Police in New Guinea are responding to crime there with crimes of their own. That’s what Human Rights Watch is reporting today in a 124 page report, "Making Their Own Rules': Police Beatings, Rape, and Torture of Children in Papua New Guinea."
The report tells the story of children being shot, knifed and beaten by police. It tells of some being forced to chew and swallow condoms, others gang raped in police stations and detained with adults in conditions described as “awful.”
"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, Papua New Guinea’s largest foreign donor directs much of its aid to the police force, yet according to Human Rights Watch, “…Australia does not make promotion of human rights an explicit purpose or condition of its aid.”
The Age reports, an Australian Foreign Affairs Department spokesman said the Government was aware of the report and was concerned about allegations of police violence referred to in it.
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.
The report says during a raid of a venue called the Three-Mile Guesthouse in the capital, Port Moresby, in March 2004, police beat, sexually assaulted and humiliated women and girls, some of whom were prostitutes, forcing many of them to eat condoms, the report said. Several women were arrested and taken to a police station where at least four were gang raped by police, one victim told Human Rights Watch.
"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.
Coursen-Neff also said, "There is no more important government responsibility than protecting children and other vulnerable people from violence. If the government is serious about the protection of children, it must start holding accountable police who beat, rape and torture children."
Bire Kimisopa, the Security Minister for the troubled Pacific nation that sprawls across mountainous jungle-clad islands just north of Australia, said police brutality is "…something we cannot hide from. It is simply because we have lost our way in the last 10, 20 years.”
Papua’s Post Courier Report writes that Kimisopa said the report was consistent with the constabulary’s review, but the issues were the signs of major problems that the constabulary had experienced over the years. “It clearly pointed out a number of things that we have not been able to deal with,” Kimisopa said. He said these included police housing, training and the ethical issues that police needed to be taught consistently “so that when it comes to discharging of lawful responsibilities, they know their ethical boundaries”.
Kimisopa said while the report highlights the police, there is more to the problem of human rights. He said human rights abuse was everywhere and not confined to the PNG police force. An example was at hospitals where people had died because they had waited for doctors for a considerable time. Sources: Sources: Radio Australia, Newsday, Alert Net, HRW, Post Courier Report (Papua), The Age (Australia)
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