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USE OF TORTURE |
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USE OF TORTURE |
A Terrible The use of torture is
frighteningly increasing along with the mounting violence across the country. Thousands of
people are suffering the mental and physical agony at the hands of both the state as well
as the Maoists. Experts say that torture will have long-term physical as well
psychological impact on the victims. Moreover, at a time when there is an absence of
proper criminal investigation system, the authorities seem to be using torture as an easy
tool to force confessions. Even though By SANJAYA DHAKAL Sushma KC, an 8-year-old girl from
Lamjung keeps on remembering the incident vividly. “The Maoists forced my father out
of the house and shot him to death. The same night they hung my mother.” The
eyewitness to such a gory incident, KC has been living in an orphanage in Devadaha of
Rupandehi district. Five years ago, Ruku Basnet (name changed),
15, of Lamki, Kailali district, witnessed the killing of her father by security forces.
The same day her mother went underground. Ever since, Basnet stopped talking and became
frightened to see any uniformed security personnel. Her relatives took her to many doctors
but to no avail. Three years ago she was brought to the office of Center for Victims of
Torture (CVICT). After months of treatment and counseling, she has recently started to
recover.
A couple of months ago, Maoists broke
the legs of half a dozen persons belonging to Dalit community in the far west region by
beating them with flat sticks – because they had disobeyed them and continued to work
as wage laborers for landlords. Some months back when a team of an NGO
called Save the Children were visiting Damauli of Tanahun district they came across a
young kid of 12 who was heavily drunk. Upon inquiring, the kid told them that he preferred
to stay drunk because that way he escapes the attention of both the Maoists as well as the
security forces and would not have to face any trouble from them. These are some of the incidents that
highlight the situation of physical and mental torture rampant in the country. The trend
to use extreme forms of torture as a tool to subdue others is disturbingly growing along
with the escalation of insurgency. Hard Facts The ‘Human Rights Situation 2003’
by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) states that the cases of torture have risen
dramatically since 1996. While in 1996, only 392 people were tortured by the sate, the
number rose to 1568 in 1997; 2665 in 1998; and 3430 in 2002. The commission recently
stated that over 1200 persons were ‘disappeared’ by the state and over 300 by
the Maoists. Most of the persons who are ‘disappeared’ go through extreme
torture in captivity. Human rights activists claim that torture
has become the number one human rights problem. According to a study, every year, 100,000
people in the country are directly or indirectly traumatized by torture – mental or
physical. As per the study conducted by the CVICT,
every year around 8000 people are arrested - and released from the custody of the security
forces. Similar number of people are arrested/released by the Maoists. And over 70 percent
of the people taken in custody face one or the other types of torture. Around 16,000
families are affected by the torture, which means around one lakh individuals share the
pain. The trend of using torture has
dramatically increased in the past couple of years. According to the CVICT data, during
1991-1996 only around 3000 victims of torture had approached them for service. This number
rose astronomically to 17,000 between 1997-2003. “In the initial years, we used to
find that 80 percent of the victims had been tortured by the state but now the equation
has changed. The Maoists torture contribute to 40 percent and is rising,” said Dr.
Bhogendra Sharma, president of CVICT. “Based on the treatment that we provide to the
victims, the cases of torture by Maoists is rising along with the rise in the areas they
claim to control.” The CVICT has facilities in three
places in the country – Kathmandu, Nepalgunj and Biratnagar - where it provides all
kinds of medical as well as psychological treatment and counseling to the victims of
torture. There are more international conventions,
treaties and regulations, more national constitutional guarantees and laws against torture
than any other single human rights abuse across the world. There is more monitoring of
torture than any other single human rights abuse. There is more reporting and denunciation
about torture than any other single human rights abuse. However, during the launching of
its third global campaign against torture, Amnesty International reported that torture was
as widespread today as when it launched its first campaign in 1973. Methods/Impacts of Torture It is said that torture is an attack on
human dignity. The major methods of torture that are used by state and non-state actors in
the country include random beating, beating on the soles of feet, sexual harassment,
mutilation, regular threat to family members, blind-folding, suffocation and so on. Apart from physical torture, a wide range
of mental torture techniques are also found to be used like providing insufficient basic
facilities, verbal sexual humiliation, threats to kill, threats to family, restriction on
physical mobility, social deprivation, isolation, misinformation and so on. Both physical and mental torture cause
terrible consequences to the health of the victims. The consequences range from short-term
physical ailment to life-threatening diseases (like kidney failure due to excessive
internal bleeding caused by random beating) and from minor mental tension to major
psychosocial ailments. “There will be a cluster of
symptoms related to torture including affective, cognitive, vegetative, psychosomatic and
behavioral,” said Dr. Nirakar Man Shrestha, a psychiatrist. “Different
individuals exhibit different symptoms even though exposed to same form of torture.” Some individuals like Basnet exhibit
extreme symptoms. “We cannot differentiate the body and mind of an individual. Any
assault on body is certain to impact the individual’s mind and vice-versa,” said
Dr. Bidur Osti, a psychosocial analyst, who has been treating many victims of torture.
“Often, the victims can even get sucked into mental problems like psychosis. And in
some other cases, they seek to take revenge,” said Dr. Osti. He cited an example of a
case in Rolpa where a mother and her daughter were both fighting as Maoist commanders.
“They said they took up the arms after state forces raped them and killed their
husband some years ago when they used to live innocent lives.” The victims of torture might not only
suffer from short-term physical pain but also a long-term agony, which could be physical
as well as mental. The victims who have been repeatedly hit in the soles of their feet
complain of headaches even years later. “That is because the victim will tend to walk
with slight stoop, which will change the center of gravity of his body resulting in his
head hanging a little below than normal. This results in headache,” said Dr. Sharma. “The victims of torture develop
conditions like lack of trust (on anybody); feeling of loneliness; lack of feelings like
pride, shame etc; urge to escape upon seeing anything or anybody resembling the torturer;
lack of time and place orientation; feeling of vengeance and so on,” said Dr. Osti.
These mental trauma – the flashbacks, the fright that refuses to leave, the sights of
anything resembling the torturer – continues to haunt them for a long, long time. Weak Criminal Investigation
System There is a gaping hole in the
criminal investigation and justice delivery mechanism in the country, which is evident by
the fact that around 60 percent of the jail inmates are found to have been imprisoned
based on their confessions that are forced through torture – as per a study by the
CVICT. “We have seen that most of the
security personnel are under different kinds of pressure to prove their efficiency. And
they do so by nabbing even the innocent persons and proving their guilt by using
torture,” said Dr. Sharma. As such, torture, in whatever form, will
not have any desirable effect (in this case the aim to control crime). “By doing so,
the very purpose for which the state uses torture will be defeated as the criminals will
be freely roaming in society even as innocent persons get victimized. And these very
victims could suffer from psychosocial imbalances triggering problems by many fold. Most
of the time the torturers use this tool to hide their inabilities to conduct proper
investigations,” said Dr. Osti. “This shocking situation persists
despite the fact that the Constitution of the country explicitly guarantees the Right
Against Self-Incrimination. The Article 14 (4) of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal
1990 specifically prohibits physical or mental torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading
treatment,” said Krishna Man Pradhan, secretary at the Nepal Law Society (NLS). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) to which Nepal is a
party, too, specifically prohibit the use of torture. Although Nepal is signatory to
various human rights conventions and instruments including the UN Convention Against
Torture (CAT), it is yet to sign the Optional Protocol on UN Convention on Torture –
which has provisions to guarantee domestic and international visiting mechanisms. Besides, there are some conspicuous lacunae
in the existing legal provisions regarding torture in Nepal. Although the country
guarantees a set of legal rights to the accused and detained persons, they are hardly
implemented. “These rights are based on due process requirements in criminal justice
and include the right to legal consultation, right to legal representations, right to be
produced before judge on remand, right not to be witness against his/her own case, right
to life and dignity. In practice, however, police do not register the arrests, refuse
information to family members, deny medical check-ups and discourage any form of legal
consultations. Such practices and attitudes in the police and in the executive branch
promote torture and make legal safeguards ineffective,” states a report by the Nepal
Law Society (NLS). While the CAT terms torture as a criminal
offense, the domestic laws do not recognize it as such. The laws do not make the non-state
actors accountable to acts of torture. “Under Section 9 of the Treaty Act
1990 of Nepal, international conventions and instruments can be implemented as domestic
law in Nepal – if they have been ratified. And if any domestic law contradicts with
them, their (international instruments) provisions will have overriding effect,” said
Kumar Regmi, an advocate. However, due to lack of knowledge of the provisions of
international human rights law, their methods of implementation and Nepal’s
commitment towards them, they are hardly exercised by the Nepalese citizens in practice
and implemented by the judiciary. “According to the Torture
Compensation Act 1996, the compensation amount has to be borne by the state fund. The
maximum amount that can be paid as compensation is Rs 100,000. It neither recognizes
custodial deaths nor the dependants of victims are entitled to compensation. The accused
is defended by a public prosecutor. The definition of torture is limited to custody
only,” said Bhimarjun Acharya, a lawyer. Till now, the efforts to stop torture
in Nepal are largely uncoordinated and limited to the use of only documentation and
denouncement of torture. The compensation act, too, is mostly ineffective to deal with the
challenge. Legal experts believe that there is a need for complete overhauling of the
criminal investigation procedure to introduce scientific methods of identifying criminals.
On the top of all these things, the
cessation of internal strife is imperative to root out the problem of torture. n |
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