By Cindy Trinh
Impunity Watch Reporter, Oceania

PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea – The United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on Torture, Professor Michael Nowak, says that Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) police need new powers to deal with the violence in the country.

Nowak has been meeting representatives from the Pacific in PNG about implementing international standards on torture in the region. He has been invited to spend two weeks in PNG in May of 2010 to assess the ill-treatment of prisoners.

Nowak says that the problems are not just “internal” to the police.

He stated: “Now I’m not only talking about torture by the police, you can also talk about violence, inter-tribal warfare in the highlands for instance. The police have a very very difficult task of mediating, or you have quite a high level of domestic violence where the police might have other kinds of powers in order to deal with it.”

Christina Saunders, a human rights advisor to the United Nations PNG country team, says that according to a UN study, most of the constitutions of the Pacific countries include some kind of prohibition on torture, but the key to enforcing those prohibitions on torture requires strengthening “accountability and supervision” of police and correction officers to ensure they follow the law.

She stated: “As often is the case, even when governments have very good laws in place and they train, unless there are strong accountability mechanisms in place and oversight to ensure that those laws are implemented, unfortunately you can’t eradicate torture.”

The goal of the recent PNG meeting is to monitor “political will, which will affirm that torture and ill-treatment is morally and legally wrong.”

In response to the meeting, Saunders stated: “We’re also hoping that this meeting will encourage members of the region to ratify the convention against torture, and also the optional protocol, which will give a stronger legal framework for the action which is required to eradicate torture in the region.”

For more information, please see:
Islands Business – UN torture representative says PNG police need new powers – 03 December 2009

Pacific Islands News Association – UN torture representative says PNG police need new powers – 03 December 2009

Australia Network News – UN torture representative says PNG police need new powers – 02 December 2009