Table Of ContentREPORT 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
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cloth ISBN 0 7156 0711 1
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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 terri-
tories 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-
