Jakarta, Aug 17 (AFP) A police crackdown on petty crime in the run-up to the Asian Games in Indonesia has claimed dozens of lives, Amnesty International said today, criticising what it said was an "unnecessary and excessive" campaign. The rights group said at least 31 suspects were killed under a "shoot first and ask questions later" operation in host city Jakarta and South Sumatra in the lead-up to the world's second-biggest multi-sport event, which kicks off Saturday. The security operation has prompted concern among international rights groups, fearing that police have taken the instructions as “a license to kill.”

At least 77 criminal suspects have been shot dead across Indonesia between January and August, a 64% increase over the same period last year, by Amnesty’s count. “Instead, we have seen the police shooting and killing dozens of people across the country with almost zero accountability for the deaths.”

Hamid said hosting an international sporting event should not come at the “price of abandoning human rights”. "These shocking figures reveal a clear pattern of unnecessary and excessive use of force by the police, and a constant veil of impunity that taints public security institutions," he said in a statement. On July 30, the chief of National Police said, “If they fight the officers during the arrest, then have no doubt, just shoot them.”

“The Asian Games are intended to celebrate human achievement, not provide a pretext for a police ‘shoot to kill’ policy in the name of crime control,” Phelim Kine, Deputy Asia Director at Human Rights Watch, told The Guardian.
Amnesty International releases a report accusing Indonesian police of fatally shooting at least 77 suspected petty criminals since January 2018, in the lead-up to the 2018 Asian Games. Authorities insist that lethal force is used when the suspects resist the police.