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III. A Continuing Practice of Police Violence

In 2006, Human Rights Watch again found a clear pattern of police violence, including sexual violence. Police also took victims’ money or possessions.

Police continue to target female sex workers and men and boys perceived to be homosexual for violence and extortion (although one NGO reported some improvements on the part of individual officers in 2006). Police are able to do so in part because the can threaten arrest using laws criminalizing homosexual conduct and certain forms of sex work, and because social stigma against homosexuality and sex work shields police from public outrage.¹⁶ Men and boys with male sexual partners appear to be especially targeted when they appear effeminate or have reputations for homosexual conduct: while many do not identify as gay, their perceived sexual behavior makes them regular targets of police abuse.

Beatings, Shootings, and Excessive Force

Our research in Lae and Port Moresby in 2006 revealed continued police use of excessive force. In some cases our research revealed instances of torture. These acts take place during encounters in the community, in the course of arrest, during transport to the station, and during interrogation, for the purposes of on-the-spot punishment, to extract confessions, or for sheer abuse of power.

Children in Conflict with the Law

In 2006 Human Rights Watch interviewed 16 children and persons who were children at the time of the incidents recounted who said that police had recently beaten or otherwise physically abused them. Although we also interviewed several children who said they were not mistreated upon arrest, as in 2005, the pattern of testimonies by children and professionals working with them indicate that most children who are arrested face abuse at the hands of police. One of the most well-publicized recent cases in which police opened fire on unarmed schoolboys in Enga province in October 2005 is discussed in section VI, below. A person who works closely with detained children told us that, based on personal experience,

About half of the juveniles are abused by the cops. Mostly they are taken in for stealing and . . . they don’t go easy on them. . . . I see bruises, black eyes, torn shorts. . . . It’s normal—it’s just part of what police do to people who are against the law. It’s seen as normal now because it’s been done over the years. They do it automatically. That’s why people really freak out when they see the police pull up because they think: they will bash me up.¹⁷

The story of Lucas P., age 17, was typical (like all children in this report, his real name is not used). He told us that police task force officers caught him in Lae in September 2005 when he was about to steal something from a car.¹⁸ There were 12 officers, he said, and they dragged him to the task force vehicle:

They hit me with a belt and the butt of a gun. I was in the middle and the guys hit me from all sides. They asked me to name the other boys that I was working with, but I was working alone so I didn’t name anyone. They kept beating me and demanding that I say their names. They said, “If you don’t tell us, we will fuck you up the ass.”

Then they took him to the main wharf at around 6 p.m. He said,

They made me jump in the ocean. The salt water was very painful because of the cuts from the beating. They just let me go afterwards and didn’t charge me with anything. They even gave me my billum [string bag] back. They warned me that if they catch me again, they will cut off an arm or leg.¹⁹

Wilfred N. told us that six mobile squad members arrested him in mid-2005 in Lae, after a robbery.²⁰ “They beat me on the forehead with a gun butt [indicating his forehead just above his right eyebrow]—it cut through the skin.” The officers took him to Chinatown police station and then to Town police station, where the Criminal Investigations Division (CID) questioned him. He recounted, “During my questioning by the CID, I was hit because they wanted me to confess. But I didn’t do it so I refused to confess. I was hit with a metal bar from a homemade gun inside the Town station. I was hit on the head.”²¹

Albert L., age 15 or 16, said he was arrested in late December 2005 and taken to Lae Town police station and interrogated by the CID: “They were kicking me with their boots. They used the barrel of their gun. They said they would take me up to the river and kill me and throw me into the water. . . . They used an iron on my leg, the sharp edge. . . . They said, ‘Like in the movies we’ll hang you with a rope.’ . . . Because they were threatening me and beating me, I was afraid for my life, so I said I did it, because I was scared.”²²

Johnny I., who said he was 18 but who looked much younger, told us that when police officers caught him trying to steal a tire in March 2006, they beat him on the head with tree branches.²³ Then they forced him to stand with the wheel on his wounded head and tried to make him swallow a bolt from the wheel, which he was unable to do: “When they put the wheel on my head I thought my brain had died. I didn’t feel anything. The bolt on the wheel—they made me put it in my mouth and swallow. It was that big [indicates water bottle cap]. I couldn’t do it. They made fun of me and were laughing at me.”²⁴

Peter O. told us that task force police beat him and his friends with a fan belt and gun barrels on the beach in Lae in 2004 when he was 17 years old.²⁵ One gun went off, he said, and shot him in the leg (he showed us a large scar on his calf). Then the police ran them off without arresting them: “They ordered us to run in the middle of the road and were chasing us in their vehicle and we were falling down and scratching ourselves. I was dragging my leg. The muscle was cramped and I couldn’t move it. Blood was running down my leg.”²⁶

Other boys in Lae and Port Moresby told us similar stories in 2006.

Sex Workers

Police often use beatings and other forms of violence and humiliation to administer on-the-spot punishment for sex work. This is particularly evident in Lae during police raids on the old airstrip near the center of town, where sex work occurs openly. Homeless individuals live in some parts of the area; in other parts, people go there during the day but sleep elsewhere. Women, girls, and men described being beaten and robbed in police raids. The account of 16-year-old Elizabeth H. of a raid in May 2006 is typical:

We were all fast asleep. They [police] came straight to me and hit me on the leg. I though it was a client and I swore. They said, “You swore.” I opened my eyes and saw the task force. They started belting the shit out of me. Then they started beating everyone. I had bruises on my lower back and a swollen arm. They used this thing they carry around—a black belt [fan belt]. They next day they did the same thing—came and belted the boys. They fought back. The task force shot one boy in the leg and he went to the hospital. I saw them shoot him—he’s also from [village name omitted]. Now he is not walking properly.²⁷

Other women described police beating them with gun butts, forcing men and boys to do push-ups, and stealing their money.²⁸ “The police, when they go in, don’t have betel nut to chew, don’t have money, so they can belt us up and take money or our things like a robbery,” a 22-year-old woman said.²⁹ Women and girls in Lae told us they were occasionally arrested, but arrest does not appear to be a main purpose of the raids.

Street Vendors

Police continue to use violence against and extort money from street vendors, who typically sell betel nut and cigarettes. Human Rights Watch spoke with several street vendors in Lae in 2006 who described such incidents. If and where street vending should be legal has been the topic of considerable public debate. While the government has a right to regulate street vending, persons violating city ordinances must be treated in accordance with the law. They should not be subjected to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, arbitrary detention, and other human rights violations. As explained in Human Rights Watch’s earlier report, laws restricting street vending disproportionately affect women and girls, who already face discrimination in other areas of employment.³⁰

Sexual Violence

Human Rights Watch continued to collect evidence of police using sexual violence against females and males, including gang (pack) rape, in 2005 and 2006. Not surprisingly, cases often involved opportunistic abuses of power: women and girls are especially vulnerable when they are detained in police cells, or when they are engaged in sex work and can be threatened with arrest. But women and girls also told us that any contact at all with police put them at risk. “When I see any cop car, I walk off. I’m scared,” said a woman who told us she was raped by a policeman in a Port Moresby police station in August 2005. “I don’t trust any cop nowadays. I don’t accept anything from them because they are going to come for my body in the end.”³¹

NGO case workers and others again confirmed that police especially target young girls, including sex workers who may be as young as 12 or 13, for rape.³² An HIV/AIDS educator told us that “[i]f the police see a young girl, they don’t want to use condoms with them because they are so young. If they are older, they suspect they have been working a long time, so they wear a condom.”³³

In 2005 and 2006, two allegations of police rape of very young girls drew widespread public outrage. In July 2005, Inspector Gideon Kaugi, a senior police prosecutor, was alleged to have raped the seven-year-old daughter of another officer on police premises in Port Moresby. The girl died of a brain tumor in February 2006, and the district court dismissed the case for lack of evidence in August.³⁴

On July 18, 2006, a reserve policeman sexually assaulted a six-year-old girl in Chinatown police station in Lae when her mother left her there while buying food at a nearby store.³⁵ The girl’s mother told journalists that she had originally gone to the station to make a domestic violence complaint but found the officer who attended her to be unhelpful.³⁶ According to professionals who treated the girl, medical evidence was consistent with penetration; the girl told her mother that the policeman called her into an office, took off her clothes, and molested her.³⁷ Following public protest, police arrested and charged the man.³⁸ When Human Rights Watch visited both Buimo prison and Town police station in Lae on August 8, 2006, officials at each place claimed that the man was not there but was detained in the other location.³⁹

Another incident in 2006 in Lae, involving a16-year-old girl, is described below (see “Targeting Crime Victims”).

Human Rights Watch also interviewed two women in Port Moresby who said that police raped them in 2005.⁴⁰ One woman described what happened one night around late July 2005:

He [the police officer] asked me for sex and I said, “No, I just want to go home.” He grabbed my collar and put a pistol to my head. He said, “If you don’t have sex with me, I will shoot you.” Then he bashed me up. He got a beer bottle, and he had a pistol in the other hand. He ordered me—we had sex—what could I do? . . . My lips were split. The side of my face and eye was swollen up. He put a pistol there as if I were a criminal! Just to have sex!

Professionals who work with female victims of sexual violence, speaking to us in August 2006, also confirmed having cases of women and girls who had been raped by police.⁴¹

Human Rights Watch interviewed in 2005 and 2006 three men who engage in homosexual activity who said police had forced them to have oral and anal sex with them and had also gang raped them.⁴²

Government services for victims of sexual violence, including health care, counseling, and other forms of support remain difficult or impossible to access or are of poor quality, especially outside of urban areas.⁴³

Sexual Abuse by Guards at Buimo Prison in January 2006

An especially egregious example of abuse of detained children occurred on January 15, 2006, when corrections officers at Buimo prison in Lae beat and sexually abused boys by forcing them to have anal sex with each other in the institution’s reception center. Although this case concerns abuse by correctional officers, not police, it is highlighted because it illustrates both how widespread the problem of violence against children in custody is and the failure to punish officials responsible. It is reminiscent of cases involving police mentioned in Human Rights Watch’s 2005 report.⁴⁴

                                                Reception center at Buimo prison where corrections officers beat boys and sexually abused  

                                                them by  forcing them  to have anal sex with each other in January 2006.

                                                © 2006 Zama Coursen-Neff/Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch spoke with correctional officials working at Buimo prison at the time, an eyewitness, and the Deputy Commissioner of Correctional services about the case.⁴⁵ We heard different explanations for the officers’ motives: that younger boys had complained about rape by older boys and officers were allowing the younger boys to “pay back” their rapists, or that the officers caught boys having sex in the dormitory and were punishing them.⁴⁶ Regardless, all agree that the officers beat and forced the boys to have anal sex.⁴⁷

The day after the incident, detainees at Buimo prison went on hunger strike in protest; they also communicated with the press and the local police. Acting Commander Judy Tara, who had recently undergone juvenile justice training, told journalists a few days later that she “met with the prisoners,” that “things have returned to normal,” and that an internal investigation was ongoing.⁴⁸ Nevertheless, almost eight months later, the officers continued to work at the prison, according to correctional officials, who said that the officers had been disciplined in some (unspecified) fashion, a claim that press reports challenge.⁴⁹

Targeting Crime Victims

Now when I see one of them [a police officer], instead of going for help, I run and hide. I don’t want to be caught another time with them.

—Twenty-year-old gay man gang raped by police when he was 12 or 13 years old, Port Moresby, September 3, 2005

Poor police response to gender-based violence, including domestic violence, is well documented.⁵⁰ Compounding the harm, fear of sexual violence by the police themselves deters victims of all types of crime from going to the police for help. While many people we spoke with told us police refused to help them or asked for sex or money,⁵¹ sex workers and men and boys who are perceived to be homosexual in particular reported that they cannot turn to police for protection from other forms of violence.

In 2006, women, girls, and boys described instances in which police asked them for sex when they went to report a crime. For example, Elizabeth H., age 16, said that two police officers had recently demanded sex from her when she went to the station to make a complaint: “I felt scared. . . They used a condom and had sex with me. They took turns.”⁵²

Monica K., age 19, described what happened around June 2006, when she went to complain at Lae’s Town police station about being robbed on the street. “One policeman took me into his office. He asked me for sex. I opened the door and said I didn’t want to. So he shouted at me, ‘If I see you on the street I will really belt you.’ He wanted to have sex in his office.”⁵³

A 16-year-old boy who now describes himself as gay told us,

When I was about 12, I went to the police when my dad was bashing me. They said, “Suck our dicks and we’ll help you.” They said, “Your mom and your dad are your first teachers. You have to go back and let them bash you and learn from it. If you want us to come, we’ll fuck you first.”⁵⁴

Many people are afraid to approach the police for any reason at all. A police officer at the juvenile reception center in Lae told us, “Some parents are afraid to come to the police station and find out why their child is locked up.”⁵⁵ The wife of a police officer told us that her husband, who was fed up with how police treated women, “says to keep away from police.”⁵⁶ A woman who was asked for sex by police told us: “We are scared to talk to the police because when we go to them to ask for help, they ask for sex. Especially [of] the young girls. So we don’t feel safe going to the police station for help.”⁵⁷