the assistance of an attorney for the last couple of days. And the attorney was not someone chosen by Benny himself," Haris said.

"The police have said their evidence include flags of the RMS [separatist Republic of South Maluku], but there is no way to verify that because the prisoners have no attorneys," he said, adding that people in the area had poor access to information on cases that the police were handling. "The public's access to such information is minimized on purpose."

He said the commission had also received reports that families were not getting access to communicate with the prisoners.

Arnold Thenu, a friend of the prisoners' families, said he also believed the police had tortured some of the captives during questioning. "Before Benny was captured, he was healthy. But now he has a wound on his right foot," he said.

He lamented the fact that Indonesia, a democracy, still had political prisoners. "Freedom of expression should be common sense here. But those expressing their political views without violence are getting 20 years to life. That's just ridiculous."

Haris said the government needed to remember that it had ratified the UN convention against torture and other regulations that guaranteed that law enforcement must never be exercised by way of torture.

"The convention also... guarantees the rights of prisoners to appoint their lawyers and ensures access to [communicate] with their families. We are not standing in the way of the police in its duty to enforce the law, as long as the process upholds the principles of human rights for every citizen of this country," he added.