The Sydney Morning Herald, September 18 2002
Academic accuses police of mistreatment
By Matthew Moore, Herald Correspondent in Jakarta
[Ms McCulloch ... held over visa irregularities. Photo: Reuters ]
A Scottish academic detained for a week by police in Indonesia's Aceh province said
yesterday she had been beaten, deprived of sleep and threatened with a knife during
her captivity.
Lesley Jane McCulloch, 42, who until July was teaching at the University of Tasmania
in Hobart, was arrested with an American health worker, Joy Lee Sadler, and their
interpreter, Mitra Binti Amin, after leaving an area in South Aceh known as a
stronghold of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM).
In a brief phone conversation from Banda Aceh police station, before being ordered to
hang up, Ms McCulloch said Ms Sadler had also been mistreated, and they had been
unable to speak to representatives from the British and US embassies, except for one
short conversation four days earlier.
Ms McCulloch said she had been scared during her ordeal.
"We were roughed up, and one army guy threatened to kill me because we refused to
open our bags."
The police chief in South Aceh, Mohammed Ali Hussein, said Ms McCulloch's party
had been arrested after photographs, a video and interviews with representatives of
GAM were found in their luggage, and that they did not have the correct visas.
Ms McCulloch admitted she was travelling on a tourist visa after Indonesian
authorities refused her a social and cultural visa to allow her to continue her research
into Aceh's separatist conflict. But she denied having GAM documents when arrested.
The women are expected to be deported after being charged with breaching their visa
conditions. Britain's consul-general, Andrew George, said they could be held in prison
for 20 days before being deported.
US and British consular staff met Ms McCulloch and Ms Sadler in Banda Aceh
yesterday, where, Associated Press reported, Ms Sadler had a brief meeting with her
16-year-old son, Dante Martins, before she was driven to the police station.
Mr George said the British embassy would make representations to the Indonesian
authorities about the mistreatment of Ms McCulloch's group when he had a full report.
Copyright © 2002. The Sydney Morning Herald.
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