And that goes for this one too!

Monday, January 24, 2011 02:40 AM

Light sentences and SBY’s speech upset Papuans
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Sun, 01/23/2011 10:00 AM | Headlines


The light sentences sought for soldiers who tortured two Papuans, coupled with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s dismissal of the torture as “a minor incident” only perpetuates systematic torture of Papuans, activists said.

An investigation by the National Commission for Human Rights (Komnas HAM) also trivialized the situation for Papuans, human rights activists said in a discussion Saturday. Komnas HAM reported the
torture perpetrated by security forces against the Papuan civilians were not a gross rights violation, therefore they recommended that the trial be heard by a military tribunal and not a human rights court.

On Thursday, Jayapura military tribunal prosecutors sought prison sentences of 12 months for Second Sgt. Irwan Riskianto, 10 months for First Pvt. Yakson Agu and nine months for First Pvt. Thamrin Mahagiri of the 753rd Infantry Batallion. The men are charged not with torture, but for insubordination in a May 2010 incident where they tortured two Papuan civilians, Anggen Pugu Kiwo and Telengga Gire.
The military tribunal is scheduled to hand down a verdict on Monday.

The video of the torture surfaced on YouTube in October 2010 and created global outrage. The soldiers in the video used sharp weapons on the two men and pressed a burning bamboo stick into one of the men’s genitals. In a videotaped testimony sent to Komnas HAM in November last year, Kiwo said the soldiers hit them, bound their arms with rope, dragged them to the back of the army post and bound their feet with barbed wire.

The soldiers tortured Kiwo for three days, beating him with their hands and sticks, crushing his toes with pliers, suffocating him with a plastic bag, burning his genitals and other body parts, cutting his face and head and smearing crushed chilies into his wounds, as well as other forms of cruel abuse.
Komnas HAM earlier this month said three recent incidents of torture in Papua were not gross rights violations but “serious violations of human rights”.

In a speech Friday to more than 200 military and police leaders, Yudhoyono called the torture “only a minor incident”.

Papua Customary Council member Markus Haluk said Komnas HAM should have defined such torture as gross violations as they were not isolated incidents but rather systemic and related to the large presence of military personnel in the area.

“This is not the first time a Papuan civilian has been tortured by security forces,” Markus said.

Olga Hamadi from the Papua branch of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (KontraS) said there were widespread incidents of rights violations against Papuans, including discrimination, since Soeharto’s New Order regime declared the region a Military Operational Area (DOM) to suppress a secessionist movement.

Papua remained a DOM until 1998 but large numbers of soldiers remain in the resource-rich region.
“The discord between the military and civilians is huge. Soldiers look down at Papuans as inferior,” she told The Jakarta Post

(Just for those who don't have time to read the newspapres )