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Summary: The Papua New Guinea government must act
to stop the police from engaging in brutal
beatings, rape and torture of arrestees, many
of whom are children. The 124-page report
documents boys and girls being shot, knifed,
kicked and beaten by gun butts, iron bars,
wooden batons, fists, rubber hoses and
chairs.
Papua New Guinea: Epidemic of Police Brutality Against Children
Torture, Gang Rapes Common in Law Enforcement
[PORT MORESBY, 1 September 2005] - The Papua New Guinea government
must act to stop the police from engaging in brutal beatings, rape and
torture of arrestees, many of whom are children, Human Rights Watch said
in a new report released today.
The 124-page report, "'Making Their Own Rules': Police Beatings, Rape,
and Torture of Children in Papua New Guinea," documents boys and girls
being shot, knifed, kicked and beaten by gun butts, iron bars, wooden
batons, fists, rubber hoses and chairs. Some are forced to chew and
swallow condoms. Eyewitnesses describe gang rapes in police stations,
vehicles, barracks and other locations. Children are also routinely detained
with adults in sordid police lockups and denied medical care.
"Extreme physical violence is business as usual for the Papua New Guinea
police," said Zama Coursen-Neff, senior researcher for Human Rights
Watch's Children's Rights Division. "Instead of protecting the public and
children from violence, it is the police who are committing some of the most
heinous acts of violence imaginable."
Australia is Papua New Guinea's largest foreign donor, and Papua New
Guinea is its largest per capita recipient of Australian development aid.
Much of this aid is directed to the police force, yet Australia does not make
promotion of human rights an explicit purpose or condition of its aid.
Australian officials admit that aid to the police has failed to reduce violence
and other human rights violations by officers.
"Australia's expanded engagement with the Papua New Guinea police is an
opportunity to better address accountability for police who beat, rape and
torture children," said Coursen-Neff. "Australia should not let other issues
overshadow concern for the human rights of children in Papua New
Guinea."
Children make up nearly half of Papua New Guinea's some 5.6 million
people. Fewer than half of all school-age children are enrolled in school,
and those who leave school are unlikely to find paid employment. Although
all children may be subjected to police violence, children perceived as gang
members ("raskols"), street vendors, child sex workers and boys engaged
in homosexual conduct are especially targeted.
Human Rights Watch said that police abuses, such as police rape, targeting
of sex workers and men and boys engaged in homosexual conduct, and
harassment of people carrying condoms, may also fuel Papua New
Guinea's burgeoning AIDS epidemic. These acts may spread the disease,
deter people from carrying condoms and drive marginalized populations
underground and away from potentially lifesaving information on HIV
prevention and health services. Experts believe that at least 80,000
people are living with HIV in Papua New Guinea-including 3 to 4 percent of
adults in the capital-the highest rates in the region.
"Human rights abuses by the police are undermining desperately-needed
HIV/AIDS prevention measures by the government, civil society and
international donors," said Coursen-Neff.
In addition to being abusive, Human Rights Watch said that police violence
is ineffective in the face of the country's serious crime problem. Violent
police tactics make people fearful of approaching police even to report
crime and reluctant to cooperate with investigations. Even government
studies have found police increasingly unable to fight crime.
One positive development has been the recent establishment by the
Papua New Guinea government of juvenile courts and guidelines for police,
magistrates and others designed to divert children from detention.
"The new juvenile courts and juvenile justice guidelines are critical steps in
the right direction, but they have to be taken from paper to practice," said
Coursen-Neff. "Yet rampant police violence against children threatens to
undermine these commendable developments."
The police have been unwilling or unable to discipline their own members.
With little or no penalty for violators and few incentives for good practices,
police training has had little effect on abusive police tactics. "There is no
more important government responsibility than protecting children and
other vulnerable people from violence," said Coursen-Neff. "If the
government is serious about the protection of children, it must start
holding accountable police who beat, rape and torture children."
Human Rights Watch called on the Papua New Guinea government to:
- publicly repudiate police violence,
- to dismiss and prosecute perpetrators, and
- to designate an independent body to monitor police violence against
children.
Human Rights Watch also called on Australia and other international
donors to place more emphasis on accountability for officers and their
commanders who commit crimes, to encourage independent monitoring of
police by a body outside the force with the resources and mandate to do
the job, and to assist the development of local human rights groups with
the capacity to demand accountability from the government and monitor
police violence.
***
Testimonies from children:
"There's a room where they take people for writing reports. . . [Three
policemen] pushed me in the back, lifted me up, and threw me down on
the floor. They hit me with a stick and I blocked it with my arm. Blood came
out of my head because they threw me head first onto the cement floor. It
really hurt. . . . They took my statement there. I don't know what the
statement said. They didn't show me. . . . I was telling the police, 'it's my
first time, don't beat me up,' but they didn't listen to me."
(boy who said he was 14 years old but looked younger, arrested
September 2004 for stealing a man's shoes)
"The cops came and got the girls one by one. There were five guys. There
were five girls so they each had one for themselves. One came to me. I
was crying and said, 'You guys hit me already.' . . . The same guy who hit
me wanted to take me out. I said, 'You have already belted around so how
can I go?' He booted me on the ass and slapped me. He pushed me. I had
a lump on my back and bruises on my bum. . . . After that, they took the
other four out. They did whatever they could do with them. . . . There was
moonlight. It was on the dirt. It was right in front of me. I could see
through the window. It was forcible. The others had injuries from where
they were belted-they had bruises on their bums and where they were
forced to have sex."
(woman, who did not claim that she was raped, recounting being stopped
on the highlands highway with her friends when she was 14 or 15 years
old)
"There were men of all ages in my cell. Many were adults. There were
plenty. . . . I didn't count. . . . The cell was very stinky. I couldn't sleep that
night because of the pain. I was leaning against the wall . . . . There
weren't any beds and there was no proper bedding-no blankets or mats.
There was shit all over the place. Especially during the day it was really
smelly as the sun was shining. There was a toilet, but it was spoiled and
there wasn't any water. There was no medicine. I wasn't even able to
wash because there wasn't any water. My parents brought me food and
water from home. In the cell, they would give us one litre of water in the
afternoon and a few dried biscuits."
(sixteen-year-old boy, detained for two weeks in a police station in 2004
for pick-pocketing, who also said he was burned, cu, and sexual humiliated
during interrogation)
Testimonies from police and other government officials:
"If you cooperate, why should I punch you? Sometimes you're called in,
you blow up. . . . Those that commit crimes will tell lies. That's when people
start getting frustrated, then they try to bash him up, punch him."
(head of criminal investigations for a police station in East Sepik province,
who later said that police guidelines prohibited punching a suspect during
questioning and that officers followed the guidelines)
"Most policemen in night duties use the women and girls kept in custody
for sex. On the pretext of taking their stories they are taken to offices
where policemen also have sex with them."
(policeman in the Eastern Highlands speaking to a UNICEF/NGO researcher)
"Discipline is in a state of almost total collapse. . . . Failure of supervisors to
prevent criminal behavior or serious breaches of discipline, or at least deal
with it appropriately at the time, has reached a crisis."
("Report of the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary Administrative
Review Committee to the Minister for Internal Security Hon. Bire Kimisopa,"
September 2004, pp. 37-39)