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REPORT ON TORTURE Amnesty International REPORT ON TORTURE DUCKWORTH in association with Amnesty International Publications Second edition 1975 First published in 1973 by Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd. The Old Piano Factory, 43 Gloucester Crescent, London NW1. © 1973, 1975 Amnesty International All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. cloth ISBN 0 7156 0711 1 paper ISBN 071560712 X Typescttingby Specialised Offset Services Limited, Liverpool Printed by Unwin Brothers Limited, Old Woking CONTENTS Preface to the Second Edition 7 Preface to the First Edition 10 Introduction 13 Historical aspects oftorture 27 11ze problem oflegaldefinition 33 1. Medical and Psychological Aspects ofTorture 39 Torture as stress 41 Cl Manipulation and resistance 49 Pharmacological torture 55 Injury and long-term effects 58 Torturers: psychological aspects 63 The difficulty ofinvestigation 68 2. Legal Remedies 70 Internationalgovernmental organisations 71 Regional organisations 74 Non-governmental organisations 76 Case Study A: The UN and occupied territories ofthe Middle East 77 Case Study B: Regional and international response to the use oftorture in Greece, 1967-1973 79 Case Study C: The UK government and Northern Ireland 105 3. World Survey of Torture 114 The nature ofthe evidence 114 Africa 117 Burundi 118 Malawi 123 Cameroun 119 Morocco 124 Ethiopia 120 Rhodesia 126 Ghana 121 South Africa 128 Namibia 133 Tunisia 140 Tanzania 137 Uganda 141 Togo 139 Zambia 144 Asia 145 India 149 Philippines 157 Korea 151 Sri Lanka 158 Indonesia 152 Vietnam 160 Pakistan 156 Westem Europe 168 Belgium 169 Spain 176 Portugal (and territories) 172 Turkey 179 Eastern Europeand the Soviet Union 184 Albania, Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia 185 German Democratic Republic 185 Romania 186 USSR 187 The Americas 191 The United States 193 Peru 215 Argentina 195 Uruguay 217 Bolivia 196 Venezuela 219 Brazil 198 Central America Colombia 201 Costa Rica 220 Chile 202 El Salvador 221 Cuba 210 Honduras 221 Dominican Republic 211 Panama 221 Ecuador 212 Guatemala 221 Mexico 213 Nicaragua 222 Paraguay 214 Haiti 223 The Middle East 224 Bahrain 226 Israel 231 Egypt 226 Oman 234 Iran 227 Yemen 235 Iraq 230 Syria 238 Conclusions 240 Select Bibliography 243 Index 246 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION Amnesty International continues to receive information to indicate that torture is a truly world-wide phenomenon that does not belong solely to one political ideology or to one economic system. This information as well as decisive new events require that this Report on Torture, the first inter national survey of its kind, be brought up to date. The surveys of the historical, medical, and legal aspects of torture that were presented in the first edition arc still valid, and these sections have been retained in their entirety. Time has conspicuously overtaken the information about some countries, however, and those sections have accordingly been updated. One principle for revision has been that if new information is now available about torture in a country that was not mentioned in the first edition, a section has been added to deal with that country: whereas Saudi Arabia and Cyprus were not given attention before, the second edition summarises the material that has been received in the past year. A corollary of this principle is that if new evidence has confirmed previous inferences. we have stated the case more strongly: incidents of torture in South Korea, for example, are not so difficult to substantiate today as they were a year ago. The other governing principle for the revisions has been that wherever a change in governmental policy regarding torture has been radical, the section on that country has been re-written. Circumstantial differences, however, have not been noted: no changes have been made in the sections that deal with such countries as Indonesia, where the victims may change but the political structure and the institutionalised use of certain methods of torture remain unabridged. The policies regarding the detention and treatment of prisoners in Chile, on the other hand, have severely changed since the military coup in September 1973, which occurred after the report had gone to press. The visit to Chile by an Amnesty International team of investigators shortly after the coup makes it possible to comment with relative precision on the 8 AmncJt)' International report on torture use of torture by the Chilean junta. Likewise, during the past year the governmental policies regarding torture have changed sharply for the worse in Namibia (formerly known as South West Africa): during the autumn of 1973 the South African Government, in cooperation with local tribal author ities, re-introduced public nogging as a tool of political repressIOn. There have been favourable changes of policy in Portugal, Turkey and Greece. An amnesty granted by the new civilian government emptied Turkish jails of political prisoners in July 1974, and the April 1974 military coup in Portugal had a similar effect there. When the military government of Greece resigned in favour of a civilian administration, Greek political prisoners were also freed. In each of these cases, the outgoing government had denied for many years that it had practised torture. It is now possible to prove beyond any doubt that those denials were false. This Report on Torture represents onc facet of Amnesty International's commitment to the continuing Campaign for the Abolition of Torture that was initiated in December 1972. The first year of the Campaign was successful in publicising the widespread use of torture, in collecting more than a million signatures from all over the world in support of an anti-torture resolution in the United Nations and in obtaining the unanimous passage of that resolution, General Assembly Resolution 3059 (XXVIII), which calls on all governmcnts 'to become parties to existing international instruments which contain provisions relating to the pro hibition of torture and other inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment'. The culmination of the first year's activities was the Conference for the Abolition ofTorture that opened in Paris on 10 December 1973, the 25th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Approximately 300 partici pants, including many internationally distinguished figures, representing governments and international non-govern mental organisations as well as AI's own national sections, discussed various aspects of torture and actions to abolish it. Four commissions were convened at the conference to discuss different problems: (1) the collecting and collating of information about the identity of torturers and of insti-