Posts Tagged Pakistan
(Not) “Only incompetent investigation officers believe in torture”
Posted by IRCT in Asia, News & Clippings on 24/01/2012
While the HRW reports a disastrous year for human rights in Pakistan, positive signals are arriving from Punjab. The province’s police have been instructed to stop torturing suspects in custody after the Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights took note of media reports of an ‘increasing trend of police torture’ in the province. Read the news here.
We welcome the news that the committee seem to have convinced the police to revise their investigation methods and concentrate on collecting physical evidence using forensic techniques rather than coercing suspects into making confessions. It also called for improvements in the recruitment and training of police and other law enforcement personnel.
According to the committee “Only incompetent investigation officers believe in torture”. Yet sadly, it’s not just incompetent police officers who torture. Despite being a gross violation of human rights, which has many times been proved inefficient, many prison officers and detention staff, military personnel, paramilitary forces, state-controlled contra-guerilla forces, and even some health and legal professionals still believe in it. Read more about who the perpetrators of torture are.
Monday News Updates: Human Rights Day Edition
Posted by IRCT in News & Clippings on 12/12/2011
My first job of every day is to scour the news for articles on cases of torture, changes in national or international legislation, or opinion pieces. Monday’s are the longest – from Saturday to Monday, there are a huge number of articles to sort through.
This Monday was exceptional in its volume. International Human Rights Day, 10 December, was Saturday, and I am grateful to see many newspapers, Op-Ed writers, and organisations take the opportunity to focus on the issue of torture. As such, below I will simply provide the links and titles from Human Rights Day 2011.
Pakistan: Human Rights Day: ‘Include a course on human rights in the curriculum’ (The Express Tribune)
Pakistan: Human rights violations: Criminalisation of torture demanded (The Express Tribune)
Maldives: President hopes for investigation of torture against inmates (Miadhu News)
Human Rights Day: Seizing a historic opportunity to end torture in the Middle East and North Africa – Ten steps against torture (World Organisation Against Torture – OMCT.org)
Hope and Change: The Arab Spring Dominated the Headlines, But 2011 Saw Other Landmark Human Rights Victories (The Huffington Post)
ASIA: The state of human rights in Asia on International Human Rights Day 2011 (Asian Human Rights Commission)
NEPAL : An Appeal from the Center for Victims of Torture to the government of Nepal on the occasion of the international Human Rights Day (Centre for Victims of Torture – Nepal)
The 16 Days Campaign: Hope, Strength and Power Prevail (Physicians for Human Rights)
Violence against women in post-conflict (Amnesty International – USA)
By Tessa
Monday News Updates: Condemning torture in Syria
Posted by IRCT in News & Clippings on 05/12/2011
When we speak of ‘torture as usual‘, this is not meant to be flippant, but to provide backing and examples of Professor Manfred Nowak, former UN special investigator on torture and IRCT Patron, contention that torture is practised in an estimated 90% of countries around the world.
It’s here in India: Where the country has not ratified the UN Convention against Torture, and an estimated 14,000 people have died in custody from torture and other ill-treatment.
In Pakistan: Where daily stories of torture and death from within prisons fills the daily news clippings I read.
It’s stories of asylum-seekers being denied a haven and returned to countries where they are tortured. It was the case in Egypt, now undergoing a revolution spurned by people who said they would not stand for torture any more. It’s continued impunity for those who torture, fuelled by the poverty of the victims, and is an ongoing struggle for our member centres to prevent torture in climates with no consequences.
Despite these daily examples, we thankfully still have global condemnation of cases of systematic use of torture specifically to stifle growing opposition movements: the case in point being Syria.
At Friday’s special UN meeting, called for after a UN-appointed investigations team found evidence of widespread human rights abuses and torture, including of children, the UN Human Rights Council overwhelmingly voted to condemn the Syrian authorities for their ongoing brutal treatment of its people.
With radical changes continuing in the Middle East and North African region, we have hope for change in Syria.
Friday News Clippings: torture as usual
Posted by IRCT in News & Clippings on 25/11/2011
Parallel to the extremely notorious cases of mass torture in Libya and Bahrain, torture continues to be practiced under the “usual” conditions around the world. Radio France Internationale reports police torture in Nigeria. The article points out two common patterns of torture as practiced in everyday life: firstly, that police in several countries are “under intense pressure from the government and the public to deliver. This means they sometimes resort to using crude tactics to get results.” A similar story came to us from Pakistan (see Police brutally torture youth, break hands, legs). Secondly, this is happening above all in countries where a large part of the population lives in poverty. This important aspect has been underlined in the recent Declaration on Poverty and Torture issued by the IRCT Council. In fact, poverty is one of the major underlying factors that keeps people perpetually vulnerable to torture, and tends to increase or deepen poverty by stripping victims of the ability to continue their livelihoods.
In times of remarkable political transformations and the mass torture that accompanies it, let’s not forget “torture as usual”.
Monday News Updates
Posted by IRCT in News & Clippings on 24/10/2011
Editor’s Note: Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we will post updates on ongoing cases of torture, new opinion pieces in the media, or news stories or issues that emerge.
Libyan demonstrators in Seoul, South Korea called on Gaddafi to step down earlier this year. Several countries have now recognized the National Transitional Council as the new Libyan government. By lmjleft via Flickr, Creative Commons license.
Following the capture and death of Gaddafi, several states, the UN human rights commission, and human rights groups have called for an investigation or condemned the killing of the former regime leader and consider whether it constituted a war crime. Some believe that for the future of Libya, it would have been preferable for the former dictator to face a trial for his crimes. More horrible torture stories have also emerged from Libya.
In a case we mentioned last week, Pakistan police in Lahore will not investigate the torture death of a 70-year-old man who died after a night in police custody. This is a horrible betrayal of justice, yet again.
A retrial began for the tortured Bahrain doctors who previously were convicted in a military trial after they treated injured protesters during demonstrations earlier this year.
Human rights defenders in Zimbabwe are ‘naming and shaming‘ those who torture, and South West Radio Africa have continued naming the alleged locations where such crimes take place.
Keep a look out on this blog and our website today for an exciting announcement.
Monday News Updates
Posted by IRCT in News & Clippings on 17/10/2011
Editor’s Note: Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we will post updates on ongoing cases of torture, new opinion pieces in the media, or news stories or issues that emerge.
Pakistan faced a condemning report on abuse and torture within their vastly over-crowded prison and justice systems. Attributed to Omar Wezir, from Flickr, (CC BY-SA 2.0).
Over the weekend, numerous claims of torture have merged from Pakistan. Firstly, last week international think-tank International Crisis Group (ISG) released a report on the state of prisons in Pakistan, saying torture, impunity, and corruption reign in prisons, which detains more than 78,000 people. The News International Pakistan wrote, in an editorial published Sunday, that, “Inmates are regularly tortured and maltreated and there is no system of checks and balances or accountability which would allow prisoners to protest legitimately at their treatment.” There is an urgent need for reform, the editors wrote.
Over the weekend, there were further cases of torture in Pakistan. Police in Lahore were accused of torturing a 60-year-old man to death. Fiza Gilani, Goodwill Ambassador for Women’s Empowerment and daughter of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, condemned police torture of Lady Health Workers (LHW). She also affirmed that was the responsibility of the Punjab government to pay them “dues”, however, I am unsure from this article if that is referring to reparations to torture victims, an obligation under the UN Convention against Torture that Pakistan has ratified. And on Friday, a Lahore court order legal actions taken against police in the torture of Ayesha Malik, daughter of PML-Q leader Abdul Ahad Malik. A medical report was submitted to the court that day that confirmed torture from beating with fists and wooden clubs.
In Turkey, a soldier died after being in a coma for 80 days due to alleged torture from his military superiors, just days before he was set to be discharged. The perpetrators are not yet known, but an investigation is under way. The Turkish Parliament’s Human Rights Commission previously had announced plans to investigate claims of mistreatment of conscripted soldiers in the military. A fellow soldier in the same military unit had also reported abuse and torture to the Turkish parliament, which included wading through a sewer, beatings, forced lack of sleep, being forced to sit in the sun, and having hot water poured on him.
Our member centre Balay Rehabilitation Centre from the Philippines is in the news. The centre, which has a prison monitoring programme, has found 16 of 26 inmates they examined had experienced torture and 2 had post-traumatic stress syndrome. Many inmates are also dying from lack of medical attention.
Four organisations have submitted an alternative report to the United Nations on the ongoing and systematic use of torture in Sri Lanka. The report is for consideration of the UN Convention against Torture, which is set to review the situation in Sri Lanka in November. The report remarks on “the failure of the government to comply with the CAT by its failure to provide for a credible and competent investigating mechanism for the investigation of torture allegations, the government’s failure to provide protection to victims by proper legislation relating to protection to the victims and also failures relating to the Attorney General’s Department and the judicial process itself.”
Torture, arbitrary detention, drug crimes: reform of the prison system is urgently needed (Agenzia Fides)
Reforming Pakistan’s Prison System (ICG)
Pakistan: Rotting Prisons (The News International Pakistan)
State brutality: Cops accused of torturing senior to death (The Express Tribune, Pakistan)
Fiza Gilani flays police torture on LHWs (The Nation, Pakistan)
Action against cops ordered after torture on Ayesha proved (The News International Pakistan)
Soldier tortured by superiors dies after 80 days in hospital (Today’s Zaman, Istanbul)
Soldier tortured in same military prison as Kantar sought deputies’ help (Today’s Zaman, Istanbul)
Inmates in Provincial Jails in Southern Philippines Need Medical Help (AllVoices)
An alternative report to the committee against torture (Sri Lanka Guardian)
