Amnesty International Series on Torture
3 total works
It is hard to believe that anyone would deliberately torture a child. Yet around the world, girls and boys are being subjected to horrific violence and abuse. Children are tortured because they are cought up in wars and political conflict. Children are in custody are vulnerable to ill-treatment by police and security forces, and are often detained in conditions that pose a threat to their health and safety. The effects of torture on the future of the child may be felt for generations to come. The victims are from all regions of the world. Some are the accidental victims of the carnage of war; some have been deliberatly targeted by armed forces; some have themselves been forced to take up arms, and to carry out acts of torture. Dozens of harrowing cases have been presented in this report, yet they are no more than the tip of a very large iceberg. The torture of children is a widespread, worldwide scandal, and concerted public action must be brought to bear on governments to force them to live up to their legal and moral obligation to protect children.
Torture of women is a fundamental violation of human rights, prohibited in all circumstances under international law. Yet despite the gains that women around the world have made in asserting their rights, the torture of women is a daily reality. It is rooted in pervasive discrimination that continues to deny women full equality with men and that legitimizes violence against women. Sometimes the perpetrators of acts of violence against women are agents of the state, such as police officers, prison guards or soldiers. Sometimes they are members of armed groups fighting against the government. However, much of the physical, mental and sexual abuse faced by women is at the hands of people they know, such as husbands, fathers, employers or neighbours.States have a duty to ensure that no one is is subjected to torture or ill-treatment, whether inflicted by agents of the state or by private individuals. Yet far from protecting women, states all around the world have allowed beatings, rape and other acts of torture to continue unchecked. When a state fails to take effective measures to protect women from torture, it shares responsbility for the suffering these women endure.
Torturers are not born, they are nurtured, trained and supported. In many countries they rely on foreign governments for the tools of their trade and expertise in how to use them. Some governments are directly involved in the torture trade; others prefer to turn a blind eye. Few have shown the political will to put an end to this trade whose profits are built on the suffering of countless torture victims. Some of the tools of the torturer's trade seem almost medieval - shackles, leg irons, thumscrews, handcuffs and whips. However, in recent years there has been a marked expansion in the manufacture, trade and use of other kinds of technology used by security and police forces, especially electro-shock technology. New research for this report has shown that the number of countries worldwide known to be producing or supplying electro-shock equipment had risen from 30 in the 1980s to more than 130 by 2000.