III. Abuses in Detention

It was a cage. Shut. In the jail we stayed there for a long time. I don’t know how many months.[57]

—Enayet H., an 11-year-old Burmese Rohingya boy, who said he was detained in migration facilities starting when he was 9 years old.

Migrant children—including children in families, unaccompanied children, and very young children—are arbitrarily detained in violent, inadequate detention facilities throughout Indonesia. Immigration authorities and Indonesian police arrest migrants and asylum seekers either as they cross into Indonesia or as they move towards the boats to Australia; NGOs and asylum seekers have also reported arrests in the areas outside Jakarta where many migrants live. Indonesian authorities routinely detain families, unaccompanied migrant children, and adult asylum seekers for months or even years in informal detention facilities and formal Immigration Detention Centers (IDCs). Migrants, including children, are typically detained without judicial review or bail, access to lawyers, or any way to challenge their detention.

Of the 102 migrants interviewed by Human Rights Watch, 82 were or had been detained, 76 of those in one or more IDCs. Of the 42 children covered in our research, all but 7 were or had been detained, including children ranging in age from 2 to 17 years old.[58] Thirty-two children were detained in a formal IDC, and 12 were detained in informal facilities (the numerical overlap exists because some children were detained in multiple facilities).

On multiple occasions, Human Rights Watch asked, among others, the minister of law and human rights (who oversees the Directorate General of Immigration) for both the numbers of immigrants held at the IDCs and their demographic details, but the government did not provide this information.[59] Indeed, it is not clear whether the government knows the number of or biographical details for the detainees in its facilities.[60]  A high-ranking police official in Tanjung Pinang City, near one of the larger IDCs, said of those responsible for facilities, “Since they don’t recognize these immigrants as human beings, they don’t track them at all.”[61]

Data we received from IOM indicates that as of February 2013, approximately 1,450 refugees and asylum seekers, including children, who fall under IOM’s care were detained.[62] The total number of detainees in migration detention facilities is higher as not all fall under IOM’s mandate.

Indonesia operates—through the Directorate General of Immigration under the Ministry of Law and Human Rights—approximately 11to 13 formal IDCs, though not all are always occupied and sometimes officials open facilities temporarily.[63] The larger facilities include Belawan IDC, near Medan; Tanjung Pinang IDC, on Bintan Island; Pontianak IDC, in Pontianak in West Kalimantan; Kalideres IDC, in Jakarta; and Makassar IDC in South Sulawesi. The smaller facilities include Pekanbaru IDC in Riau province in central Sumatra; Manado IDC in North Sulawesi; Surabaya IDC in East Java; Denpasar IDC in Bali; and Kupang IDC in West Timor. Facilities in Bandar Lampung, in southern Sumatra, Balikpapan, in East Kalimantan, and Papua are not always open or do not always contain detainees.

Indonesian immigration detention centers. © 2013 John Emerson/Human Rights Watch

Migrants interviewed by Human Rights Watch, including children, reported being held in a number of alternate facilities in addition to the IDCs. Regional immigration offices, including those in Medan, Denpasar, Padang, and Jakarta, have holding rooms or cells, which typically are used to hold migrants for short periods of time (our interviewees who were held in these facilities referred to periods of time less than one month). In addition, Indonesian authorities use hotels or other buildings, with guards (sometimes from the Directorate General of Immigration, and sometimes from the police), to hold groups of migrants for short periods.  The total number of informal facilities used to detain migrants is hard to know, as different facilities are open at different times.

Arbitrary Detention

Indonesia routinely holds children of all ages in migration detention for months or years, rather than use alternatives to detention—such as registration and community monitoring. Young children are detained with one or both parents, and unaccompanied migrant children are held with unrelated adults. Single adults are also detained for lengthy periods. Neither children nor adults have any means of challenging their detention, nor do they know for how long they will be detained. Such indefinite detention without recourse to judicial review amounts to arbitrary detention prohibited under international law.

For instance, children are arbitrarily detained at the Tanjung Pinang IDC, where according to its director, several families were detained at the time of our visit in September 2012.[64] A security officer at Tanjung Pinang said there were two unaccompanied migrant children there at the time, whom he believed to be 13 or 14 years old.[65] Another boy, Jairaj N. was 12 years old when he was taken to Tanjung Pinang where he was held for six-and-a-half months. Interviewed after his release he said, “I stayed with my mom in detention, and my two sisters, ages sixteen and six. It was very bad though, we couldn’t go outside.”[66]

At some facilities, migrant children were held with their mothers but separated from their fathers; in others, the entire family was detained in the same cell. Saasvikan P. was nine years old when he was detained at Tanjung Pinang with his family for several months:

In one room, 10 families lived…. They separated us: Mothers and children in one room, and fathers in another room. They opened the fathers’ room from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day. My father was not allowed to eat dinner with us.[67]

Parents did not know how long they and their children would be detained. Safia A., an Afghan woman, was held with her husband and three daughters in a cell at Pekanbaru IDC for a year; her daughters were 10, 6, and 4 years old. Safia said, “My children asked and asked, ‘When can we go outside?’ but we cannot answer. We are responsible parents, but we have no answers for them.”[68] Mariam A., Safia’s eldest daughter, added, “We couldn’t go outside the gate. It was very difficult for us.”[69]

Some parents had concerns about their children’s physical safety. Raahitha H., for example, a Sri Lankan Tamil mother who had been detained in an IDC for five months with her two-year-old son, said, “There is no safety here because there are so many men. We are scared for our children because of the other men being around us. Sometimes they fight each other, the men. My son sees them fight—he watches like entertainment.”[70]

An asylum-seeking girl, thought to be from Sri Lanka, walks through Belawan Immigration Detention Center while detained with her family, September 2012. © 2012 Kyle Knight / Human Rights Watch

Parents reported worries about the impact of lengthy detention on their young children. For instance, Selva P., a Tamil man, was detained at Kalideres IDC for three-and-a-half months with his daughter, who was then four years old.

Men and women are already adults when they have these experiences, but children don’t understand them—the first thing they know in their lives is painful. We have to explain to them many times.[71]

Children and adults are also held in informal detention facilities apart from and in addition to the IDCs, including hotels and immigration offices.

 Ahmad Z., an unaccompanied migrant boy from Afghanistan, was 17 years old when he arrived in Indonesia. He reported that he was held in multiple immigration offices, including the Medan office for 25 days. “Five people in one small room. It was all day, all night lock-up.”[72] Ahmad was then transferred to Kalideres IDC where he was held for approximately 14 months. Labaan A., an unaccompanied Somali boy, was 17 years old when he attempted to cross to Australia by boat, said, “The police arrested us. They kept us in a hotel (Jayana Hotel) in Sumbawa for 25 days…. The security at the hotel was Indonesian police.”[73]

These immigration detention facilities are not also used to house criminals. Nonetheless, children and adults detained repeatedly referred to their detention as jail-like, despite UNHCR standards mandating that detention of asylum seekers not be criminalized or punitive,[74] and despite the notion that detention of children, which is only permitted to occur exceptionally, must not have punishment as its purpose. Faizullah A., an unaccompanied boy from Afghanistan, was 17 years old when he was detained at Pontianak IDC for seven-and-a-half months. “The room had walls with windows [gesturing to internal windows] and a cage on one side. It was not a detention center, it was a real jail.”[75]

According to Indonesia’s immigration law, the criminal penalty for illegal entry or illegal exit is maximum one year imprisonment and/or a maximum fine of 100 million rupiah (US$10,315).[76] Any immigrant who enters Indonesia without proper documentation will be regarded as an illegal immigrant, and may be subject to detention awaiting deportation.[77] Detention is permissible until deportation is executed, and where deportation cannot be carried out, for up to 10 years.[78] Immigration officials have discretionary power to move a foreigner who “is sick, will give birth, or is still a child” out of detention and to an alternative location, though the law does not specify what that location would be.[79]

Indonesia’s laws do not give migrants or asylum seekers opportunities to challenge their detention, nor do they provide any way for them to know when they will be released.[80] Indeed, migrants rarely if ever have assistance from lawyers in challenging their detention. “There are no lawyers,” said an IOM staffer at Pontianak.[81]

Indonesia’s prolonged, automatic migration detention—without the possibility of judicial review or remedy—amounts to arbitrary detention prohibited by international treaties to which Indonesia is party. Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights forbids arbitrary detention, and the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention holds that a migrant or asylum seeker placed in detention “must be brought promptly before a judge or other authority.”[82]The Working Group’s mandate to investigate arbitrary deprivation of liberty refers to five legal categories for arbitrary detention, including one describing arbitrary detention as “[w]hen asylum seekers, immigrants or refugees are subjected to prolonged administrative custody without the possibility of administrative or judicial review or remedy.”[83] A prohibition on arbitrary detention is also found in the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families,[84] ratified by Indonesia in 2012. UNHCR emphasizes that asylum seekers and refugees have the rights to liberty and freedom of movement and that detention must only be in accordance with and authorized by law.[85]

Migrant children have a further level of protection from deprivation of liberty under international law. Article 37(b) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) mandates that the detention of children “shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.”[86] The treaty body that interprets the CRC has stated that unaccompanied children must not be criminalized for reasons related to their immigration status or illegal entry,[87] and urges states to cease the detention of all children on the basis of their immigration status.[88] UNHCR asserts that family detention should be a last resort, when alternatives to detention are exhausted.[89]

Physical and Psychological Abuse

Immigration officials, under the Directorate General of Immigration in the Ministry of Law and Human Rights, appear to frequently beat migrants and asylum seekers in Indonesian detention facilities, according to our interviews. Of the 82 interviewees who were or had been detained, 11 reported that they had personally experienced incidents of violence, and 3 of the 11 reported multiple incidents in which they had been physically abused by immigration guards. Nineteen interviewees gave credible, detailed testimony of incidents of violence against others with whom they were detained, with one interviewee reporting multiple instances of violence against others. The experiences documented in this report, while not statistically representative of the detained population, are at least indicative of the types of abuses suffered and the lack of redress available.

Interviewees were consistent in their descriptions of the types of violence in detention facilities, describing guards kicking, slapping, and punching detainees, beating detainees with sticks and other implements, burning detainees with cigarettes, and using electroshock weapons. Some migrants reported sustaining lasting injuries. Multiple immigration officials might attack one migrant or a group of migrants in a single incident.

Unaccompanied migrant children were among those who reported brutality from immigration officials. In addition, according to our interviews, children as young as four years old have been witness to attacks, including one case in which guards forced children to watch as they beat adult migrants.

Human Rights Watch’s interviewees discussed incidents of violence between 2010 and 2011 in each of the four largest detention facilities: Belawan, Pontianak, Tanjung Pinang, and Kalideres IDCs, each of which routinely host asylum seekers, unaccompanied migrant children, and families. We also received reports from detainees of abuse in 2011 at Pekanbaru and Balikpapan IDCs; in summer 2012 at Kalideres IDC; and September 2012 at Belawan IDC. Our interviewees reported violence in informal detention facilities, during arrest, and at police stations between 2010 and 2012. A media report indicates further instances of violence at Surabaya IDC in February 2012,[90] and a support group for asylum seekers reported allegations that guards beat several Afghan men after they tried to escape from Tanjung Pinang IDC in July 2012.[91]

Despite the death following a severe beating of an Afghan migrant in Pontianak IDC in February 2012, and some limited accountability that has followed, the government has not launched a systematic review of physical abuse in the immigration detention system. Our interviewees reported instances of violence after February 2012.

In April 2013, eight migrants died in custody following a riot at the Belawan IDC near Medan,[92] creating further worries about the government’s capacity to maintain an atmosphere free of violence in the detention facilities. 

International law binding on Indonesia prohibits corporal punishment and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment in detention facilities, whether criminal or civil.[93]

Children Beaten

Human Rights Watch collected accounts of multiple incidents of immigration officials beating children in detention between 2010 and 2012. Unaccompanied migrant boys told us they were beaten in detention, and adults testified that boys detained with them were beaten. One boy traveling with his family was also beaten.

Arif B. was 15 years old when he traveled to Indonesia without a parent or guardian. He said he was detained with unrelated adults at Balikpapan IDC for 1 month and 20 days in 2011, but tried to escape within the first 48 hours:

Those who were trying to escape were beaten…. Three people got away, four were caught. I was caught. That day I was beaten up very roughly…. There were eight or nine people beating me, most were guards and there was one person from the outside. They hurt my shoulder, my ear, my back. I was beaten with one of the other people who was caught.[102]

Faizullah A., an unaccompanied migrant child from Afghanistan, was 17 years old when he was detained at Pontianak IDC in 2010: “The immigration officer hit me on the face. I had gone to ask for water [to be turned on], I was shouting. He hit me two or three times. That stopped me. I was quiet then. I was crying for three or four hours after this.”[103]

A psychologist reported that one of his clients, an unaccompanied Afghan boy, was beaten in the same incident that led to Taqi Naroye’s death in 2012 (see above). Mirza,[104] who was 17 years old at the time, was in the courtyard and witness to Naroye’s beating. According to the psychologist, “the guards kicked [Mirza], his ankles, his shins, his feet, shouting at him emotionally. This was to get him away from the area of the beating.”[105] Mirza suffered severe anxiety in the months that followed (see below).[106]

Daoud T., an Afghan adult asylum seeker, said he went on a hunger strike at Belawan IDC in 2011, with several other migrants, including an unaccompanied migrant child. Many of them were beaten, said Daoud. “They even beat the 17 year old.”[107] Later testimony from detainees confirms continuing violence at Belawan. Kannan A., a 16-year-old boy detained with his family at Belawan in late 2012, reported that “immigration officers … grabbed me by my shirt and threw me into the room” after he says he was making too much noise.[108]

In all but one case reported to Human Rights Watch, immigration staff carried out the beatings. Yet in one instance in 2011 reported to us by an adult migrant, guards at Belawan forced another migrant to beat an Afghan unaccompanied child, Sadiq,[109] who was 16 years old at the time. Mohammad S., an Afghan refugee detained with Sadiq, said, “The person who beat Sadiq … was a prisoner like us, but immigration … told him, ‘You must beat this boy.’”[110] Sadiq was 16 years old at the time; Mohammad could see Sadiq’s cell and the hallway from his own cell:

[The other prisoner, who was Bangladeshi] took Sadiq to another room, with three immigration guards…. They locked the door to [the] room. The guards were still in the room while he [the other prisoner] beat Sadiq … I could hear him crying … he was beaten for 10 or 15 minutes. The next day he had black, black marks where [the other prisoner] had punched him…. Sadiq did see a doctor…. The marks stayed for three or four days…. For Sadiq, we complained to UNHCR and to IOM. All the Afghans who were living inside did. But … nothing happened.[111]

International law prohibits the use of force against children in detention except in exceptional circumstances to prevent self-injury, injury to others, and destruction of property.[112]  Beating children is a serious violation of this standard.

Adults Beaten

Reports of children beaten in immigration detention are symptomatic of a larger problem. Adult migrants said they were also beaten in a number of different detention facilities, including Kalideres, Belawan, Tanjung Pinang, and Pontianak IDCs.

In 2010, Sher K., an asylum seeker who fled Afghanistan after working as a translator for coalition forces, attempted to escape from Kalideres IDC near Jakarta:

About twenty people managed to get out, but I got caught with five others. They beat us brutally. Three shifts of guards, they would each come with sticks and knives and hit us. Six or seven guards would come and beat us for fun. It lasted for three days, every day, all day. They did it for fun. One friend of mine … had a broken arm. My face was black and blue. My kidney was damaged for a month—it was bad—from the beating. We were put in a four foot by eight foot cell for six months—for six people. [113]

Ahmad Z., who said he arrived in Indonesia from Afghanistan when he was 17 years old, was 19 years old when he was detained at Kalideres IDC. He told us he was beaten and kept in a segregated cell when he was caught attempting to escape:

The [immigration] police found us…. They caught us and they beat us so badly. They punched me, they kicked me, they slapped me. Eight people each hit me. [After driving back to to Kalideres,] they took us inside and beat us more. They stomped on our food and kicked us in the stomach. Then they put us in a room with nothing. [We were] just sleeping on the floor. The next day they came and woke us up and beat us for 20 minutes….  For about six months we were locked inside of that room. No doctor visit during the six months. My friend got sick.[114]

Several migrants said that guards beat them and others at Belawan IDC, in northern Sumatra. Mohammad S., who was detained there for 14 months in 2010 and 2011, said, “ at Belawan, they beat people, many times, in front of my eyes.” [115] At the time of our interview, Daoud T. still sustained injuries from one of his beatings at Belawan, which took place in 2010:

The immigration guards beat me….  We wanted them to open the door so we could see the sky ... We staged a five-day hunger strike…. On day five, the guards slapped and kicked me. I can’t hear in my right ear because of the beating—they slapped my ear so hard.[116]

A number of interviewees who were detained at Tanjung Pinang IDC reported being beaten after being found with mobile phones or SIM cards. Nuwan D. described one incident in 2010:

One of my friends used a cellphone. He bribed a guard to buy it. Once the guards discovered him they attacked him—[including] the same officer he had gotten the phone from. They took him to a private room—three guards—and they beat him. He was burned by cigarettes, we could see this when he came out. He was 23 years old. He came out upset and injured.[117]

Ravith N. related a similar incident at the center after one of his cellmates objected to the guards’ delay in opening the gates to the recreation area: “The guard took a cigarette and burned him on his chest … the guard did this inside the guard room.”[118]

Abuse is not limited to IDCs: Migrants also reported abuses at immigration offices and police stations. After almost a month at Manado IDC, Khalid A. said he was caught while escaping with several other Afghan men, and beaten at a police station in Palu in 2010:

The police beat me. I’ve never been beaten like that before. They used electric shocks … 10 people beat us. All 10 were police. They were laughing and beating us. One had an electric shocker[119] that makes you shake…. He hit me with that maybe 20 or 25 times. I was feeling very weak. When he stopped the shocker, the other police beat me with a stick. We all cried, cried, cried. They beat me with a stick here, here, here [indicates his left elbow, knee, ankle, and shoulder]. They were telling us, “Do you want to escape next time? Do you want to escape? This time I’m beating you, next time I will kill you.”

This was in Indonesian and a little in English. I was left bruised. I had black marks in every place of my body. I couldn’t move my hand like that [indicates swinging elbow horizontally].[120]

Khalid also said immigration officers beat him when he was held at the Polonia immigration office for 11 days in 2011: “They … [p]unched me two or three times and asked why I tried to escape. If you’re illegal, you must be beaten…. It was a big guy who beat me, an immigration guy[.]”[121] Mohammad S. also said he was beaten at the Polonia immigration office when he was held there for seven days in 2010 shortly after entering the country:  “The officer beat me because I didn’t want to give him my money. He said, ‘Just be quiet,’ and he beat me. ‘Give me your watch, and money, and be quiet. You’re illegal.’ He hit me. On my face, on many parts of my body.”[122] Faizullah A., who was 17 when he came to Indonesia alone, and 19 at the time of this incident, said immigration officers “grabbed me and slapped me on the face” when they re-arrested him in Medan in July 2012 and took him to the Polonia immigration office.[123]

Children Forced to Witness Violence

Among our interviewees, children of all ages were witness to harsh episodes of violence, underscoring the unsafe and unhealthy environment of detention. In one case, parents reported that immigration guards specifically forced children to watch as they beat other migrants. Media accounts confirm similar incidents in which children were exposed to violence in detention: for instance, in April 2013, multiple families were detained at Belawan IDC, when a riot broke out that left eight migrants dead and 15 injured.[124]

Arif B., a 15-year-old Afghan boy, said he was beaten on his shoulder, head, and back by “eight or nine people” he thinks were guards when detained at Balikpapan IDC in 2011. He said the incident took place “in the courtyard —everyone was there.... They saw and watched. Including one family from Iran, with a seven-year-old boy. He was watching too.”[125]

Faizullah A. was 17 years old when he was detained and learned of guards beating two other migrant who had tried to escape in separate incidents. According to Faizullah, the first “had cigarette burns over his body, on his arms and whole body [indicates torso.]”  Faizullah witnessed the punishment meted out to the second escapee: “They beat him very badly. They hit him with a stick, and broke his hand.”[126] He described an atmosphere of routine intimidation and violence at Pontianak IDC during his seven-and-a-half months there: “They [immigration guards] had a stick, an electric stick. They would run it on the wall of the cage, it was very loud, like screeching…. They beat with everything—glass, boxes, anything around.”[127]

Enayet H., an 11-year-old Burmese Rohingya boy, said he was detained starting when he was 9 years old at a facility in Bandar Lampung. He told us, in English, that:

There, the police beat all people. My father, my uncle.... My father was beat, beat; my uncle was beat, beat, beat; but not me. They only beat the big people. I was the only child there. I stayed a long time.... it happened in the police room. The police were very bad in there. When people run [attempt to escape], they beat.... My father said to them, “I want to go outside, my child to study.” So the police, they beat my father.[128]

Lack of Accountability for Violence

They [the immigration guards] didn’t have rules. We were in a cage, and they were outside.[130]

—Faizullah A., 17-year-0ld unaccompanied Afghan boy held at Pontianak IDC.

The immigration detention system appears to have no published regulations for staff behavior, nor are there clear consequences for violations of migrants’ rights. We requested, on multiple occasions, information from the Minister of Law and Human Rights (overseeing the Directorate General of Immigration) regarding procedures regulating staff behavior or providing accountability for abuse or other violations of migrants’ rights; we received no substantive response to these requests.[131]

Our own research on Indonesian domestic law and policy yielded no evidence of the existence of comprehensive regulations, and interviews with nongovernmental and intergovernmental organizations involved in providing support to asylum seekers and refugees further supports the notion that comprehensive regulations do not exist.

Intergovernmental agencies provide limited, unofficial channels of support for those subject to violence, though they do not have a mandate to monitor abuses. For instance, IOM, which provides assistance to some detainees, has no official capacity or mandate to monitor IDCs, and when staff members hear of abuses they are reported to the Directorate General of Immigration in Jakarta.[132]UNHCR has protection staff in seven locations (Medan, Tanjung Pinang, Pontianak, Makassar, Kupang, Surabaya, and Bogor) who regularly work within the IDCs,[133] but Human Rights Watch is not aware of any UNHCR mandate that would enable them to monitor the facilities.

A staff member of an NGO who spoke on condition of anonymity reported that

 [I]mmigration staff employed in the IDC[s] have received little or no training on how to respond to detainees, there is a lack of guidance regarding detainees’ rights and obligations … the lack of regulations and guidelines tends to lead to choosing strict conduct as immigration staff fears to receive sanctions if detainees abscond.[134]

The staff member added that “there is no mechanism inside immigration to file complaints about violence, and there are no national standard operational procedures that could standardize simple complaint processes.”[135]

Rudy Prasetyo, an immigration officer at Pontianak, explained how new detainees learn what behavior is expected of them: “Usually one or two Afghan asylum seekers speak English, and IOM tells them the rules… sometimes it’s body language.”[136] Migrants said they were punished for a variety of offenses, including attempting escape, possessing mobile phones, going on hunger strikes, or arguing with guards.

Groups of migrants have been punished collectively. For instance, after a group of Afghan asylum seekers attempted to escape from Pontianak IDC in February 2012, other Afghan asylum seekers in the facility said they had their recreation curtailed and were no longer allowed to use mobile phones some migrants had been able to purchase. “The Myanmar and Thai people [detained in the facility] can go outside, they can have phones,”[137] said Afghan asylum seeker Nazar M. in a group interview. Zabiullah M., also Afghan, added, “[Immigration] says we can’t because we escaped. But I didn’t escape, that wasn’t me.”[138]

There is no independent monitoring body for immigration detention facilities. The Directorate General of Immigration falls under the Ministry for Law and Human Rights, which, as discussed above, does not have clear regulations for oversight of the facilities. As far as Human Rights Watch is aware, no institution has a mandate to monitor treatment of detainees by guards.  

Failure to Provide for Children’s Rights

Conditions for children detained in Indonesian immigration detention facilities violate multiple international standards, leaving children without adequate care. Unaccompanied migrant children are detained with unrelated adults, and many have no contact with their families. No child has meaningful access to education, and recreation and medical care are limited. The prolonged, indefinite detention damages both adult and child mental health.

Detention of children—which should only occur in exceptional circumstances—must meet standards in the UN Rules for the Protection of Children Deprived of their Liberty.[139] These rules articulate standards for the provision of education, recreation, and medical care, among others. According to our investigations, several detention facilities in Indonesia failed to meet these standards.

Detention of Unaccompanied Migrant Children with Unrelated Adults

Unaccompanied migrant children were routinely detained in a number of immigration facilities with unrelated adults, making them vulnerable to exploitation and neglecting their need for specialized care.[140] During a visit to Pontianak IDC in September 2012, Human Rights Watch observed a boy who said he was 16 held in the same area as adult men. Many boys we interviewed reported they were detained with adults. For example, Arif B. from Afghanistan, who was 15 when he was held at Balikpapan IDC, said, “There were four people in each room. In that room, I was the only underage there. The other three were adults.”[141] Faizullah A., also from Afghanistan, was detained at Pontianak IDC:

I told the police I was 17 years old. They said “it’s no problem for us, you still go to detention.”… There were 34 or 35 other people [in my cell], all male [adults], and [one] other boy.[142]

Many adults also reported they were held with boys, including Shakairan A., a 44-year-old Tamil man, who said that while he was detained at Tanjung Pinang IDC in 2010 and 2011, “the 16 or 17 year olds lived with us, the men.”[143]

Some adult migrants said they worried about the welfare of the boys with whom they were detained. Udaya V., an adult male Tamil refugee, was detained for 10 months at Tanjung Pinang starting in 2010 and held with unaccompanied minors:

In my block there were three people under 18. They were 17 when we were there. They were just treated the same as us. The immigration officers and UNHCR, they knew they were kids. But they didn’t do anything. The boys felt stressed … They stayed with 40-year-old men, with 50-year-old men; they felt pressure.[144]

Sher K., from Afghanistan, was detained for over two years:

In Kalideres [IDC] … there were 20 or 30 unaccompanied minors. We got a weekly food supply from IOM. Boys had food stolen from them. Immigration didn’t listen; they laughed when we complained. Whenever the boys talked on the phone with their families, they would cry. The boys cried all the time. They were the most powerless in there. They would get attacked.[145]

No routine age determination is conducted in Indonesian immigration facilities. Several boys reported that officials knew their age but they remained in detention with adults anyway, suggesting that the detention of unaccompanied minors with adults did not occur from mere oversight. “They took us to the immigration office in Padang for 20-25 days,” said Ahmad Z., an unaccompanied migrant boy from Afghanistan who was 17 years old when he arrived in Indonesia. “I told the police I was 17. They just put me with the others, and treated me like the others.”[146]

Sayed M., from Afghanistan, was detained with adults at the time we interviewed him:

I’m 16 going on 17. UNHCR knows I’m here. I’ve been here for four months. I talked to UNHCR last week, I have talked to them many times…. I sleep in a room with these guys [pointing to adult men around him].[147]

The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights oblige states parties to separate adults from children in detention,[148] and the Committee on the Rights of the Child emphasizes that this obligation specifically applies to migrant children in detention.[149]

Lack of Access to Education

None of the children or parents we interviewed said children had access to formal education in detention,[150] and children are not allowed to leave the IDCs to attend schools.[151] Children can, therefore, lose months or years of education while they are detained. Mariam A., from Afghanistan, who was 10 years old when she was detained for one year from 2010-2011 with her family at Pekanbaru IDC, said, “There wasn’t any school there.”[152] Madudeva N., an unaccompanied boy from Sri Lanka, was detained for a year from 2010 to 2011 in Tanjung Pinang IDC starting at age 16. He said, “There wasn’t a school [at Tanjung Pinang]. We studied English by ourselves; IOM gave us books.”[153]

The CRC indicates that, in the exceptional cases where children are detained, they should receive care appropriate to their age, including access to education.[154] Every child of compulsory school age has the right to education, which should be provided outside the detention facility in community schools wherever possible. Children above compulsory school age who wish to continue their education should be allowed to do so.[155]

As Madudeva’s testimony illustrates, IOM provides some books and English classes, but no formal education. Balanandini N., a Sri Lankan girl, was detained at Belawan IDC in 2011 when she was 12 years old. “There was no school. I studied by myself with books I brought, and a few extra books from IOM.”[156] The deputy chief of mission of IOM in Indonesia reported that the organization offers some teaching in IDCs, but “it comes down to what the heads of the IDCs allow.”[157]

Lack of Recreation

Interviewees including children reported inconsistent access to recreation facilities and to time outdoors, despite international standards prescribing access to outdoor facilities for an hour per day.[158] Some migrants reported not being allowed outdoors for weeks or months. Labaan A., an unaccompanied migrant boy from Somalia, aged 17, said he was detained for 25 days in an informal hotel facility, where he was “never permitted to go outside.”[159] Mohammad S., an Afghan man, was detained at Belawan IDC: “Immigration put us inside a room and locked us in. For one month, and they never opened the door.... After one month, the constable came inside and let us out, he opened the door for just one half hour.”[160]

An Afghan asylum-seeker walks in the courtyard used for outdoor recreation time at Belawan Immigration Detention Center, September 2012. Some interviewees reported being held for months without access to recreation spaces. © 2012 Kyle Knight / Human Rights Watch.

According to our interviewees, access to recreation seemed to be at the whim of immigration staff. Faizullah A., also from Afghanistan, was 17 years old when he was detained for seven-and-a-half months at Pontianak IDC:

I was in that room [at Pontianak] for five months without going outside. For the last two months we could go outside. But for about five months I didn’t see the sun. They changed the rule, I don’t know why. For the last two months we were allowed outside from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. How can I explain what it’s like when we went out? We were like the wild, running all around. We were thinking we were alive again. In the yard there was water up to here [indicates waist] and we were running in it. [161]

Lack of Sufficient Medical Care and Deteriorating Mental Health

Medical care is made available to some detainees in IDCs through IOM (the organization sends doctors to visit the IDCs and refers some cases to local hospitals).[162] However, some migrants reported delays in receiving care in emergency situations, and children did not always receive routine medical care necessary for child development. Meanwhile, the arbitrary and lengthy detention took a toll on the mental health of many interviewed, affecting particularly children’s mental health.

Thivviya N., a Sri Lankan girl who was 13 and 14 years old when she was detained at Tanjung Pinang IDC with her family, said, “In the detention center I went to the doctor. They didn’t give us proper medicine. I had [the] flu.”[163] Delani K., who was 16 years old when she was detained with her mother at Kalideres IDC, said:

When people got sick, they would bang on the gate to get the officer’s attention. The officers sometimes got mad and kicked them…. I told the immigration officers that my mother was very sick and had passed out. They said, “Oh, the doctor didn’t come today.” Then they told me to go away. I sprayed water on her face and she woke up later … she was with the doctor the next day and he gave her some pills.[164]

Sher K. said he was denied access to a doctor when held in a confinement cell at Kalideres IDC in 2010:

I had a fever and stomach pain and diarrhea. For three days I asked to see the doctor. The IOM doctor said he wasn’t allowed to come see me because I was in the solitary detention area. I wrote a letter and gave it to an IOM social worker. [Once I obtained permission to see the doctor], the guards came and told me to come close to the door so they could see if I was really sick. But I couldn’t walk at that point, I was too weak and sick after three days of waiting. I threatened to kill myself if they didn’t open the door and help me stand up…. They took me to the doctor, and he gave me some medicine. The doctor told IOM that I was so sick I should go to the hospital, but Immigration said no, and put me back in the cell.[165]

Mohammad S. reported that a man detained with him was denied access to a doctor when they were held in one room at Belawan IDC in 2010 for a month without ever being allowed out:

[He] became sick because of the water and the smell … We called to immigration but they never came inside to help him … He threw up many times, it was very serious. His eyes became red color and he fainted, fell over many times.[166]

Asylum seekers at Pontianak IDC, and their doctors, reported mental health problems connected to lengthy detention. Prolonged detention—especially with no finite time limit—can have a devastating effect on migrants’ and asylum seekers’ mental health, especially that of children, who are thought to be more vulnerable to mental trauma. In 2003, the respected medical journal The Lancet published research finding that lengthy asylum detention in the United States correlates with higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression, and that detention exacerbates pre-existing symptoms, including mental trauma sustained while fleeing torture or persecution.[167]

A psychologist who volunteers at Pontianak IDC reported that both his adult and child clients suffered psychological deterioration connected to the prolonged, ill-defined wait:

They lose hope, they lose dreams. There’s no timeframe on when they can have a normal life and go outside as humans. It leads to hopelessness and depression…. My job is to … keep them with some hope, so they can live through the detention period.[168]

One asylum seeker detained at Pontianak IDC said, “If you are a criminal you know the sentence, two years, three years. But here, the wait is unknown. It’s hurting the mind, to wait and wonder, it makes us crazy.”[169]

Detention can be particularly severe for children’s mental health. According to medical experts in the United Kingdom, children held in immigration centers developed “clinically significant emotional and behavioral problems.”[170] Drawing on an extensive study from Australia’s Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, the International Detention Coalition finds that

Children who are detained for immigration purposes are at risk of a variety of psychosocial and developmental problems linked to their detention experiences … The experience of detention may mimic the experience of human rights abuses, persecution and terror.… Children and young people who are detained for extended periods of time are more likely than others to experience feelings of isolation, detachment, and loss of confidence.[171]

An IOM doctor reported that one 14-year-old boy detained at Pontianak IDC “became a stammerer because of the stress of the long detention. He had problems in the past, he was a stammerer … as a young boy in Afghanistan. He had been treated for depression then, and got better. But it came back, the stammer, when he was in detention.”[172] Another IOM staffer added, “The minors have more psychological problems than the adults, they haven’t developed their defenses yet.”[173]

The psychologist who volunteers in Pontianak IDC described some of his child patients:

There were recently [in 2012] seven unaccompanied minors in detention, all of whom were Afghan. Three of them had serious psychological problems; they felt very distressed there. They had trauma from before, back in Afghanistan, they were harassed there…. They have developed a fear of authority figures, so being in detention is hard.

The psychologist reported that these children “don’t communicate, they don’t act alive or participate in activities, they look morose.” He said that restrictions on communications took a particular toll on the boys: “They have heavy depression because they can’t communicate with their families in their countries.”[174]

One of C.A.’s clients was an unaccompanied migrant boy who witnessed the severe beating that led to the death of Taqi Naroye, an adult asylum seeker, in February 2012. The boy, Mirza,[175] was 17 years old at the time and was beaten himself during the incident (see above).

Now, he cannot sleep well, he has nightmares, and his heart beats very fast,” said C.A. “[H]is heart problem … is psychological; he is very anxious…. Before the beating, [he] had problems, psychological problems … After the beating, things got more intense for him, the nightmares started in earnest…. It’s not easy to make this better.[176] 

Lack of Contact with Family

Migrants, including children, go for months or years without being allowed to communicate with their family; there are no routine provisions taken for detainees to contact family from Indonesian immigration detention facilities. International standards mandate that individuals shall have the right to inform their families of imprisonment “at once,”[177] and the individual’s capacity to communicate with his family shall not be denied for more than “a matter of days.”[178] The CRC indicates that, in exceptional cases where unaccompanied children are detained, they should be able to contact family.[179]

Madudeva N. said he was 17 years old when he arrived in Indonesia alone and was detained, with unrelated adults, for a year at Tanjung Pinang IDC.

In detention, in the jail, we didn’t have any conversations with my family. I only talked to my parents after I got out … My parents didn’t know where I was. They just knew I was arrested on the way…. I sent them a letter from IOM but got no reply. I was very worried, because I hadn’t heard from them and I couldn’t talk to them.[180]

Sayed M., an unaccompanied migrant boy from Afghanistan, was 16 years old when Human Rights Watch interviewed him inside an adult detention facility. “It’s been four months without contact with my family. We’re not allowed to make phone calls.”[181]

Many adult asylum seekers felt isolated by the lack of contact. Nuwan D., a Tamil asylum seeker, was detained at Tanjung Pinang IDC for five months. “We were not allowed to use phones. It was difficult not to talk with our families for so long.”[182] Shajunan P.. was detained at Tanjung Pinang for 11 months: “We had no contact with our families, and no cell phones. It was so isolated.”[183]

Failure to Provide Basic Necessities

We had a bad life in our country. We left to seek asylum. We got worse conditions here. We had cement benches for sleeping. No mattress, just bed sheets and a pillow.[184]

—Ravith N., a Tamil refugee

Physical conditions in Indonesian detention facilities are often poor. Immigration detention centers are, at times, filled beyond capacity. Many migrants and asylum seekers reported a lack of basic sanitation facilities, with only short periods of running water; lack of bedding; and flooding in sleeping areas. For example, we observed flooded, overcrowded sleeping areas in Pontianak IDC during our visit in September 2012. Detainees at many facilities said their food was dirty, with insufficient nutrition available for young children.

Detention of migrants and asylum seekers should conform to international standards, including the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners,[185] as well as the UN Rules for the Protection of Children Deprived of their Liberty.[186] These rules mandate minimum space; adequate bedding and decent sanitation; access to water; and adequate food. Many of the Indonesian immigration detention facilities that we investigated failed to meet these standards.

Overcrowding in Detention Facilities

According to Human Rights Watch interviews, IDCs around the country are, at times, overcrowded beyond their stated capacity. The director of Belawan IDC told Human Rights Watch in September 2012 that there were then “189 detainees, the capacity is 120,”[187] while Human Rights Watch observed, during a tour of the facility, that a family of six was held in a room approximately eight feet by twelve feet, with a single set of bunk beds.

Media reports confirm overcrowding: for instance, at the time of a fatal riot in the Belawan IDC in April 2013, the facility reportedly held 280 people, more than twice its capacity.[188] Belawan is not the only facility that experiences overcrowding. An immigration official at Bali IDC told Human Rights Watch that the facility was over capacity when we visited in September 2012: “There are 90 people here. The capacity of the facility is 80 people.”[189] During our visit in September 2012, the director of Tanjung Pinang IDC told Human Rights Watch, “We have 304 people here now. The capacity is 300.”[190]

Overcrowding results in packed rooms with little or no privacy. Nasir A., from Afghanistan, said he was detained at Pekanbaru IDC with his wife and daughters, then aged 10, 6, and 4 years, for one year. “The room [we stayed in] was a little bigger than these two rooms [a total area about 30 feet by 15 feet] for three families, a total of 17 people. There were no walls, no curtains.”[191] Faizullah A., an unaccompanied migrant boy who was 17 years old when he was detained in 2011 at Pontianak IDC, reported that the room in which he slept was, approximately 20 feet by 30 feet. “There were 34 or 35 other people there, all male ... including [another unaccompanied child],” he said.[192]

Sher K., an adult Afghan refugee, was held in a confinement cell at Kalideres IDC: “We were put in a four foot by eight foot cell for six months—for six people. There wasn’t even space for us all to sleep at night. There wasn’t space on the floors; we slept in shifts.[193] Khalid A., also an Afghan refugee, experienced severe overcrowding at two IDCs between 2009 and 2011: “Manado’s capacity is 100. The most when I was there was 160.” In Kupang IDC, near a popular departure point for boats to Australia, he said, “the capacity is 60 to 80 people. The most who were there when I was there was 280.”[194]

Migrants also reported overcrowding in the temporary holding cells in immigration offices in Jakarta and Polonia.[195]

Lack of Adequate Bedding, Flooded Sleeping Areas

Some migrants in IDCs interviewed by Human Rights Watch said they were not given adequate bedding,[196] and experienced flooding in their sleeping areas, particularly during the rainy season. Mohammad S., age 30, said he was detained at Belawan IDC for 14 months starting in 2010:

During the raining, the water would always come into the room. But Immigration wouldn’t do anything, and wouldn’t listen to us when we complained. It was a lot of water, which was about this deep [indicating knee height, about one foot]. The water came from the toilet too. It was very dirty and smelled very bad … The water would take from night until morning [to drain]. In that room, IOM gave us mattresses, a little off the floor made of cement.[197]

Children detained at the Belawan facility at the time of our interviews reported similar conditions. A 17-year-old girl detained at the Belawan facility reported, “When it rains, the toilets flood and come into the room.”[198] A mother detained with her infant son, said, “When it rains and the water levels get high, the sewage comes up out of the toilets. It stays in the room. It’s very dirty. There are insects in the water anyway, but this is even dirtier.”[199]

Faizullah A., an unaccompanied boy age 17, was detained for seven-and-a-half months in Pontianak IDC in 2010 and 2011:

Always, it was raining. The water was on the floor and then we were sleeping there … There were no beds. For some people who came before us, they had mats. For us, nothing. For four or five months. Then they deported some people to Afghanistan, so we used their mats. It was thin, like a type of carpet. We used the old sheets. They never gave anything else [new sheets]. And on the floor we had nothing.[200]

During Human Rights Watch’s visit to Pontianak IDC in September 2012, damp corners of sleeping areas were clearly visible. According to our interviews with detainees while there and to our observations, groups of six to eight migrants and asylum seekers slept on raised concrete platforms with bedrolls or thin mattresses.

Mustafa A., from Afghanistan, was detained at Kalideres IDC in 2010 and 2011: “During my 17 months [in Kalideres], I slept on the floor. We had nothing to make us comfortable.”[201] Shajunan P., a 44-year-old man from Sri Lanka detained at Tanjung Pinang for 11 months, reported dirty and crowded conditions. “They made us sleep on the floor on a thin mattress—sometimes one for two people, sometimes one for one person.… The room was dirty, so many people.”[202]

Lack of Water and Basic Sanitation

Migrants reported poor sanitation facilities and insufficient amounts of water for drinking and bathing in a variety of detention facilities. A girl age 17 interviewed at Belawan IDC reported, “It’s difficult for girls to have a bath. There is no privacy. Our window got broken in the bathroom so we have to cover it with some cloth to have privacy now.”[203]

A cell at Kalideres Immigration Detention Center near Jakarta. Detainees reported that living areas were unsanitary and that they frequently lacked adequate water, bedding, and mattresses. © 2012 Muni Moon

Migrant children in two centers reported that immigration guards limited the quantity of water they received for bathing. Thivviya N., a Sri Lankan girl who was 13 and 14 years old when she was detained at Tanjung Pinang IDC with her family, said she was held in one room with 12 or 13 other families. She reports that there were two toilets and a shower inside the room: “Sometimes the water was on, but sometimes off. Sometimes it was only on at four in the morning for half an hour, so we’d get up and shower then.”[204]  Faizullah, the unaccompanied child detained at Pontianak IDC for seven-and-a-half months, said,

We had one toilet for 37 people. The water was outside, like this [points at tank]. They [the guards] could turn it on and off, off when they were unhappy. There was no hot water until the last month I was there.[205]

Shakairan A., a 44-year-old Tamil refugee, was detained at Tanjung Pinang for 11 months, ending in 2011. He commented that “the lack of consistent water flow made toilets sometimes get blocked up for five to six days,” and that “it would make the whole place smell.”[206]

 

Lack of Adequate Nutrition for Children

At many different facilities, migrants reported they found insects, metal, and other items inside their food. Children, who have special nutritional needs, do not always receive food appropriate for their developing bodies. 

Faizullah A., an unaccompanied boy at Pontianak, said, “the food [provided by IOM] was very bad … inside the rice you can find everything if you try. Flies, insects, little bugs.”[207] Daoud T. was detained at Belawan IDC: I was always hungry.… The food … was dirty—we got sick all the time…. There were lizards in the food. It was filthy.… The smell was bad.”[208]

Families were concerned about their children’s health in relation to the food provided. A mother interviewed in Belawan IDC reported to us that the food there made children sick: “The children sometimes vomit after eating the food.”[209] Kannan A., a boy detained at Belawan, said “My sisters vomit if they eat [the food]…. Even the water they use for cooking has worms in it.”[210]

Safia A., who was detained at Pekanbaru IDC with three daughters who were then 10, 6, and 4 years old, said, “Inside the food we could see how dirty it was, you could see metal in there. Sometimes we went to sleep hungry.”[211]

Parents found it hard to get milk for their children. One Burmese father reported that he and his family waited five months in two different detention facilities before they started receiving milk for the children. Another Burmese father, detained at Belawan, said he bribed immigration officials to get supplies for his children: “I pay the maintenance man to get me milk.”[212]

Bribery, Corruption, and Confiscation of Property

Migrants, including children, reported that it was possible to pay immigration officials for access to mobile phones, and in some cases, release from detention. Hussein A., a Burmese father detained in an IDC with his wife and infant son, said, “If we want something to happen, we need money to make it happen.”[213]

Arif B., an unaccompanied Afghan boy, was 15 years old when he was arrested.

From Kalideres, I paid [US]$400 to Immigration to get out. I went to talk to the boss of Immigration to get out, asked him how much it cost.... I have a friend outside. He is 16 ... My brother [older, in Australia already] sent the money to him, through Western Union, and he brought it to me [at Kalideres]. After my friend came, I gave the money to immigration…. One of the other boys had paid too. $400, the same. [214]

Mustafa A., from Afghanistan, found himself in a similar position at Kalideres IDC in 2011:

The immigration guards make business … there were two people who each paid $2,000 for their release … they wouldn’t release me because I didn’t have any money.” Mustafa stated that he was detained with “unaccompanied minors … the guards demanded money from them [too] if they wanted to go.[215]

Daoud T. was detained at Tanjung Pinang IDC in 2010 and 2011, even after he was granted refugee status: “I wanted the release immediately [after getting status], but immigration staff asked me for a bribe. I didn’t have any money.”[216]

Migrants, including unaccompanied children, reported that immigration officials took away their personal property when they were arrested or transferred between detention facilities, and that the property was not always returned.

Ahmad Z., an unaccompanied Afghan boy, was detained at the Medan immigration office. “They took our money, then before they transferred us [to an IDC] they only gave some of it back. They said they were charging us for food.”[217]Khalid A., an adult Afghan refugee, asserted:

I was arrested in Medan, by immigration. They took us from the airport to the Polonia immigration office. They took my money, my everything. My mobile, everything. Dollars, my watch, rings, everything. They never gave it back. [218]

Sayed M., an unaccompanied migrant boy interviewed in an IDC, was worried that the loss of property meant he could not contact his family: “[When I was arrested] they took my phone and my wallet. They took all my money, [US]$700. And plus, all the numbers for my family at home, they’re in the SIM card in that phone.”[219]

International standards mandate that property should be placed in safe custody, returned to the detainee on release, and that the detainee should get a receipt.[220]