Jakarta faked conditions at camps, smuggled letter says

Press, 23 May 1977, Page 9

Jakarta faked conditions at camps, smuggled letter says

By

DAVID WATTS,

5, of

•‘The Times,” through NZPAI London| A remarkable picture of lite in the political prisons of Indonesia, and of the de-i ceptions practised to mis- i lead a team from the Inter-! national Committee of the j Red Cross which visited the camps earlier this year, has; emerged in a letter! smuggled to the West. The letter, 16 foolscap! pages in the English translation. was written by a prom-1 inent detainee to warn the! Red Cross of how the prison i camps were being trans-; formed in preparation for j their visit, to hide details of I torture and primitive condi-1 tions and to catalogue some 1 of the thousands of deaths! in the prisons since the at-1 tempted Communist coup in 1965. Il Partly as a result of the IJ letter, the Red Cross has taken the unusual step of ' commenting internationally 1 on one of its visits. Normally, J the Red Cross issues its re-;* port only to the Government' l concerned, and any details!* emerge only if that Govern-! ment wants them to be made!’ public. I i But, in a recent bulletin,!; the I.C.R.C. says that itjr "drew the attention of the t authorities to the fact that h its delegates’ findings could 1 not be regarded as an indica-lt tion of the real conditions ;f of detention in Indonesia for t two reasons: the limited c number of places visited and c the difficulties encountered! during the visits.” it

i The committee goes on: I “The I.C.R.C. will continue lits visits to places of detention in Indonesia on the condition that these difficulties are overcome.” Giving details of 26 prisoners removed from the isolation block at Salemba Priisori, one of those visited, the ' I letter also mentions the rejmoval of Dr Subandrio, the former Prime Minister and! l ■ Foreign Minister, and the! ■ former air marshal. Mr Omari; Dhani, from ’Nirbaya Prison! I before the arrival of the dele-1 gation. I The writer says that the! ; authorities feared that they 1 (“would have the courage to | reveal all the secrets of the ; inhuman, arbitrary treatment ■ meted out to tapols (political ' prisoners).” 1 j At Salemba the prisoners 1 were given camp beds, | pillows, food, and utensils ! [before the Red Cross arrived. The prisoners were told that i if they were approached by ’ the team they must not speak t about their experiences, but i only about the present con- ; ditions in the camp, accord- i ling to the letter. $ ; Recreational equipment < |was brought into the camp. ! ; including two television sets, j 1 a loudspeaker, sports equip-it iment and games. The isola-p ■tion block, where prisoners T Iwere kept in their cells 24 j hours a day, was emptied and the occupants trans-!1 ferred to Budi Utomo camp., and the whole camp waslr cleaned up and repaired, it c claims. n The government attempted I c to present the Red Cross ih

with a completely false pic-i tura of the human rights! afforded Indonesians, accord-! ing to the writer. It is estimated that there are 100,000 * political prisoners in the! country-, and the United!: States Congress has labelled Indonesia one of the worst; offenders against human' rights. [ The writer estimates that :90 per cent of the prisoners;] • have been tortured, and he ■ [gives details of alleged; ! abuses. He says that there I has been a steady decline in [both the quality and quan- | I tity of food given to prisonI ers. Initially, after the major- , ity of the arrests in 1965, prisoners were given two < packets of rice a day with a few vegetables. The “mid- ( day” meal was given about ; 5 p.m. or 6 p.m., and the 1 evening meal nt 11 p.m. Since 1967, the writer ’ says, the number of deaths 1 through beri-beri and malnu- * trition have increased 1 significantly and the daily 1 allowance has been either 3 eight to 10 spoonfuls of bulgur wheat or 120 grains of 1 corn, with spinach and salt, I < the former being grown by It the detainees themselves. In 11 this latter period prisoners ja are said to have died at the; l rate of about two a day. |t In North Sumatra and) Surabaya, the writer says,lp 15,000 prisoners have died.' j a At present, the daily food's ration in the writer’s place ir of detention has an esti-1 r mated value of 800 — 1000; j: calories a day. except onlc holidays, when help is sent'Sl

iin by the churches or the ) Muslim Council, or when a ’ tour of inspection is to be made. I The diet consists of a | ; twice-daily ration of 3001 ) grams of rice of about 300) | calories a portion, a dish of! ; tempe, a meal made of soya! beans of about 100 calories,! land spinach and salt with ai lvalue of a further 100 ca-( jlories. The requirement of the! ) body to fuel metabolism,; movement, and work'is gen-! erally regarded as 2500 ca-| lories per day. Some detainees get help from their families, but most do not and are prone to contract a wide variety of diseases. The writer says that official statements about the number of prisoners freed have been misleading. In 1975 the Government announced that 2000 people had been released, whereas, according to information collected by the writer, only 150 were freed in batches of 30 to 40. At the end of 1976 the release of a further 2500 was announced, but, according to the writer, only 120 were released. The balance of the announced number was made up of people who had been freed in 1975 or before. On release, the families of prisoners from the Jakarta area were ordered to pay) administration costs. These j ranged from $143 for a low-) ranking soldier to $6OOO for) prominent prisoners. A typical peasant income is about! 560 a year.