Indonesia's rights record in Aceh and Papua worsened: Amnesty 

LONDON, May 28 (AFP) - Indonesian authorities intensified repression of independence movements in Aceh and Papua last year with hundreds of cases of killings, torture and unlawful arrest, Amnesty International said Tuesday.

The international rights group, in its annual report, said police and troops also destroyed houses and means of livelihood as a form of collective punishment following attacks by opposition groups on security forces.

Amnesty said no one had been brought to justice for the massacre in August 2001 of 31 plantation workers and their families in Aceh, although evidence collected by local rights monitors suggested the army may have been to blame.

Human rights defenders were increasingly targeted, mainly in Aceh and Papua.

They were subject to execution, unlawful arrest and torture as well as threats and harassment by the police and military, Amnesty said. The Free Aceh Movement, an armed separatist group, was also guilty of harassing rights monitors.

Eleswhere in the country, Amnesty said excessive force by police and troops caused deaths or injuries to striking workers and protesters and in areas of ethnic and religious conflict.

"Impunity continued: there were no credible investigations into allegations of human rights violations," it said.

Indonesia this year set up a human right court to try cases of attacks on independence supporters in East Timor in 1999. Pro-Jakarta militias, organised and armed in some cases by the Indonesian army, carried out the attacks.

Amnesty criticised a presidential decree restricting the court's jurisdiction to just two month in 1999 and said senior police and military officers who were named as suspects remained on active service.