Nivell Rayda, Markus Junianto Sihaloho & Banjir Ambarita, Jakarta – Rights activists fear for the welfare of two Papuans tortured by soldiers earlier this year, saying one is deeply traumatized and the other's fate is unknown.

"One is now in hiding because if the military finds him, he's bound to be kidnapped or even killed, especially now that the video detailing the torture has gone public," Markus Haluk, from the Papuan Customary Council (DAP), said on Thursday.

The comments came as the military said the court-martial of five soldiers believed to be those shown in the video torturing the men would open today.

Haluk identified the victims as Tunaliwor Kiwo and Telangga Gire, both civilians from Tingginambut subdistrict. He said that last Saturday his group had managed to contact Kiwo, the older of the two men who escaped after three days in military detention. It is not known what happened to Gire.

A 10-minute video showing two men being interrogated and tortured by Indonesian soldiers was posted on YouTube. The interrogators were seen burning the genitals of one of the men with a smoldering stick, while the other man was threatened with a knife to his neck.

It is believed that the video was shot on May 30 at 1:40 p.m., while the Papuans' dialect suggests they are from the Lani tribe, indigenous to Tingginambut subdistrict in Puncak Jaya.

Haluk said the military was still looking for Kiwo. "They told us it was part of an ongoing investigation, but we didn't believe them," he said.

In a written statement sent by the DAP to the Jakarta Globe, a person identifying himself as Kiwo said that he was one of the two men in the video.

He said that he had been pulled over by a soldier in Yogorini village while riding his motorcycle taxi from Tingginambut to the nearby town of Mulia. Kiwo said the military kept torturing him long after the video was recorded, while repeatedly asking him about guns in the area.

He said that over the course of three days, he was smothered with a plastic bag, had his toes crushed with pliers and his thighs burned with a red-hot poker.

"One night, I heard they were going to shoot me," he wrote. "And I heard that they might have already shot Telangga Gire. So I bit through the ropes binding my wrists together and planned my escape. At dawn, only one guard was awake so I made a run for it. They fired shots at me but I just kept on running," he wrote.

"I could hear them chasing me, so I hid behind some bushes and crawled to the Yamo River." Kiwo wrote that he reached his village after a two-hour swim down the river on June 1.

Army spokesman Brig. Gen. Suwarno Widjonarko declined to comment on the revelations, saying he was unfamiliar with this latest development. "Whatever happened will be brought to the court-martial," he said. "We've never covered this story up."

Lt. Col. Susilo, a spokesman for the Cendrawasih Military Command in Jayapura, the capital of Papua, said the five servicemen had been accused of using excessive force. He said the court-martial would start today at the Jayapura Military Tribunal.

Andreas Harsono, from Human Rights Watch, said he doubted it would be a fair trial. "Ever since the fall of President Suharto, the military has been reluctant to commit to reform and continues to prevent members involved in human rights violation from being tried in a civilian court," he said. "The court-martial process is closed and often results in perpetrators being acquitted."

Harsono said Kiwo's reluctance to participate in the investigation highlighted Papuans' general distrust of the military's legal process. "The government should form an independent fact-finding team to investigate the case," he said.

Haris Azhar, chairman of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), said the five soldiers should be tried at a civilian human rights tribunal, given that torture was not a violation under the Military Penal Code.

"I believe the investigation and court-martial were called to show visiting US President Barack Obama and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard that something's being done," he said. Syamsul Alam, also from Kontras, said it had obtained footage of an interview with Kiwo that it would submit to the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) today.