Posts Tagged police
(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.
In Bahrain, Protests and Police Action
Posted by IRCT in Middle East North Africa on 21/12/2011
Nicholas Kristof, a columnist at the New York Times, reports in this video from Bahrain, where he speaks with human rights defenders Nabeel Rajab, Zainab al-Khawaja, and a state spokesman from the royal family.
Read our previous post on Bahrain here, featuring a discussion with Zainab’s sister, Maryam and Nabeel in Copenhagen.
Human rights organisations condemns repressive and deadly action by Mexican police
Posted by IRCT in Latin America & the Caribbean on 14/12/2011
From our website:
The IRCT condemns the repressive action by the Mexican police following the recent student demonstrations in southern Guerrero. The action by the police resulted in the death of Alexis Herrera Jorge Pino and Gabriel Echeverria, several severe injuries and numerous detentions.
IRCT member organisation CCTI and other human rights organisationscall on the Mexican authorities to respect the integrity of the students present at the scene, and all those who were arrested, whether students, journalists or others present, for the immediate release of all persons arrested for these acts, and for a prompt and impartial investigation about the circumstances and those responsible for the death of the two students.
An urgent action statement signed by multiple human rights organisations, including our member centre CCTI (Collective against Torture and Impunity) in Mexico is available here (PDF en español)
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 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)
Monday News Updates
Posted by IRCT in News & Clippings on 03/10/2011
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.
Protesters demonstrate at the Pearl Roundabout in Bahrain in February 2011, site of violent government crackdowns. The doctors, currently sentenced to 15 years, treated several injured protesters. Photo credit to Mahmood Al-Yousif from Flickr, Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0)
I was tortured in Bahrain police cell, says one of the doctors jailed for 15 years // The Independent / UK
Never were there more unlikely revolutionaries than the doctors and nurses, all specialists in their fields, whom the Bahraini government claims had turned the Salmaniya Hospital Complex in Manama, the capital, into a base for rebellion. “We are completely innocent,” Dr Saffar said. “All we did was to treat our patients.”
Anti-Qaddafi Fighters Are Accused of Torture // The New York Times / U.S.
First there were the blindfold, the wrist-scarring handcuffs and the death threats. Then came beatings and electric shocks. In the fog of pain, the detainee, who said he had done nothing wrong, would have confessed to anything, he later recalled.
The techniques were familiar to Libyans, but the perpetrators were not: they were former rebels, according to the detainee, a 36-year-old man who said he had worked in military intelligence for the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
Tales of torture in Syria // Al-Ahram Weekly / Egypt
The recording was a reminder of other video footage showing acts of torture, including the widely-circulated footage of the corpse of Hamza Al-Khateeb, 13, who had been detained by the security forces for more than two weeks and his body returned to his family disfigured by torture.
Police has ordered an inquiry into torture of minor // Express News Service / India
On Friday, Ricky’s family had alleged that the police picked had him at 9 PM on September 24 and taken him to the Sector 61 police post on the suspicion of breaking a window pane of a house in the colony. The boy was allegedly beaten up by the cops and made to stand naked for over two hours.
Governo quer criar comissão para combater a tortura // Estado de Minas / Brasil
O projeto de lei constitui ainda o Comitê Nacional de Combate à Tortura, que será formado por integrantes de ministérios e representantes da sociedade civil.
