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Torture and political killing on a massive
scale have erupted throughout the world in recent decades. The perpetrators decimate their
societies as they fuel growing cycles of violence. Torturers and killers assume they will
escape accountability for their deeds. Whenever they go free, they set appalling examples
for others. A primary purpose of torture, the infliction of severe physical pain and mental anguish, is to destroy a person's humanity. In public, most governments condemn torture. In private, government agents in scores of countries use torture to extract "confessions," to punish perceived opponents, or to terrorize entire communities. The systematic torture of political detainees and criminal suspects continues in Mexico, Venezuela, and several other Latin American countries. Police and military personnel there rarely face charges for committing torture. Torture also tears the fabric of societies in Africa, the Middle East, and other areas of the world. Uncorroborated confessions obtained under torture routinely are used to convict individuals who survive the ordeal. Chinese security forces in Tibet have perfected techniques of torture which leave no marks on the bodies of Tibetans taken into custody for peacefully promoting independence from Chinese rule. In Liberia and Uganda, both government forces and opposition groups have burned, slashed, and mutilated the bodies of civilians perceived as supporting the wrong side. Political killing, the deliberate extermination of a human being, is the ultimate form of state violence. Some two million Cambodians, about one in every four, died in the genocidal massacres and resulting famines initiated by the Khmer Rouge regime between 1975 and 1979. This regime decreed death for anyone with an education or with opinions seen as obstacles to the complete reordering of Cambodian society. Guatemalan security and military forces killed tens of thousands of civilians during the early 1980s, an especially brutal period of the Guatemalan civil war that ended with a 1995 cease-fire. Members of indigenous communities, human rights defenders, and critics of the government throughout Guatemala were tortured and killed. General Efrain Rios Montt, who held power during much of this killing, emerged again as a political leader during 1997. Both government forces and Shining Path insurgents in Peru have committed mass political killings during the conflict which began in 1980. Emergency regulations decreed by the government gave security forces free reign in torturing, raping, and killing civilians. In 1995, the government enacted amnesty laws which provide its agents with complete immunity from prosecution for their human rights crimes. Chinese officials to this day claim that the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 was justified. Troops and armored vehicles moved against unarmed pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing, killing and wounding thousands of children, elderly people, and other civilians. Armed opposition groups are responsible for the slaughter and mutilation of civilians, many of them women and children, in Algeria. Scores of politicians, including some 30 mayors, were among the victims of political killings in Colombia during 1997. More than 800,000 Rwandans were killed in the government-directed massacre of Tutsi and selected Hutu citizens during 1994. Several years later, revenge killings and counter-attacks continue. Many leaders in the former Yugoslavia who directed the "ethnic cleansing" atrocities of recent years retain vast political powers. The horrendous human rights crimes committed during the 1990s in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia raised a global outcry resulting in the creation of two temporary International Criminal Tribunals. These Tribunals have demonstrated the world's need for a permanent International Criminal Court with the capacity to prosecute genocide and other crimes against humanity. If the survivors in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, as well as in many other countries, are to have any hope of securing just and peaceful societies, the individuals who commit torture and political killings must be held fully accountable for their actions. All people and the governments representing them must clearly demonstrate that they will not tolerate these human rights crimes. Act Now:Request and Read Act Locally Act
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National Coordinating Committee for UDHR50. |
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