A legacy of pain

When war engulfed Bosnia in the early 1990s, Mustafa was working at the Coca-Cola plant on the outskirts of Sarajevo. Taken prisoner by Bosnian Serb militias, he and his neighbours were tortured and sexually abused. Ten members of Mustafa’s family were killed in the notorious Kula barracks. “The guards formed a sort of zigzag line and we had to pass between them,” says Mustafa. “The beat us with everything they had: rifles, metal bars and small sacks of bullets.”

Mustafa was freed in a prisoner exchange, and today runs an organization that searches for the missing from his hometown. But the hurt remains. “Sometimes I feel the pain today in my legs and knees.” The physical agony is matched by the mental anguish. If torture is about “degrading and dismantling another person’s humanity and putting in its place despair,” in the words of the Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, it will be years before the darkness that cloaks Mustafa’s heart disappears.

It is this cost in human suffering borne by people like Mustafa* that is remembered on 26 June, when the world observes the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. That cost is still being paid despite the existence of a comprehensive legal framework to confront torture. “Six decades after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” said a joint statement from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and other UN bodies working to end torture, “much remains to be done to ensure that everybody is free of this scourge.”

To alleviate the pain of such victims in some measure, in 1981 the international community set up the UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture. In 2008 this body disbursed a total of US$ 9.5 million to organizations that provide direct psychological, medical, social, legal and economic assistance to torture victims. Furthermore, in 1985 the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment was introduced by the Human Rights Commission and assumed by its successor, the Human Rights Council.

The task of upholding the ban on torture has been made harder by the fear and suspicion that have arisen from the ashes of the World Trade Centre bombing in New York and other terrorist acts in many parts of the world. Anti-torture efforts have also been hurt by the belief among some leaders, security services and members of the general public that torture is acceptable if it will produce information that will save lives.

This trend is illustrated by the results of a recent survey conducted in 19 countries by WorldPublicOpinion.org, a polling service on international policy issues affiliated with the University of Maryland. The poll, released just prior to 26 June, found that majorities in most of these countries still oppose the use of torture, but a substantial number of people make an exception and believe torture is permissible when interrogating terrorists who might have information that could save innocent lives.

Still, in all the States polled the number of people saying that the Government should be able to use torture is less than one in five. Even when the case is presented of terrorists having information that could save lives, majorities in most countries oppose torture. But in the latter case a substantial number of people would accept the Government using some degree of torture. In four countries this is the most common view.

The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment provides that the prohibition against torture is absolute and non-derogable. It emphasizes that no exceptional circumstances whatsoever may be invoked by a State Party to justify acts of torture. Among such circumstances the Convention identifies a state of war or threat thereof, internal political instability or any other public emergency. This includes any threat of terrorist acts or violent crime as well as armed conflict.

However, as the findings of the WorldPublicOpinion.org survey indicate, the long-accepted belief that there is no excuse for torture is in danger of being eroded. That shift in opinion, small though it is for the moment, must be countered lest it result in more men and women being broken in body and spirit.

* Mustafa’s story, and others like his, can be found in Rebuilding Lives (2006), published to mark the 25th anniversary of the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture.