The practice of torture by security forces in Papua is widespread and described by analyists as systematic. The documents provide you with case examples and analysis on the practice of torture in Papua and its impact.
Recent cases in “Human Rights in West Papua 2013”
For the ICP’s latest report on the situation of human rights in Papua several cases of torture were selected and documented in more detail. The 17 selected cases from the 18 months period between October 2011 – March 2013 include ten cases by the police during arrest or detention, three by the military and four in prisons. See page 28 of the report.
download the PDF go to the report’s page
PhD Thesis: Analysis of 30 years of torture in Papua
In his thesis “From the theatre of torture to the theatre of peace: The politics of torture and re-imagining peacebuilding in Papua, Indonesia”, Budi Hernawan after having worked for many years on cases of torture based on Papua details the characteristics and systematics of torture as it is used in Papua.
Description
This thesis provides the first full-length of scholarly examination of the half century of the politics of torture and peacebuilding frameworks in Papua, Indonesia. It has assembled a data base of 431 reported torture cases for the period 1963-2010 as well as examined 214 testimonies of state actors, survivors and third parties from Indonesia, Australia, Papua New Guinea, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. While the current resurgence of scholarly interests on torture largely focuses on the utilitarian nature of torture as part of the war on terror, the findings of this study take a non-utilitarian turn. First, torture has been deployed strategically by the Indonesian state in Papua as a mode of governance. Second, torture constitutes a spectacle of the sovereign by which the sovereign communicates to a broader audience through the public display of the tortured body. Third, torture has constituted a crime against humanity punishable by both Indonesian and International Human Rights Law. Fourth, the five-decade practice of torture with almost complete impunity has constructed a theatre of torture in which the interactions of survivors, perpetrators, and spectators have produced and reproduced contesting narratives of suffering, domination and witnessing. Based on these four conclusions, peacebuilding in Papua can be reconceptualised as developing a theatre of peacebuilding to transform the theatre of torture. The theatre of peacebuilding model reveals that torture has not always entirely and permanently converted a subject into an ‘abject’. Many survivors not only regain their subjectivity but also their agency. They are able to resist the domination of perpetrators and to take control over their own bodies and histories. In this process of regaining agency, memoria passionis (the memory of suffering) may be beginning to push Papua toward a tipping point that is transforming the theatre of torture to a theatre of peacebuilding. The possibility for this transformation is encapsulated in the idea of establishing a permanent Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Papua (TRCP). Memoria passionis has become a converging point that connects the triangulation of the narratives of suffering, domination and witnessing and inverts the triangulation into a new configuration of ‘revolt, healing and solidarity.’ The whole process of theorising peacebuilding based on the concept of memoria passionis as a remedy to the politics of torture in Papua contributes a novel and distinctively Papuan foundation to the theory and practice of peacebuilding in conflict situations like Papua.
more background information on the thesis
AHRC Cases
The Asian Human Rights Commission documents several cases of torture in Papua. Please visit AHRC’s torture cases in Papua.
