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Stop Torture
Everyone has the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman and other degrading treatment or punishment - Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The UN Convention Against Torture defines torture as "…the intentional infliction of severe physical or mental pain or suffering for purposes such as obtaining information or a confession, or punishing, intimidating or coercing someone."
Torture is always illegal. "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."
US Government authorises torture
The photographs of US soldiers humiliating and terrorising detainees in Abu Ghraib shocked the world when they were published in 2004. The pictures followed numerous allegations of torture and other ill-treatment reported from US detention centres in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo.
The Abu Ghraib scandal prompted top US officials to condemn the exposed abuses and to initiate limited investigations into, and reviews of, detention practices. Yet these did not result in accountability of all those responsible, reparation for the victims or adequate measures to prevent such human rights violations from being repeated in the future.
The Abu Ghraib scandal prompted top US officials to condemn the exposed abuses and to initiate limited investigations into, and reviews of, detention practices. Yet these did not result in accountability of all those responsible, reparation for the victims or adequate measures to prevent such human rights violations from being repeated in the future.
The US administration has authorized torture and other ill-treatment and has reserved the right to do so again if the "circumstances" warrant it. The US laws, legal opinions and executive orders that have facilitated such practices must be amended or revoked, and impunity for abuses ended.
What needs to happen?
Amnesty is calling on all states to:
- condemn all forms of torture and other ill-treatment and speak out against governments that perpetrate, are complicit in, or fail to act against such abuse;
- prevent these practices;
- bring to justice those responsible for authorising and inflicting torture and other ill-treatment;
- ensure that information obtained by torture or other ill-treatment cannot be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of abuse as evidence of the abuse.
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