Posts Tagged human rights
Human rights and torture news roundup
Posted by IRCT in News & Clippings on 23/05/2012
Navi Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, is in Zimbabwe for a week to investigate human rights abuses (Photo by: UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferre, available via Flickr through Creative Commons License)
Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights – essentially the world’s top human rights chief – is currently visiting Zimbabwe this week. On her first investigatory mission, Ms Pillay will spend one week in the Southern African country to follow-up on decades of allegations of severe and gross human rights violations, including torture and political violence during the 2008 elections. The government, of course, is denying that torture is practiced in Zimbabwe, despite testimonies to the contrary. Zimbabwe will again have elections this year – 2012.
Speaking of the United Nations, the UN’s Committee against Torture is winding down their semi-annual review of countries. This round included, among others, Canada, Cuba, and Albania. The Committee also requested Syria submit a report following a year-long clashes with protester and thousands of accusations of human rights violations and torture. Syria refused to come.
Finally, last week Al Jazeera reported that we – the IRCT – had sponsored a forensics expert to perform a second autopsy on a young man in Bahrain after his parents requested assistance and suspected possible torture. The Bahrain Public Prosecutor agreed to look further into the case, but we have officially called on him, Nayef Yousif, to not ignore the evidence presented in the autopsy conducted by forensic pathologist Dr Sebnem Korur, a leading international expert, winner of the first International Medical Peace Award and an instrumental contributor to the Istanbul Protocol.
Hunger strikes and torture
Posted by IRCT in News & Clippings on 08/05/2012
Many torture victims have historically used the protest method of hunger striking to fight for change
As of this blog’s posting, Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja has been on hunger strike for 90 days in protest of his detention and treatment in Bahrain. The use of hunger strikes has a long history for the politically powerless to advocate for change. Photo available through Creative Commons license.
Currently, in Bahrain Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja remains on hunger strike – day 90, according to the organisation that he founded, the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights.
Guarded by the Bahrain Defence Force, Al-Khawaja has not consumed food in about three months in protest of his ongoing mistreatment – both torture at the hands of military and police officials, and judicial mistreatment by the military court that found him guilty and delivered a life sentence for his involvement in last year’s protests. He further accused authorities of force feeding him during recent weeks, an accusation that they, of course, deny.
Hunger strikes have a long history among political dissidents, detainees, and, the politically powerless to advocate or coerce authorities into policy changes. It can be both a powerful tool for enacting change, and, by its nature, can also be extremely dangerous and even deadly for its participants. Some famous examples of hunger strikers include:
• Mohandas Gandhi during the British rule of India;
• Women on both sides of the Atlantic protesting for equal suffrage during the early 20th century;
• Irish republicans in particular have a long history of hunger striking; but this tactic was famously used during the early 1980s by Bobby Sands and other prisoners of the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland. Ten hunger strikers died in 1981;
• Among the longest and most deadly strikes were those that took place in Turkey, with the final wave beginning in 2000, over the government’s prison policy – the state was building new prisons that the protesters feared would be used for long-term solitary confinement for political dissidents, regardless of whether they had even been formally charged with a crime.
• At Guantanamo Bay, hunger strikes have been ongoing since 2005, when more than 120 detainees were on hunger strike at one point. Since then, this number has varied as the U.S. government has continued to force feed the strikers. It is unknown how many detainees remain on hunger strike today.
As hunger striking is often a tactic of absolute last resort, many torture victims have employed hunger strikes to protest their treatment and perhaps ongoing torture and detention.
Al-Khawaja is one such example; during his detention, which began in April of last year, he has been severely tortured by Bahrain authorities. In fact, his previous visit to the Bahrain military hospital where he is today was after such a severe beating in prison that he underwent surgery to have titanium plates inserted into the sides of his head.
Other U.S. prisoners, in California’s Pelican Bay Prison, have also engaged in limited hunger strikes in protest of long-term solitary confinement. They have since requested a formal ruling from the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Professor Juan Mendez, who has previously deemed long-term solitary confinement as torture.
Detainees at Guantamao Bay have too used hunger striking to protest their treatment and ongoing detention. However, rather than trying or freeing the Guantanamo detainees, or ceasing the ongoing torture and ill-treatment there, the U.S. government has instead been force-feeding hunger strikers since 2005 – both a violation of patients’ autonomy and another form or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.
Force-feeding hunger strikers is often a highly controversial issue, none the least because it questions medical ethics and physicians adherence to set principles, such as ‘do no harm’, and requirements of patient consent. The World Medical Association has come out against force-feeding as it violates medical ethics, such as respecting patient autonomy, primary obligations to patients over employers, preventing maltreatment, and preventing harm. This is especially true in cases, such as in Guantanamo, where authorities are force-feeding hunger strikers well before the fast becomes life-threatening. Furthermore, the process of force-feeding itself – often inserting feeding tubes down an uncooperative patients’ nose or throat – can cause immense pain and suffering.
Most important to consider is that the vast majority of hunger strikers do not want to die. Death is not the goal, and a hunger strike is generally not considered suicide. It is a measure of last resort for an often powerless figure fighting for policy change, to end torture and mistreatment or for release from degrading and arbitrary detention.
Why the US must release the torture report
Posted by IRCT in News & Clippings, North America on 02/05/2012
The world needs to know CIA torture was pointless, thus public release is imperative
Current Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta — former CIA Director during the mission that led to Osama bin Laden's death — denies that torture produced the information leading to bin Laden's whereabouts. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, available through Flickr Fresh Conservative, Creative Commons License.
The four-year long investigation on CIA’s detention and torture practices after 9/11 by the US Senate Intelligence Committee is close to an end.
Many of the same old questions are resurfacing, bringing the debate of torture effectiveness to the fore yet again.
Did the harsh “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by CIA produce counter-terrorism breakthroughs or no more than wrong leads? Could information have been obtained in other ways?
According to Reuters, “the backers of such techniques, […] maintain they have led to the disruption of major terror plots and the capture of al Qaeda leaders.”
Most of the speculation around this question though, seems to be confirming that the Bush administration made an enormous mistake by choosing to ignore the immense body of knowledge disproving the effectiveness of torture.
To make it clear, the report needs to be made public. Activists and human rights organisations, including the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, are therefore pressing for its release.
An ugly truth
Posted by IRCT in Europe, From our members, News & Clippings on 30/04/2012
The jobs we do not see advertised in the papers
”If this sounds like a sick joke, that’s only because jobs like this aren’t usually advertised. But the jobs exist and there’s no shortage of candidates.”
This is the point made by Freedom from Torture, a UK-based rehabilitation organisation and IRCT member, through an original campaign being run in major British newspapers.
An unusual job offer, but a usual reality
The organisation came up with several fictional job ads, where, for example, “a government department is looking for a torturer to work in a well equipped prison”, or “a militia group is recruiting a senior human rights abuser.”
Among several other oddities, candidates applying for the “torturer job” are expected to be ready to inflict extreme pain and suffering.
This ad and other similar ones created by Freedom from Torture are surely taking job-seekers by surprise. However, the reality portrayed by the campaign may also be a surprise to the general public. The reality is, torture – and torturers – exist and is a common practice around the world. Lack of awareness about it impedes the work done by the torture rehabilitation organisations, members of the IRCT network, like Freedom from Torture.
As Freedom from Torture puts it, we need your help. You can contribute to efforts to alleviate the devastating long-lasting effects of torture and join us in speaking out against this inhumane practice and supporting the work of the IRCT and its members.
25 de Abril Always
Posted by IRCT in News & Clippings on 25/04/2012
On the anniversary of the end of Portuguese dictatorship, the testimonies of torture survivors may remind us to learn from the past — that torture is never justified.
"25th of April ALWAYS!" Available through Creative Commons license
Today, 38 years ago, a military coup ended almost 50 years years of dictatorial regime in Portugal. With it came the end of the Portuguese colonial war and the oldest European colonial empire. This was the carnation revolution in 1974.
During the dictatorship, particularly during the long-lasting regime of Salazar (1936-1972), Portugal saw an unprecedented curtailment of civil rights and liberties. Wide-reaching censorship succeeded to halt all initiatives against the government.
PIDE, the political police, became the regime’s most emblematic means of control. With its wide network of informants in schools, workplaces and recreational areas, PIDE corrupted Portuguese society from within and consolidated the power of Salazar, using, whenever necessary, physical and psychological torture to obtain confessions and accusations.
Fortunately, freedom came so quickly after the 1974 revolution, that most of the crimes committed by the regime have been told and retold with remarkable detail in numerous books, essays and news articles.
While it is not surprising that what I’ve just told resembles other revolutionary episodes of the same historical period, it is indeed quite striking that some of the torture testimonies of the period look a lot like recent international media stories on torture. We haven’t learned our lesson.
Already in 1932, for example, Salazar was using the “ticking time-bomb” [PDF] scenario to justify torture. At one occasion, he asked a journalist [PDF] whether “the lives of children and defenceless people are not worth, and justify, a dozen timely shakes on those sinister creatures…”.
Another, from 1974, shortly after the revolution, was told by the psychiatrist who evaluated many of the victims. He said that, “for the police, making the prisoners talk wasn’t the most important. What they were truly interested in was to destroy the prisoners personality and to create a climate of terror in the whole country through the stories told by the relatives of those subjected to torture”.
Today, while Portugal commemorates, we take the opportunity to honour the victims of torture and human rights defenders, many of whom were instrumental in bringing down the regime, thus changing the course of history. Their bravery should be honoured in learning from history; not repeating the justifications for and horrific practices of torture for those who seek governments that respect human rights.
For more information:
Some of the torture victims of Salazar’s regime were masterly portrayed in Susana de Sousa Dias’ prize-winning 2009 documentary film “48”. We recommend watching it [PDF]. Here is a clip:
Fábio works at the IRCT as a Communications Officer and Editorial Assistant for TORTURE Journal.
The wrong track
Posted by IRCT in Middle East North Africa on 19/04/2012
Instead of flagging human rights abuses in Bahrain, F1 is choosing to ignore the grim reality
At left, protesters in Bahrain are calling for democratic reform and an end to human rights violations, photo by Al Jazeera English. At right, F1 chief Bernie Ecclestone denies there are any 'problems' in the country, photo by Silverstone Circuits Limited. Both obtained through Flickr via Creative Commons license.
“On the track, Bahrain is going to be all about tyre wear”, it states on the Formula 1 website, reporting on their big race event in Bahrain, which begins tomorrow 20 April.
Off the track, however, is another story. Human rights violations, torture, indefinite detentions, judicial harassment, and a uniformly violent crackdown on democratic protesters throughout the last year. Demonstrations early last spring and the brutal state response caused F1 to cancel last year’s race. This year, however, they say the race will continue, despite a wave of outcry from human rights defenders.
The demonstrators are aptly using the Formula 1 grand prix to highlight these crimes committed by the overly image-conscious Bahraini regime and royal family. For example, last year they hired a U.S.-based public relations firm for $40,000 a month, plus expenses to quell their increasingly tainted international reputation. Just take a look at Twitter, where a huge conglomerate of human rights defenders and reform activists have taken advantage of the well-connected island nation to spread information, videos, pictures and news stories to highlight these human rights atrocities to the world. Zainab al-Khawaja and Maryam al-Khawaja, human rights activists and daughters of hunger striker Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, and Nabeel Rajab, head of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, are among most followed Bahrainis on Twitter. In more recent months, the #Bahrain feeds have become more muddled in a social media battle as pro-regime and royal family supporters have stormed in, attempting to overwhelm the opposition with their own technology and tools.
And then there’s Formula 1, the singular event that unequivocally puts Bahrain on the map, and furthermore has previously showcased the capital Manama and the island nation as a “developed” “Western” ally in the Middle East (don’t forget, Bahrain has received both military, financial and symbolic support from the U.S. – which has a key naval base on the island - and European nations in the past). F1 two years ago brought in more than 100,000 visitors and an estimated half-billion dollars in revenue. Pushing the event forth and bringing back Formula 1, is simply a tactic for the Bahraini government to rebrand itself on the world stage, pretend that their so-called reforms have worked, and sweep away the human rights violations, crimes of torture, and the ongoing protests for a true democracy underneath the screeching rubber tyres.
And the Formula 1 organisation, F1 chief Bernie Ecclestone, and the teams participating in the Bahrain grand prix have much to answer for; their decision to move forth and participate in this shameful event not only aids the regime’s purpose for image-making, but thus allows these crimes to continue unabated and without redress for the victims. Instead, these are there excuses:
Bernie Ecclestone, chief executive, Formula One
“I’m happy our position is quite clear. We don’t get involved in politics in a country. There’s nothing happening. I know people here, it’s all very peaceful.”
Ross Brawn, principal, Mercedes team
“We have to take the advice of people who have all the information. We have reassurances from the FIA that we can have a safe race.”
Sebastian Vettel, driver, Red Bull
“I think it is safe enough to go and we should go there and race and not worry about something that is not our own business.”
Jenson Button, driver, McLaren
“I look to the governing body to decide whether we go to Bahrain or not. I don’t know all the facts; hopefully they can make the right call.”
There are simply no neutral parties when it comes to human rights violations and torture. By making these claims – Bahrain is peaceful, drivers should not get involved in political affairs, that nothing is happening – is, at best, highly naïve and is, more likely, that those in a position to take a stand instead are burying their heads in the sand. F1 leaders, teams and drivers, in a highly visible position in this debate, should rather use that platform to call out the Bahraini government for their crimes. International sporting events and their participants have a unique position to push forth change, and those in the Bahrain F1 event should use it. We can hope that, for example, the BBC, which is “contractually obligated” to broadcast the event, will not sideline the protests and demonstrations. Instead, we hope they use the F1 broadcast to show the awful truths Bahrain is keeping away from the track.
Torture in black and white: books on torture
Posted by IRCT in News & Clippings on 17/04/2012
Recently, on our organisation’s website, we wrote about a new book from former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Professor Manfred Nowak. The book, titled Torture: the banality of the unfathomable (in German: Folter: Die Alltäglichkeit des Unfassbaren) chronicles Professor Nowak’s experiences in documenting torture around the world, both during his professional career and during his mandate for the UN, where he traveled to almost 20 countries in all regions of the world.
However, Nowak’s book is only in his native German; but it started us thinking about other books – both fiction and non-fiction – that address torture and its impact on the victims and their families. Similarly to our previous list on the top films, we present here our top books on torture. If there are any we have left off or neglected, please remind us in the comments.
To start, it’s fitting to point to the current UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Professor Juan Mendez, and his recent book Taking A Stand: The Evolution of Human Rights. Mendez, who is himself a torture victim from the Argentine Dirty War, describes it as; “a way to illustrate and enable people to understand how far we’ve come to make the international human rights groups diverse in their composition”. The book provides a very moving and in-depth telling of his own experiences as a torture victim in Latin America in the late 70s, and how since, he has dedicated his life to furthering the cause of human rights.
Many staff here at the IRCT recommended Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals. Mayer examines the legal justification and excuses for the use of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ AKA torture, on terrorism suspects by the CIA. As a long-time foreign correspondent, war reporter, and now at the New Yorker, Mayer’s journalistic background and method in writing creates a well-researched and gripping account.
Professor Juan Mendez actually recommended this historically-derived drama in an interview when his own book was published. Set in Chile, Dorfman chronicles a country seeking justice and peace after the violent Pinochet regime. Set several years after the end of the Pinochet dictatorship, Death and the Maiden follows the perspective of a women who hears the voice of the man who raped and tortured her several years prior – a man who is now a guest in her kitchen. Beautifully written, Dorfman’s play points to the long-term impact of torture.
While this may come as a surprise for some, George Orwell’s classic novel about a totalitarian state depicts well one of the tools of repression, fear, and control that occurs in such regimes. Although better known for its creation of terms such as ‘Orwellian’, ‘Big Brother’ and ‘though police’, the final chapters focus on the torture and interrogation of protagonist Winston Smith. Smith seeks love and individuality in this dystopian novel, only to find it snuffed out by apparatuses of the state.
The third book in our list written by a current or former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, The Treatment of Prisoners Under International Law is a seminal work on torture, human rights, and international law by Sir Nigel Rodley. Places of detention, such as prisons, immigration detention centres, police lock-ups, or psychiatric centres, are the most common space in which one would find torture in any given country. As such, Rodley’s book and descriptive analysis is a fundamental read for those interested in how international human rights law came to be applied to a wider manner of human rights concerns, such as the inhumane or ill-treatment of detainees.
Horacio Verbitsky, author of Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior, is among the most well-known investigative journalist and human rights advocate in his native Argentina. After the ‘Dirty War’, the decades of human rights violations, extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances, and torture in Argentina, the former perpetrators of these crimes – largely the military branches under the regime – kept silent. Impunity prevailed. Verbitsky’s book is a first-hand account of the confessions of retired navy officer Adolfo Scilingo, the first man to break the military’s pact of silence and come forth with the crimes.
Torture: Does It Make Us Safer? Is It Ever OK?: A Human Rights Perspective is a series of essays and analysis from some of the top human rights thinkers, experts, and anti-torture activists in the world on a range of timely, current issues in human rights and the discourse around torture, particularly in the era of the so-called ‘war on terror’. For example, Minky Worden, Media Director of Human Rights Watch, conducts a survey of countries that torture. Eitan Felner, formerly of the Center for Economic and Social Rights and B’Tselem, writes on the Israeli experience. Twelve essays comprise the book.
There were a lot of memos that comprise the almost bureaucratic and systematic manner in which the U.S. government most recently approved the use of torture in interrogation. Among the most famous of these memos was a series of notes from former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. After 18 pages of interrogation techniques that defied well-established law on torture, Rumsfeld approved, thus leading to such atrocities as Abu Ghraib in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay Prison and Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.
Are there any we have missed? Please let us know in the comments.
The most interesting blog post you’ll ever read on ‘capacity development’
Posted by IRCT in Sharing Knowledge - Project Work on 10/04/2012
Andrés Bastidas Beltrán of Colombian member centre Corporación AVRE (Support to Victims of Sociopolitical Violence for Emotional Recovery) gave a presentation during the 2011 seminar of the Latin American region in Lima, Peru in September. Hosted by Peruvian member Centre of Psychosocial Attention (CAPS), last year's regional seminar brought together professionals from 15 torture rehabilitation centres in the region to discuss issues such as public policy on torture documentation and different treatment methods.
As I started working at NGOs, a phrase kept popping up that, honestly, I didn’t quite understand at the time.
“Capacity development” or “building capacity” was among the new NGO-ese I had yet to become acquainted with. In this field – as any other – there is a whole new language to learn. This included “concept note”, “actors”, “stakeholders”, “facilitators”, “good governance”, among many others. However, as I started working at the IRCT, I heard this particular phrase a lot, and most often in context with our Non-State Actors project.
“Non-state actors” is also not a very helpful term, and it doesn’t get any better with the longer version: developing the capacity of IRCT member centres to deliver holistic torture rehabilitation services through south-south and south-north peer supervision and support.
But this is my attempt to explain this project, and why building capacity is so vital for the future of the global anti-torture movement.
We are a membership organisation comprised of more than 140 rehabilitation centres all over the world. We have members in Sudan and Peru, Australia and Nepal, Egypt and, most recently, Namibia – more than 70 countries. And as one might surmise, not all the centres have the same resources or expertise.
EATIP in Argentina has a lot of experience in supporting torture victims – medically, psychologically, and financially – through justice proceedings. They have done so with several victims who are providing witness testimony in cases from the former dictatorial regime. African Centre for Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture Victims in Uganda has been at the forefront at developing livelihood programmes – training women how to sew or weave, for example – as part of their rehabilitative care for female victims of sexual violence and torture. Other centres are stars at fundraising and understanding how to apply for grants from the European Union or philanthropic foundations.
These are all skills that are not evenly distributed across the 140 centres. Building capacity is simply trying to improve all the rehabilitation centres by having the centres teach each other. Our project is to facilitate that through exchanges, seminars and organising training. A doctor in Sri Lanka travels to an Indian centre to learn a new psycho-social treatment method. A partner in Cameroon meets with other Sub-Saharan African treatment centres to discuss fundraising options – to work together rather than in competition. A forensic specialist from Colombia might visit a centre in Mexico to explain the most up-to-date information on documenting torture in the proper fashion (according to the Istanbul Protocol), so that the information can be used to prosecute the perpetrators or apply for asylum cases.
Capacity development – despite the esoteric wording – is simply making organisations better through training, sharing information and expertise, and cooperating, so that all members of the IRCT benefit from the incredible wealth of knowledge in each of the rehabilitation centres that comprise that membership. Improving the centres means improving their ability to treat victims of torture, aid survivors in accessing justice, and prevent torture from happening in the first place.
Tessa works in the Communications Team at the IRCT.
Investigating human rights violations in Chechnya together
Posted by IRCT in From our members on 05/04/2012
Editor’s note: This is the fourth post in an ongoing series from Russian member centre Committee Against Torture on their use of a Joint Mobile Group to investigation human rights violations, such as torture. See the first , second and third post.
After the murder of Natalya Estemirova, Memorial Human Rights Centre stopped working in Chechnya; many of its employees who used to work in Grozny had to temporarily leave the country. Soon after that, on 4 August 2009, Zarema Sadulayeva and Alik Dzhabrailov, chairperson of the Let’s Save the Generation charity and her husband, were abducted and killed in Grozny.
The CAT realised that it should either investigate the crimes allegedly perpetrated by Kadyrov’s agents, or stop all activities in Chechnya, as efficient operation of a human rights NGO was not possible without constant threat to the lives of its members. In the face of the alternative – either admit its impotence or risk the lives of the Chechen representation staff – it found another option: creation of a Joint Mobile Group consisting of employees permanently residing in other Russian regions. The JMG started working in Grozny on November 30, 2009.
JMG tasks in Chechnya
Taking into account the widespread and large scale nature of human rights violations in Chechnya and almost total impunity for them, it would be naive to assume that the JMG could conduct a public investigation of all reported cases of violations, murders and enforced disappearances. The task was much more unpretentious and narrow – to choose several cases of abductions, perform a detailed in-depth analysis of the reasons for the ineffectiveness of investigations carried out by the Investigative Committee and find out why none of these such cases were fully investigated. The CAT decided that these should be fresh 2009 cases with no suspects among Russian servicemen or law enforcers from other regions temporarily serving in Chechnya; only crimes allegedly committed by local policemen in the period when Ramzan Kadyrov was already Chechnya’s president.
On the basis of these criteria, the JMG selected nine cases and its lawyers officially joined the proceedings as victims’ representatives. Investigative authorities had instigated criminal proceedings under Article 126 of the Russian Criminal Code (abduction of a person) under all those crime reports. In one case, we have established that state agents were not involved in the abduction; in another case, victims’ relatives have refused to further cooperate with human rights defenders due to intimidation. Thus, the JMG is now dealing with seven public investigation cases.
Peculiarities of the method and security measures
The major peculiar features of JMG activities in Chechnya are unusual mission lengths and increased security measures.
The Joint Mobile Group encompasses three people who work in the Republic on a rotating basis for one month. Each team is headed by a leader. Each leader has power-of-attorney to represent victims’ interests in criminal proceedings. Thus, they have a right to participate in investigative activities, file petitions and otherwise monitor the official investigation progress.
The JMG rents a four-room flat in Grozny that serves both as an office and accommodation. The JMG has a car; there is at least one person with a driving license in each team.
Security rules do not allow JMG members to leave the flat and move around the Republic alone. The team leader notifies the supervisor located in Nizhny Novgorod about the agenda and actual movements of the JMG on a daily basis. There is a time frame (controlled intervals) when the JMG leader has to contact the supervisor. The JMG headquarters and car are equipped with hidden video and audio recording devices.
The JMG has once experienced unlawful detention (in fact, abduction) of all its members by police agents suspected of grave human rights violations. Thanks to strict compliance with the security rules, prompt response of human rights defenders in Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod, and quickly drawing public attention to the violation, the abducted JMG members escaped tragic consequences.
From our members: When human rights defenders continue the fight
Editor’s Note: This will be the first post in an ongoing series featuring the work of our 140+ member centres around the world in more than 70 countries. It’s in these centres, from Argentina to The Philippines, where the fight against torture is most direct – where victims are treated for their physical and psychological wounds, where testimonies are first heard, and where healing begins.
Human rights defenders often face grave dangers for those who investigate violations, such as torture, committed by the state. In the upcoming weeks, IRCT member centre Committee Against Torture, a Russian interrregional NGO, will be updating us on their work with the Joint Mobile Group. The group, coordinated from NGOs and human rights defenders from across Russia, joined together to investigate the human rights violations, including torture and enforced disappearances, in Chechnya. They describe it as follows:
Working in the framework of the Joint Mobile Groups (JMG) is one of the ways to conduct a public investigation into grave human rights violations. We must admit that this type of activity is, in fact, induced, as it requires extraordinary organizational resources and funding. Therefore, it is used only in the context of large scale or systematic violations, when the region featuring such violations: 1) lacks human rights NGOs capable of conducting a professional public investigation on their own; or 2) when due to the large scale of violations local NGOs do not have the capacity to conduct such an investigation; or 3) when involvement of local human rights defenders into such investigations might pose a real threat to their lives, health and security, or that of their families.
When at least one of these conditions is present, establishing a JMG is basically the only way to effectively fight unlawful violence and seek redress for victims.
The Joint Mobile Group was awarded the 2011 Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders At Risk. This video, explains why:
In a second video, Igor Kalyapin, a member of the Joint Mobile Group, speaks about how the international attention and, specifically, the award from Front Line has impacted their work: “Because the authorities there, having realised that it is not possible to scare us away, have started to treat us with total indifference. That is, they still try to frighten the Chechen human rights activists and control them in some way, but with us, they simply pretend that we’re not there.”
Check out the website of Committee Against Torture here, where they have several news stories in English on the work of the Joint Mobile Group in Chechnya. Visit us next week to read more about their work.
