The Trial of UNITED NATIONS-4

Convention Against Torture and other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (contd.)

I had difficulties to explain 'TORTURE' during T.V.discusssions which were held immediately after a torture death in police custody. The problems I faced could be enumerated as:

1. How could we assess or evaluate or measure whether or not the pain or suffering was severe?
   
2. Should the "tortured" be under the physical custody of the one who would have tortured him?
   
3. How to find out whether or not the pain or suffering was arising only from inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions?
   

   Answering the first question was not easy. Severity of pain might be assessed differently by different people .What would be severe to one might be "not severe" to another. As subjectivity would be more in evaluating the severity of torture/suffering, an objective assessment of the pain/suffering would be difficult indeed. Of course, one can more or less, assess the physical pain. One of the methods adopted by the officials would be to inflict physical pain without causing any external injury to the tortured. Examples taken from the diary are(1) Keep a man in a chilled room or ask him to lie down on an ice block until-at last he confesses his guilt or gives information about his involvement in the commission of crime.(2)Keep ice cubes in the anus of the interrogated-one after another-until a confession/information is obtained.(3)Forcing a man to consume alcohol or pouring liquor into his mouth forcefully and excessively so that he may speak under the influence of intoxication.(4)connect one end of a hose to a running water tap and the other end to the mouth of the person in such a way that he will be in real difficulty if he does not confess his crime or give information about his involvement in the commission of crime. Thus the methods are numerous and many of such methods can be conceived only by human imagination. No one who loves the concept of human rights can think of such cruel and inhuman methods.
   

   The real difficulty arises in cases of mental pain. My view is to assess the severity from the socio-cultural points of view. If particular act/behavior/talk/expression etc. causes mental pain to majority of people in a given socio-cultural situation, then one should consider it to be 'causing' mental pain. The severity of mental pain too can be thus assessed. The following live examples may illustrate it further.(1) Detaining an accused in nakedness or half-nakedness or nakedness covered with newspapers.(2)Parading the arrestees in handcuffs in public or parading them after tying their hands together like animals being taken to butcher shops.
   

   Once a few women were taken into custody from a brothel and they were brought to a police station and exhibited to the media men who videographed them in police custody. They later telecasted it and it invited severe criticisms from human rights activists. Hence, my suggestion is to apply socio-cultural and majority or statistical scales to assess the severity of mental pain in torturing cases. Hence, judicial officials, law enforcement officers, public authorities or other persons acting in an official capacity must be taught and trained how they must apply the above scales to decide upon the severity of mental pain in each and every tortured case.(to be continued…)