Jakarta – A survey conducted by the human rights watchdog Imparsial found that there is a widespread public perception that the police frequently use torture as a weapon against suspects and convicts.
The results of the survey indicated that 49.4 percent of 500 respondents in Jakarta believed that the police tortured people.
Imparsial researcher Gufron Mabruri said that the one-to-one interviews with respondents showed that "the police had yet to successfully eradicate their brutal image". "The respondents say that they still hear stories about torture by police during investigations," he said.
The police are most brutal when handling civilians who have been found guilty, he said, adding that "criminals should also be treated properly".
He said the reports of torture showed that the police had yet to reform themselves and create a new image as protectors of civilians and enforcers of human rights. This behavior breached the United Nations Convention against Torture, which had been ratified by the Indonesian government in 1998, Gufron went on.
Apart from violating human rights through torture, 40 percent of the respondents also said that the police were too slow in dealing with sectarian, ethnic, racial and inter-group issues.
Most respondents rated police performance on human rights issues as far from satisfactory, but their main criticism was of the police force's failure to eradicate corruption.
Recently, the public has been strongly demanding that the police move more quickly in investigating high-ranking police officers whose bank accounts allegedly contained billions of rupiah.
According to investigative media reports, the "fat" bank accounts from unknown sources indicate that police are colluding with state officials in corrupt practices.
Another Imparsial researcher, Cahyadi Satriya, said that 74.8 percent of respondents stated that the police were major perpetrators of corruption. "After years of struggling to show itself as a better state institution, the tainted image of the police as a corrupt body remains," he said.
The survey reported that only 11.20 percent of respondents believed that the number of corrupt practices inside the institution had decreased.
Apart from high-level corruption cases involving billions of rupiah, Cahyadi said that the most common form of corruption in the police force centered on the issuance of driver's licenses. The survey indicated that 75.80 percent of all respondents said they had encountered corruption in this service.
The survey, which was conducted through a multi-stage random sampling process between June 17 and July 4, showed that 61.2 percent of respondents were dissatisfied with many aspects of the police's performance. The margin of error for the survey was estimated at 4 percent.
Imparsial senior researcher Rusdi Marpaung said that public dissatisfaction with the police should be taken seriously by the institution. The survey reported that 86.80 percent of respondents believed that police officers should get more anti-corruption education and 83.60 percent said the officers should get more human rights training. (lfr)