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VI. Ongoing Impunity for Police Violence

Accountability for police violence is critical to providing victims with justice and to preventing future abuse, by removing offending officers from the force and by deterring others.⁹⁴ The occasional dismissal and prosecution does occur in Papua New Guinea. However, when compared with the scope of the problem, it is very rare for police who use excessive force, torture, and rape to face punishment either through internal police disciplinary procedures or in a court of law. As Human Rights Watch found in 2005, the extensive human rights training that police have received is rendered in large part ineffective by the failure to require them to follow it.⁹⁵ In this climate, good police officers are left demoralized, marginalized, and at risk of retaliation for trying to hold other officers accountable.

A useful guide for reform remains the as yet-unimplemented recommendations of the 2004 administrative review of police regarding accountability, discussed in our 2005 report.⁹⁶ These include enforcement of existing disciplinary codes; reform of mobile squads, task forces, reserve and auxiliary police; and improving police response to domestic violence and sex abuse cases.

While the police force itself should be the first place abusive police officers face sanction, other bodies in the justice system and the wider government have responsibility as well. These include the judiciary and magisterial service, the Ombudsman Commission, Parliament, and the Prime Minister.

Response of High-Level Government Officials to Evidence of Police Abuse

Following the release of Human Rights Watch’s 2005 report, some government officials spoke publicly about police violence. Then-Minister of Police Bire Kimisopa (now Minister of Justice), who had already commissioned the 2004 administrative review of police highlighting problems with the force, said, “I’m aware of instances of female offenders in custody being raped. That’s something, you know, we’re not proud of. That’s something we need to eradicate within the PNG force now.”⁹⁷ The Minister continued to speak out following police shootings of unarmed schoolboys in late 2005 (see below). He also ordered an investigation into the incident that resulted in the arrest of two officers (the arrest was effected only following armed resistance from local police, which highlights the capital’s broader struggle to exercise command and control in the provinces).

But public denial by other senior officials mitigated this progress. In September 2005, then-Commissioner of Police Sam Inguba denied that children were detained with adults in police lockup, and stated that abusive officers were prosecuted.⁹⁸ “Understandably, this is because they are only human. Human beings get frustrated especially when they are constantly exposed to hostilities in their line of duties,” he said.⁹⁹ In 2006, Human Rights Watch heard from the current Minister of Police Alphonse Willie and other police officials this same excuse: that police beat detainees because they were frustrated or angry.¹⁰⁰

Prime Minister Sir MichaelSomare, when asked about police violence against children around the same time, said that although there were some instances, he had seen the same things and worse in Australia.¹⁰¹

Compounding the problem, turmoil in police leadership in 2006 cast doubt on government commitment to implement real reform in advance of the parliamentary elections due in 2007. In April, Prime Minister Somare replaced Kimisopa with Alphonse Willie as Police Minister (various other ministers were also removed). In September, the Commissioner of Police was arrested and charged with abuse of office and perverting the course of justice over a fraud investigation; the charges were later dropped. Other high-level police officials were charged soon after, and a senior officer was serving as acting commissioner at the time of writing.

The new Police Minister, Alphonse Willie, seemed unfamiliar with even the well-publicized cases of police abuse as of August, and told Human Rights Watch that human rights problems were “not too big in scope.”¹⁰² When asked about implementation of the 2004 administrative review, the Minister told us that the priorities were police salaries, housing, maintenance, barracks, and new uniforms (without the recommended name tags). Money was, in fact, allocated for these purposes in a supplementary budget in mid-August 2006. After pay and housing, the Minister said, the next priority was police vehicles. Nowhere on his agenda were the administrative review’s recommendations regarding police discipline and efficiency.¹⁰³ Assistant Police Commissioner Jim Andrews told Human Rights Watch, however, that they did plan to disband reserve and auxiliary police and rehire them on two-year contracts.¹⁰⁴

Thus, at present, implementation of the administrative review appears stalled at the point of improving police resources—an important step but one that means little if not accompanied by measures to improve performance and discipline.

Police Failure to Discipline and Prosecute

In 2005, Human Rights Watch found that police are almost never punished for excessive force, rape, and torture. Even when public outcry spurs an arrest or charges, cases may never be referred to the public prosecutor; if they are, they may face dismissal in court as the result of poor police investigation. In 2006, little appears to have changed.

Several high-profile cases illustrate how unlikely it is that police who commit even flagrant abuses will face justice either through internal police disciplinary procedures or in a court of law.

Police Shootings of Schoolboys in Enga Province

On October 31, 2005, in Porgera valley in Enga province, police opened fire on school premises into a group of students, some reportedly as young as age 12, who threw rocks when police tried to arrest their schoolmaster.¹⁰⁵ At least one person, Luke Tarakali, died and at least 21were injured, three seriously.¹⁰⁶

Students studying inside the school were among those injured. A 15-year-old boy told an interviewer several months afterwards:

I was doing my mock exam when we heard the first shot fired, and all of a sudden I just saw my friend sitting next to me fall on the floor, and then I saw his leg was bleeding, and then I realized that something went wrong. Then I ran outside, and I saw that all the kids were running around, and then to my surprise I saw the police.¹⁰⁷

Then-Minister of Police Bire Kimisopa spoke strongly about the incident and sent in an investigatory team that arrested two officers.¹⁰⁸ An officer and a commander were charged with willful and attempted murder in January 2006 and released on bail.¹⁰⁹ As of August 2006, these cases had not been sent to the public prosecutor.¹¹⁰

Police Beatings and Gang Rape of Women and Girls in Raid on the Three-Mile Guesthouse, Port Moresby

On March 12, 2004, mobile squad officers beat and gang raped women and girls during a raid on the Three-Mile Guesthouse in Port Moresby and during their detention at Boroko police station. Human Rights Watch published extensive details about the case in 2005 based on police charging documents naming some of the officers involved, 21 statements from the women and girls made shortly after the incident and kept on file by the National AIDS Council, our individual interviews with eyewitnesses, and other evidence.¹¹¹

Despite the unusual amount of information available, then-Police Commissioner Sam Inguba responded to Human Rights Watch’s 2005 report saying that, “investigators could not probe the allegation because they needed to deal with them on a case-by-case basis. These people complained as a group and were asked to come in one by one to substantiate their allegations but no one turned up.”¹¹² According to the police, no officers involved had been disciplined or prosecuted at the time of writing.

Internal Disciplinary Sanctions and Criminal Prosecutions

Dismissals and criminal prosecutions of offending officers occasionally occur, although it is not clear how often these are actually for violence. In 2006, the Commissioner of Police refused to allow the police internal affairs directorate to speak with Human Rights Watch. However, in September 2005, in response to Human Rights Watch’s findings that police rarely face administrative or criminal sanctions for violence, then-Police Commissioner Inguba told journalists that since 2002, 571 cases of police brutality had been reported and more than 148 officers dismissed as a result.¹¹³ Fifty-two cases were still pending, he said. (The numbers given to Human Rights Watch by the police internal affairs department in 2004 covering a shorter period of time suggest that the statistics given by the police commissioner may represent all dismissals from 2002 to 2005, and not just those for brutality.¹¹⁴)

In light of how widespread police violence is and given the lack of accountability for particularly egregious cases investigated by Human Rights Watch—both unknown and well-publicized—the statistics on internal police discipline support our finding that most abuses go unpunished.

Problems occur at each step in the process, beginning with reporting abuses. As illustrated by Inguba’s comments on the Three-Mile Guesthouse case, above, high-level officials characterized the problem to Human Rights Watch as the fault of victims who fail to report or aggressively pursue disciplinary complaints: Police Minister Willie told Human Rights Watch that the problem lay in victims failing to report abuses to “higher powers,” and when abuse is reported, he said, “disciplinary action has taken place.”¹¹⁵ But individuals who have attempted to make complaints, the service providers who have accompanied them, and even individual officers who have referred victims to internal affairs units, told Human Rights Watch that it was very difficult to make complaints and, if one was made, it almost never got results. Worse, as noted above, some women and girls are laughed at, ignored, and asked for sex.

The story of the woman raped by a police officer in July 2005 (described above in section III) is illustrative. With the help of an NGO,she reported the rape to a commander at a Port Moresby police station, whom she believed was the boss of the officer who raped her (she was afraid for us to name the station). The commander, she said, took her into a dark office and “asked for sexual favors.” He said, “If I help you, you have to do me a favor.” After that, she said,

I didn’t go back. I didn’t want to go back by myself because I know something will happen. The feeling is still in me. There’s nobody in there to help us. . . . If the commander is doing that, then we have to go to his commander, and I think he will do the same thing so I think there is no one to see. . . . We have the right to report police brutality, but if we go there, there is no one to help us.¹¹⁶

Like this woman, many have simply given up seeking redress or accountability, calculating that it is not worth the time or risk. The administrative review of police similarly found in 2004 that “public confidence in the effectiveness of current disciplinary review machinery is at such a low level that complaints against the police are no longer reported.”¹¹⁷ A young woman vendor whose cigarettes were taken by police explained why she did not report the incident: “I really wanted to go, but after a couple of times [in the past] when the police didn’t help me, I said, what’s the point? They won’t help. When we go and ask for help they ask for sex—this is why I don’t go because I don’t want to have sex with them.”¹¹⁸

To improve public reporting, police must first provide victims with a timely and fair response, as well as provide protection from retaliation. In Lae, Human Rights Watch heard of some efforts to make the internal investigations unit more accessible to victims: the office conducted some public outreach to inform people about the process, and has a back entrance to the office so that complainants do not have to go to the police station front counter.¹¹⁹ Internal investigation units should do more to reach children, who usually have more difficulty than adults making complaints, and women and girls who face additional barriers to making complaints of rape and sexual assault.

Some persons do succeed in registering complaints. Human Rights Watch reviewed the log book for complaints made against police in the National Capital District and saw serious allegations: “police shooting,” rape, assault, robbery. Staff of the internal investigations unit for the National Capital District told us that 45 cases had been registered from January through July 2006 and that 121 cases were registered in 2005 (these represent all cases registered, not only for violence).¹²⁰  The head of internal affairs in Lae told us that most complaints against police were for “stealing, unlawful assault, drinking, and misappropriation of vehicles.”¹²¹ His office had more than 50 complaints in 2005, he told us.¹²²

However, as we documented in 2005, registering a case is no guarantee that an internal investigations unit will actively pursue it.¹²³ A few NGOs report more success in getting police to respond if they accompany victims and persistently follow up on the case; even then, cases have been lost or extensively delayed.¹²⁴ Internal investigations unit staff also told us they needed more resources—such as transportation and cameras—to do their jobs properly.

When the internal investigations unit does conclude an investigation and the internal affairs directorate determines that sanctions are warranted, it must wait for the Police Commissioner’s final decision about whether they should be imposed. Even if the Commissioner approves a penalty such as suspension or dismissal, provincial police officials, who are responsible for imposing it, may simply fail to do so.¹²⁵

Human Rights Watch was not able to obtain more data on criminal prosecutions in 2005 or 2006 for police violence, either from the police or the pubic prosecutor.¹²⁶ A staff member of the internal investigations unit for the National Capital District told us that three cases in 2006 had resulted in criminal charges (not necessarily for violence) but that they were still investigating the cases. However, when asked about the outcome of criminal cases he has worked on, he told us that in the roughly eight years he had worked in the office, he had never known a police officer to be sent to jail.¹²⁷

New Police Procedures for Dealing with Children

Papua New Guinea’s juvenile justice system continued to develop in 2005 and 2006 under the direction of an interagency juvenile justice working group.¹²⁸ Reception centers for processing children began operating in police stations in Port Moresby and Lae. Police established a small unit to divert children from the formal justice system and monitor their treatment by police. A handbook on the police juvenile justice policy and protocols was published and launched in October 2006. While these developments have yet to produce widespread change in police behavior, they hold promise.

As of August 2006, juvenile reception centers were operating in both Port Moresby and Lae, with the intention that all children arrested in each city would be brought to these centers for diversion or processing.¹²⁹ The centers are small buildings on the grounds of a police station, Boroko station in Port Moresby and Town station in Lae. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), approximately 60 percent of juvenile arrests take place in these two cities; therefore the centers should cover the majority of children arrested in the country.¹³⁰

In Port Moresby, the police also began setting up the juvenile policy monitoring unit in October 2005. As its name suggests, the unit is intended to monitor implementation of the National Police Juvenile Policy for children, including diversion from formal criminal charges, separation from adults in lockup, and police violence. As of October 2006, two police officers (one part-time) operated out of the juvenile reception center in Boroko station with a designated vehicle, donated by UNICEF.

Although the unit does not keep formal records of its interventions, the staff told us that in the first 10 months of operations, they had intervened to divert children from formal charges. However, they also said they had not encountered cases of children physically or sexually abused by police, suggesting—given our quite different findings—that they are not monitoring for police violence. All children arrested in Port Moresby are supposed to be brought to Boroko stations’ juvenile reception center, where the unit would be in a position to directly oversee them, but this does not always happen: one of the officers visits other stations periodically to look for children, although not on a particular schedule, and they otherwise rely on calling police stations to ask if children are there.¹³¹ The officers also log children’s names and charges, a step towards improved data collection on children in conflict with the law. In terms of monitoring separation from adults, we noted that the reception center contains two rooms intended to remove children entirely from the adult lockup area, but they were not being used for this purpose as of August 2006. As described above in section IV, when Human Rights Watch visited Boroko cells immediately after interviewing juvenile policy monitoring unit staff, we found a boy detained with adults.

According to others closely linked with the unit’s work, the unit has struggled to obtain police cooperation and, after getting no results from filing formal complaints about problems, has since resorted to persuasion and “mentoring.”

The police officer who staffs the Lae juvenile reception center has similar responsibilities. Unlike in Port Moresby, Lae has only one station with a lockup—Town police station where the reception center is also located. This fact makes it more likely that the officer will have access to children who are detained, and we were told that this center had worked effectively in the two months it operated prior to our visit. The officer in charge of Lae’s reception center told us that she checks the cells on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and gave examples of successful interventions to separate children from adults in police lockup and in Buimo prison, and to release arrested children to their parents.¹³² However, while we were in Lae, this officer was sent to teach at Bomana police college for six months, and an officer of a lower rank was left in charge. It remains to be seen how this will affect the center’s operation. When we visited the police lockup several days after she left, we did find children detained with adults.

In addition to these measures, juvenile court officers, provided for under the Juvenile Courts Act, should also be in place to monitor police treatment of children.¹³³ This has not happened. Although some 15 volunteers were trained in 2004 and commissioned in 2005, they were never given final approval (gazetted) by police and have not begun working. Indeed, in Port Moresby, when individual volunteer juvenile court officers have tried to access children at certain police stations, police have denied them access on the grounds that they are not gazetted and lack official identification.¹³⁴ In the place of volunteer juvenile court officers, probation officers attend some juvenile court procedures, but they are not the advocates for children envisioned by the act.

A member of Lae’s juvenile justice working group also told us he had checked the cells in Lae for children detained with adults, although it was not clear how often he did this.¹³⁵

Responsibility of Magistrates, Judges, and the Ombudsman Commission

Juvenile magistrates, judges, and the Ombudsman Commission each have a role in monitoring for police violence and conditions under which children are detained. Several individuals have taken steps to fulfill these obligations, but monitoring, including regular follow up, needs to become far more frequent and comprehensive.

Magistrates and Judges

Formal juvenile courts are now operating in seven sites around the country, with two more planned for 2006. Juvenile magistrates hear all but the most serious cases against children. Since 2004, juvenile magistrates have had a Juvenile Court Protocol that outlines procedures for handling children’s cases. National court judges handle particularly serious cases against children, but not all apply the protocol (or even had copies of it until 2006).

Magistrates are required by the Juvenile Court Protocol to “monitor the use of physical force used against a juvenile,” and should exclude evidence obtained by threats or torture under the Evidence Act and international standards.¹³⁶ Judges, when hearing children’s cases, should do the same. Human Rights Watch previously found that judges and magistrates were not asking children about police violence, even when they were obviously injured, and typically ignored children’s volunteered reports of violence.

In 2006, the juvenile magistrates agreed to review the legality of arrest and detention in each child’s case using a checklist of some 20 questions.¹³⁷ Prominently featured on the checklist are questions about police use of force, cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and forced confessions. However, when the checklist was piloted, magistrates found that it took too much time—about 10 minutes per case. All juvenile magistrates’ clerks were then trained to use the checklist in mid-2006 and directed to report any problems to the magistrate. However, it was not clear whether any clerks were using it as of October. In Port Moresby, although the clerk has tried out the checklist, she has not been able to employ it: despite appeals from the juvenile justice working group and the juvenile magistrate, police continue bring children to court late, leaving insufficient enough time for the clerk to complete the checklist.¹³⁸

Outside of the capital, implementation is far more erratic. The juvenile magistrate in Lae told us that he had never had a case of a child injured by police. “Like any other case,” he told us, “people tend to have [this complaint]. It’s the responsibility of the juvenile to prove that they were assaulted. This is a normal defense. But I haven’t come across any [children] with physical injuries.”¹³⁹ He does not ask about use of force, he said, and if he did have a case he would ask a probation officer to look into it.

A 16-year-old boy told Human Rights Watch that he appeared before the magistrate in Lae around late April 2006 with his face still swollen (like many boys, he was detained for more than a week before ever seeing magistrate, so many of the marks had faded, he said.) The magistrate did not ask about his injuries, and, like most children in court, he did not have a lawyer.¹⁴⁰ A person who regularly observes juvenile court proceedings in Lae told us, “Juveniles do speak out that they have been abused by police and some go with bruises. Mostly the magistrate sides with the police.”¹⁴¹

Juvenile magistrates also have a role in preventing the detention of children in illegal conditions. The Juvenile Court Protocol prohibits magistrates from remanding or committing children to institutions without a separate juvenile section, and directs them to review police detention decisions.¹⁴²

In 2006, the chief magistrate gave juvenile magistrates the power and obligation to visit places of juvenile detention (including police cells, rural lockups, prisons, and other remand or post-conviction institutions such as Erap Boys Town) by designating them as visiting magistrates and incorporating this obligation into their duty statement. At a meeting in July, the juvenile magistrates agreed to do one visit per month, and a detailed questionnaire was drafted to record the outcome of the visits.¹⁴³ By October, however, the process was stalled around the question of magistrates’ right to conduct visits without further legal approval.

National Court judges also have a visiting program, although only a few judges conduct such visits. For example, following two visits to Buimo prison in May 2006, Justice David Cannings reportedly ordered detainees released, transferred, or provided with medical care. He also issued a report highlighting problems including overcrowding, high numbers of female and juvenile detainees, shortage of uniforms for detainees and prison officials, poor sanitation, and long periods of detention before trial.¹⁴⁴ According to news reports, the National Court had previously ordered the partial closure of Buimo in 2004 following several deaths from disease related to poor sanitation and overcrowding.¹⁴⁵

The Ombudsman Commission

The Ombudsman Commission has the power to investigate violations of basic rights, but has until now focused primarily on official corruption, where it plays a critical monitoring role.

The commission’s human rights desk only has one staff person. Although much of his work has been in conducting trainings, he told us he had 25 active cases as of August 2006, most concerning violence by correctional officers and police.¹⁴⁶ Since the desk’s inception in May 2005, it has resolved four cases.¹⁴⁷ The commission has active files on the 2004 raid on the Three-Mile Guesthouse and the 2005 police shootings of students in Enga province, but has not taken action in either case.¹⁴⁸

The commission was in negotiations with the police in August 2006 to allow the commission to oversee and work with the police internal affairs directorate on serious disciplinary offenses. However, the commission did not plan to add additional staff for this work should an agreement be reached, staff members told us.¹⁴⁹

The Ombudsman Commission through its regional offices and its single staff person on the human rights desk has the power to visit police lockup and prison. When they discover problems with conditions, staff members told us, they can raise them with correctional services or the police.¹⁵⁰ However, they do not necessarily have the capacity to follow up after a single visit, and responsible corrections officers may not be held accountable for addressing problems identified.