Showing papers on "Torture published in 1991"

The united nations convention on the rights of the child

Abstract: States parties to the Convention are obliged to develop and undertake all actions and policies in the light of the best interests of the child. The Convention sets out these rights in 54 articles and two Optional Protocols. It spells out the basic human rights that children everywhere have: • the right to survival; • to develop to the fullest; • to protection from harmful influences, abuse and exploitation; • and to participate fully in family, cultural and social life. The four core principles of the Convention are • non-discrimination; • devotion to the best interests of the child; • the right to life, survival and development; • and respect for the views of the child.

Torture and Truth

Abstract: The ancient Greeks routinely tortured slaves to extract evidence for legal trials. They considered truth obtained from slaves by torture to be more reliable than the freely-given testimony of free men. This text questions whether recollection of this fact is merely a curiosity that allows us to marvel at our progress from the past, or whether our very idea of truth, the truth of the philosophical tradition founded by the ancient Greeks, is caught up in the logic of torture, in which truth is conceived of as residing elsewhere, requiring violence if necessary for its production. Examining ancient Greek literary, philosophical and legal texts, the author analyzes how the Athenian torture of slaves emerged from and reinforced the concept of truth being repressed.

The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties

Abstract: If Abraham Lincoln was known as the Great Emancipator, he was also the only president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. Indeed, Lincoln's record on the Constitution and individual rights has fueled a century of debate, from charges that Democrats were singled out for harrassment to Gore Vidal's depiction of Lincoln as an "absolute dictator." Now, in The Fate of Liberty, one of America's leading authorities on Lincoln wades straight into this controversy, showing just who was jailed and why, even as he explores the whole range of Lincoln's constitutional policies. Mark Neely depicts Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus as a well-intentioned attempt to deal with a floodtide of unforeseen events: the threat to Washington as Maryland flirted with secession, distintegrating public order in the border states, corruption among military contractors, the occupation of hostile Confederate territory, contraband trade with the South, and the outcry against the first draft in U.S. history. Drawing upon letters from prisoners, records of military courts and federal prisons, memoirs, and federal archives, he paints a vivid picture of how Lincoln responded to these problems, how his policies were actually executed, and the virulent political debates that followed. Lincoln emerges from this account with this legendary statesmanship intact--mindful of political realities and prone to temper the sentences of military courts, concerned not with persecuting his opponents but with prosecuting the war efficiently. In addition, Neely explores the abuses of power under the regime of martial law: the routine torture of suspected deserters, widespread antisemitism among Union generals and officials, the common practice of seizing civilian hostages. He finds that though the system of military justice was flawed, it suffered less from merciless zeal, or political partisanship, than from inefficiency and the friction and complexities of modern war. Drawing on a deep understanding of this unique period, Neely takes a comprehensive look at the issues of civil liberties during Lincoln's administration, placing them firmly in the political context of the time. Written with keen insight and an intimate grasp of the original sources, The Fate of Liberty offers a vivid picture of the crises and chaos of a nation at war with itself, changing our understanding of this president and his most controversial policies.

Assessment and treatment of torture victims: a critical review.

Abstract: This paper presents the main issues in the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric sequelae in torture victims. The concept of post traumatic stress disorder is used to organize literature on psychiatric casualties resulting from massive psychic trauma, e.g., the Nazi Holocaust, the Vietnam and Israeli wars, and the current world epidemic of torture. Torture is a unique human made stressor resulting in category-specific diagnostic symptoms. Medical assessment can be complemented with photographs, x-rays, electroencephalograms, and sleep studies. Individual psychotherapy and group techniques focus on the issues of denial and trust, loss, survivor guilt, and reparation. Programs of psychological and social rehabilitation and treatment with benzodiazepines, tricyclic antidepressants, and other compounds are reviewed. Future research needs include the conceptualization of the trauma of torture and its sequelae in broader terms, the application of standardized measurements to facilitate international comparisons, and the testing of various approaches to intervention in an experimental design. An ethical physician must resist the pressures of totalitarian governments to assume neutrality in the presence of human rights violations affecting his/her patients. Language: en

European Human Rights Law: Text and Materials

Abstract: Preface. Table of Cases. Part I: Structure and Process. 1: The European Convention on Human Rights. 2: The European Commisssion on Human Rights. 3: The European Court of Human Rights. 4: Reform of the Commission and the Court. Part II: Substantive Adjudication in Court. 5: Torture Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of Punishment. 6: Freedom of Expression (Article 10). 7: Respect for Priivate and Family Life (Article 8). 8: Liberty (Article 5). 9: Right to a Public Hearing in the Determination of Civil Rights and Criminal Charges (Article 6). 10: The Convention in Municipal Law. Appendices A - E Index

A Story of South Africa: J. M. Coetzee’s Fiction in Context

Abstract: History and the South African writer naming the other - history, language and authority the master myth of history - "Dusklands" a feminine story - "In the Heart of the Country" the novelist and torture - "Waiting for the Barbarians" apocalypse - "Life & Times of Michael K" writing for the other - "Foe" the unquiet dead -"Age of Iron".

Psychosocial Needs of Torture Survivors

Abstract: Growing recognition that the world faces a modern epidemic of torture has stimulated widespread interest amongst mental health professionals in strategies for the treatment of survivors. In this article we outline the distinctive experiences of torture survivors who present for treatment in western countries. These survivors are usually refugees who, in addition to torture, have suffered a sequence of traumatic experiences and face ongoing linguistic, occupational, financial, educational and cultural obstacles in their country of resettlement. Their multiple needs call into question whether "working through" their trauma stories in psychotherapy will on its own ensure successful psychosocial rehabilitation. Drawing on our experience at a recently established service, we propose a broader therapeutic aim.

Torture and Truth in Renaissance England

Abstract: It was Myagh's misfortune to find himself suspected of complicity in Irish rebellion during the relatively short period, roughly the last half of the sixteenth century, when English authorities resorted to interrogatory torture in criminal investigations, as Sir Edward Coke was to write, "directly against the common lawes of England."2 An aberration in English juridical practice, the use of torture in Elizabethan England was a brief departure from a legal tradition that abhorred and ridiculed the highly organized practice of judicial torture on the Continent. The immediate purpose of much English torture was political repression. Like modern torture, it was a form of official terrorism, used to crush perceived dangers to the Elizabethan state, particularly, although by no means exclusively, the persistence and spread of Roman Catholicism. Nevertheless, the goal of torture was characterized in the official warrants as the acquisition of knowledge; its purpose was the "discoverie of the truth," "manifestacion of the truth," or "the boultinge forth [sifting out] of the truth."3 These characterizations of torture are not merely official euphemisms, for, as I shall argue, the repressive and epistemological concerns of Elizabethan torturers were intimately related.4 What is striking about Myagh's account of his situation is that he too interprets his torture as a procedure whose goal is truth. But if Myagh also characterizes torture as a trying of truth (try is a synonym for the warrants' boult), he signals his resistance to the state's coercion by styling the truth that emerged from his torture as his own.5 In so doing, he subtly recharacterizes the nature of the truth at issue in torture. Where "the truth" the torture warrants seek is an account of

Torture and the medical profession: a review.

Abstract: Current knowledge about doctor participation in torture was reviewed at the symposium Torture and the Medical Profession. This particular topic has received increasing attention during the last few years, and the meeting may be seen as one in a series, following particularly Doctors, Ethics, and Torture in Copenhagen, 1986 and Physicians, Ethics, and Torture in Montevideo 1987 (1,2). The background for the meeting, as well as the recommendations emanating from it, are reviewed, including the call for an international tribunal to evaluate doctors alleged to have been involved in torture.

The psychosocial effects of conflict in the third world

Abstract: In current armed conflicts around the world, over 90 per cent of casualties are civilians. This article reviews medical and anthropological evidence of the psychosocial effects of extreme experiences such as torture, mutilation, rape, and the violent displacement of communities. The consequences for women and children are considered in particular. The author argues that the social development programmes of non-governmental development organisations should be extended to support social networks and institutions in areas of conflict, and ends by giving guidelines for mental health promoters working in traumatised communities.

The mental state of detained asylum seekers

Abstract: The persecution of civilians by the Iraqi forces in Kuwait and subsequent acts of revenge on the Palestinian population have caused widespread revulsion throughout the world. Stories of torture and rape have been described in the Western media and issues of human rights have gained considerable prominence of late. Perhaps now is a good time to examine how Britain responds to the needs of survivors of torture who seek asylum here.

The European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

Abstract: The European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (‘the Convention’) adds a new approach to the promotion and protection of human rights.1 According to Article 1 of the Convention, a European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (‘the Committee’) shall be established in order to examine, by means of visits, the treatment of persons deprived of their liberty with a view to strengthening, if necessary, their protection from torture and from inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The Convention was opened for signature to Member States of the Council of Europe on 26 November 1987.2 It entered into force on 1 February 1989 upon the ratification of 7 states. As of January 1991, 20 Member States of the Council of Europe had ratified the Convention.3 The Committee started to operate in November 1989. It adopted its Rules of Procedure on 16 November 1989.4 The first list of states to be visited in 1990, established by the Committee by drawing lots, includes Austria, Denmark, Spain, Malta and the United Kingdom. The first country to receive ‘a periodic visit’5 by the Committee was Austria.

Modernizing Customary International Law: The Challenge of Human Rights

Abstract: Those who work to incorporate human rights into the international legal arena face a compelling but difficult mission. The mission is compelling because the cause of human rights often involves individuals or groups facing death, torture or oppression. The mission is also difficult because the human rights cause generally supports individuals standing in opposition to their governments, whereas international law has traditionally focused on the rights of those same nations in relation to each other, to the almost total exclusion of "domestic or internal matters." To understand one way in which the human rights regime fits within this traditional body of international law, the tensions between these two sometimes contradictory foci need to be explored, and the international law governing refugees offers one example of how these tensions operate.

Can the Notion of Inhuman and Degrading Treatment be Applied to Socio-Economic Conditions?

Abstract: 1. In a number of cases the European Commission and Court of Human Rights have applied Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, whereby 'No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment'. It is in the area of civil rights that the two Strasbourg bodies have relied primarily upon this Article: the bulk of the applications dealt with by the two supervisory bodies relate to the conditions of detention of persons deprived of their liberty (usually in prisons, in police custody or in mental institutions). Other applications raise the question whether corporal punishment in educational institutions can be regarded as inhuman and degrading, or whether extradition or deportation to a country where an individual is likely to be subjected to inhuman treatment is contrary to Article 3. In addition, the question has also been raised whether at least in some instances racial discrimination can be said to amount to inhuman or degrading treatment. 1

The involvement of medical doctors in torture: the state of the art.

Abstract: One of the first international meetings against doctors participating in torture took place in Copenhagen in 1986, and the Statement of Madrid was a very important outcome of this meeting. The second international meeting took place in Uruguay in December 1987. We can all be very proud of what Dr Gregorio Martirena and the Uruguayan Medical Association has been able to do. The conclusions of that meeting in Uruguay are worthy of study, with a special emphasis on what has been done; then it will be up to us to discuss what we need to do in the future....We have now come together at the third international meeting concerning doctors and torture. I would like to describe what has been done, especially in Denmark since the last international meeting.... Language: en

Repression, health care and ethics under apartheid.

Abstract: Over the past twenty-five years torture by state security forces has escalated in South Africa. The scale of this abuse has impacted on the health professions, both medical and psychological, which have unavoidably been exposed to the casualties. Individual doctors and psychologists and the country's professional bodies have been forced to confront crucial ethical choices. This paper is about some of those choices and the schisms which they opened in the South African health professions. A brief contextual outline of the sociopolitical context within which repression, resistance and torture arose in South Africa will be followed by discussion of the challenges which civil rights abuses, including torture, have posed for health professions in this country; and how the professions have responded. Torture in South Africa emerged as a logical development within an abusive social control system. This system widely known as apartheid was intended legally to entrench power and economic advantage in the hands of the white minority. South Africa had been settled from the mid-seventeenth century onwards by Britain and Holland. Wars of subjugation waged against the black peoples of the country were followed in the 20th century by coercive measures intended to bring blacks into the economy as cheap labour. When the Afrikaner Nationalist government came into power, after World War II, they instituted a rigorous formalisation of the loose racial discrimination practised previously. The apartheid system inflicted enormous institutional violence on the black population of South Africa. In pursuit of racial separation without loss of cheap labour, millions of blacks were relocated to barren homelands where in order for families to survive physically they had to be fragmented by the migrant labour system. Those blacks permitted to live in 'white' areas were forced by the Group Areas Act to live in overcrowded soulless dormitory townships, prey to high levels of crime and violence, and far from their workplaces. In these circumstances blacks have succumbed in huge numbers to the diseases of poverty such as tuberculosis or kwashiorkor these effects aggravated further by inferior health and social services (1). They have been trapped in these circumstances by a separate education system overtly designed to disadvantage blacks as 'hewers of wood and drawers of water'; and for decades they were prevented by the Job Reservation Act from taking up any but the lowest-paying work. Constructed within this system as 'untermenschen', blacks were slighted, patronised and psychologically undermined (2,3). A vast and obstructive bureaucracy implemented the regulations of apartheid. Backing this bureaucracy are an efficient police and security police force and a sophisticated military which the state has not hesitated to use to quell the resistance which has erupted in recent decades under these intolerable conditions. Demonstrations have been put down with extreme force, and wide-ranging security legislation has allowed the state to ban publications, outlaw organisations, withdraw passports, banish people to remote areas, and in general criminalise political activity (4). The Internal Security Act and State of Emergency legislation allow the detention of persons without recourse to the courts and in conditions of secrecy (5). It is these provisions, together with defacto and legislated impunity enjoyed by security police, that have provided the climate in which torture can emerge and flourish (6). As checks on the security police fell away, consistent reports of torture of political detainees began to surface, including violent assault, electric shock, 'hooding' and suffocation, forced prolonged exercise, death threats and prolonged solitary confinement (7,8). Initially these abuses were mostly committed under the provisions of 'Section 29' (laws allowing detention of suspected political activists for interrogation) and relatively small numbers of activists were involved. From 1984/5 onwards, however, when widespread protest and civil conflict erupted, huge numbers of people were detained under the provisions of the State of Emergency. Violent assaults by members of the police and security forces were commonplace and seemed to be aimed at the intimidation of the general population (9). Under these circumstances, members of the health professions came into direct contact with the work of the security police. Their responses to this testing situation brought into focus the ethical responsibilities of health professionals and publicly revealed the activities of the security police. coright.

Torture and the participation of doctors.

Abstract: ...All those opposed to the mistreatment of prisoners and to torture, should acknowledge the obvious fact that, wherever there is a systematic application of torture, there is involvement on the part of doctors. In other words, if doctors did not participate in, or contribute to, these practices, systematic torture could never be realised. Speaking both universally, and on a national scale, doctor contribution to torture is realised in two main forms....Following this overview, I would like to summarise the situation in Turkey.... Language: en

Proceedings of the International Symposium on Torture and the Medical Profession.

Abstract: ... The main topic of this publication is the involvement of professional medical doctors in the course of torture in, generally speaking, the following ways: 1. Medical scientific knowledge and experience is used in the design of the methods and techniques of torture, for example pharmacological torture; 2. Doctors teach the torturers/perpetrators regarding the practical application of these methods; 3. Doctors actively participate in carrying out torture and in executions in relation to the death penalty; 4. Doctors are present -- \"passive\" -- during the implementation of torture (in more than sixty per cent of cases) for example monitoring the clinical condition of the victim in order to prevent death; are present when the death sentence is carried out, and then write out death certificates. Many of these are later shown by forensic documentation to be false.... This supplement is based on an international symposium, Torture and the Medical Profession, which was held at the University of Tromsø in June 1990....

Über das Stasi-Verfolgten-Syndrom

Abstract: For many years western psychiatrists only out of their clinical experience have known about a syndrome for which the name Stasi-persecution-syndrome will be used here. Stasi was the all powerful secret police of what was the East German Democratic Republic. The syndrome concerns an hitherto unknown number of the aprox. 50,000 survivors. It is a sequel of a form of persecution now more generally named torture. The characteristics of the persecution include arrestion, interrogations, degradation, humiliation, maltreatment, assault, mass detention in tiny rooms, hunger, cold, discrimination, defamation, disgrace, outlaw, social degradation, absence of rights, uncertainty of future, life threatening, and stigmatizing. The sequels resemble in many aspects of what is known by the psychiatry of the persecuted, but own a special flavor. Among the sequels are persisting and paranoid anxieties, re-arousable by specific situations. There are also realistic anxiety and persecution dreams, mood disturbances, lack of confidence, attempted suicide and complaints about lack of understanding by others, which the victims suffer from. Questions of indemnification for psychiatric sequelae have entered into a new stage after the East-German parliament had passed a rehabilitation bill and because of corresponding declarations in the unification treaty. Psychiatrists should fight for treatment costs and appropriate compensation for physical and psychiatric sequels of Stasi persecution to be set into reality as soon as possible. There is urgent need for a not yet existing scientific literature and publications of clinical experiences.

A Dance of Death: Eduardo Pavlovsky's "Paso de dos"

Abstract: It's late winter in Argentina, 13 months since Carlos Menem assumed the presidency in July of I989.1 "The Age of Impunity"2 is how many here refer to the present, marked not only by massive corruption but by two extraordinary executive pardons. The first, enacted in October I989,3 exonerated military officers facing trial for crimes committed during the last dictatorship, in which some 30,000 people were disappeared.4 In April I990, Menem declared that the ex-commanders of that de facto government-already sentenced for crimes against humanity, in addition to numerous counts of kidnapping, torture, murder, and robbery5-would also be pardoned, and free "in time for Christmas." In some circles, there's talk of monuments to these men, to their "heroic war against subversion."

Medical professionals and human rights in the Philippines.

Abstract: ... Filipino health professionals and private health groups concerned with human rights deserve special credit for their public service. The MAG [Medical Action Group] and its project for rendering medical care to torture victims, the Philippine Action Concerning Torture (PACT), has begun to enunciate the elements of a new service-oriented philosophy for health care providers. But the momentum gained by MAG and other groups will need to be sustained through collaborative efforts with university medical and nursing faculties, professional associations and government health agencies. We believe there are several steps that could be taken to further the training of health professionals in their professional duties and responsibilities.... Language: en