Timor -Leste Member of Parliament reports another case of police brutality

Police brutality in Timor-Leste

ETLJB 6 July 2013 - Timor Post has reported another alleged incident of police brutality in East Timor. Timor Post reports that a Member of the National Parliament told parliament that he lamented the actions of an individual Timor-Leste National Police (PNTL) officer who physically assaulted a youth in Suco Beco, District of Covalima, Sub district of Suai Vila, last Friday 28 June.

"On 28 June last, in Suco Beco, Subdistrict of Suai Vila, District of Covalima at 10:00 hours in the morning, the police officer assaulted a youth who was riding a motorbike without a helmet.  The policeman just launched a physical assault on him without warning or questioning him, kicking him, but falling over himself as he carried out the assault," MP Cristovao Barros told the National Parliament's Plenary on Monday 1 June last.

After having fallen over in plain view of a large number of the witnessing public, and having felt embarrassed, the police officer took his pistol out and fired it, and called the police post for reinforcements, proceeding to assault the youth to the point he needed to be hospitalized at the Covalima Referral Hospital.

FRETILIN MP David Dias Ximenes "Mandati" also expressed his lamentation with the actions of the police assaulting the public, an issue he has raised many times previously but continues to occur unheeded.

"When the police acts they should first engage in dialogue with people and ascertain the facts, but not nowadays, because they have become accustomed to just beating people, so they think beating people up is the way to solve a problem, which is wrong," David lamented.

This type of behavior by police has not just happened in Covalima, but last Thursday (27 June) a civilian guard and patients at the National Hospital had to flee in panic after becoming witnesses some police officers attacking a Hospital security guard on hospital grounds.  Source: Jornal Timor Post 03 July 2013 Edited by Warren L. Wright

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