Jakarta – Indonesian police are to investigate claims in a human rights report released this week that their forces in Papua have routinely abused people there, national police chief Sutanto said Friday.

The report by New York-based Human Rights Watch alleged that police were torturing, raping and killing with impunity in Indonesia's easternmost Papua province and called on the government to open the region to independent observers.

"Please give us the information because we want the Indonesian police to protect the people," Sutanto said. "If it is true, we will address it, but of course we have to see the objectivity of the report," he said.

Told by reporters that the document was already in the public domain he said that police would address the matter and "check the truth on the ground."

A long-running but low-level separatist movement has simmered in the region since the 1960s and the Indonesian government does not permit journalists or rights workers to travel there without special permission.

The HRW report found that Indonesia's feared paramilitary Brimob were responsible for the most serious violations, although some reports of brutal treatment by Indonesian soldiers persisted.

Indonesia's military has for decades been accused by Papuans of committing human rights abuses in the isolated, resource-rich region, but the police have been gradually taking on more of their former security role.

"We found that both army troops and police units... continue to engage in largely indiscriminate village 'sweeping' operations in pursuit of suspected militants, using excessive, often brutal, and at times lethal force against civilians," the HRW report said.

It documented 14 first-hand accounts of abuse and said only one culprit had been jailed.

The head of the police and military in the region did not respond to requests by HRW for information on the cases they documented while the report was being compiled, the group said on Thursday when it was published.