Indonesians are generally in favor of the country’s harsh punishments for drug offenders, but a viral video showing the inhumane treatment by prison officers towards 26 inmates being transferred from Bali to Nusakambangan Narcotics Prison has shocked many and even led to the head of the prison being stripped of his position.
The inmates in the video had all just been transferred from Bali’s Kerobokan and Bangli prisons to the notorious Nusakambangan prison — located in the Cilacap Regency of Central Java. In the one minute and 22 second clip, the prisoners can be seen with their shirts covering their faces, their hands cuffed and their legs chained. Several inmates can be seen crawling or squat walking. Some of them can be seen getting beaten and dragged by prison officers.
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According to Indonesia’s Ministry of Law and Human Rights, the incident seen in the video occurred on Thursday, March 28. On that day, the head of Nusakambangan, identified to the media by his initials HM, was working with Batu Prison’s head of security to direct officers from Nusakambangan to screen the inmates so that they couldn’t smuggle drugs into the prison. The inmates arrived at noon at the Wijayapura Port, which is the entrance to Nusakambangan Prison. The video shows what happened when the officers were “screening” the inmates.
“There were violations in the standard operating procedure for officers, as seen in the video that has been circulating in public,” the ministry’s Head of Prisoners Development and Production Training, Junaedi, said in a press conference yesterday, as quoted by Detik.
The video triggered an investigation by the ministry, which decided to fire HM for allowing his officers to abuse their prisoners (or because of his “inability to control them so they would not violate procedure”, as the ministry put it). The ministry said that all of the officers involved in the incident have been questioned and could also face administrative and criminal charges.
Junaedi said the 26 prisoners that had been transferred to Nusakambangan were moved because they were allegedly still involved in the drug trade while in prison. According to him, they all occupy maximum security cells at Nusakambangan.
