Crossing cultures and rehabilitation: voices from Argentina

Editor’s Note: This is the second of two blogs on the Latin American Regional Seminar, which took place in Quito, Ecuador a few weeks ago. Read the first one here. Here, IRCT member Equipo Argentino de Trabajo e Investigación Psicosocial (EATIP) of Argentina speaks about the work – and the challenges — of rehabilitating indigenous victims of torture in Latin America.

Representatives of torture rehabilitation centres conduct workshops at the Latin America regional meeting held in Quito, Ecuador.

We want to share our views on torture rehabilitation in the multicultural environment in Argentina, as discussed at the 16th Regional Meeting of the Latin American network of institutions working against torture.

Argentina has a hegemonic culture related to the flood of European migrants from the end of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century. This culture often does not include the perspectives of the native populations, aggravated by political and administrative centralism. Equipo Argentino de Trabajo e Investigación Psicosocial (EATIP) gives priority to social class factors, including also ethnic and gender factors.

The Latin America regional network is giving more attention to violation of indigenous people rights, especially related to the protection of their territories due to exploitation of natural resources (mining, oil, etc.), cultivation of soya, etc., in which important corporative interests are at the stake. Other characteristics of this problematic situation are the social polarization and confrontation between groups and members in the communities due to co-optation by governments.

For interventions with these groups, we used community-based approaches. For psychosocial interventions in those cases, specific training of professionals is needed. At the present, the economic difficulties that EATIP and other centres in the region are facing impede the continuity of these activities. EATIP has assisted migrant groups from Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru, who live in slums called “Villas Miserias”; and African youths and political refugees.

In the 16th Regional Meeting of the Latin American members of IRCT and allied organisations, our centres identified that the inter-cultural factors have strong significance that enrich our work.

By Dr Mariana Lagos and Mr Ely Stacco, Clinical and Psychosocial Area, EATIP, Argentina

The disappeared: shedding light on a secret crime

Mother of Plaza de Mayo, Argentina, began marching in 1977 to find out what happened to their children and grandchildren during the regime. Photo by lazy tired, available on Flickr through Creative Commons

”Enforced disappearances are becoming a major human rights concern in Asia,” read the news radio announcer. “Estimated tens of thousands have been disappeared.”

The structure of that last sentenced grated on the inner copy-editor in me. “…Have been disappeared,” is markedly passive. “By whom?” I want to ask, but the uncertainty of the subject is part of the nature of enforced disappearances. The answer is: we don’t often know.

If someone is enforced, or involuntarily, disappeared, they are just that – they are gone, but no one knows to where. It is likely that they have been killed, but no one knows when or where they are buried. It is possible that they have been tortured, but no one knows if they are OK.

In countries around the world, state officials, such as police, military or other security officials, arrest and detain individuals without their families’ knowledge of their whereabouts or well-being. They are outside of the arms of the law, often tortured, often killed, and rarely found again. They simply disappear, and their families are always left to wonder what happened to their loved one.

Installation with photos of the disappeared on the day of the anniversary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Photo by Catherine Binet, available via Flickr through Creative Commons License of Advocacy Project

According to a 2012 report from the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, 53,778 cases have been reported since 1980. Over 42,000 of these cases, in 82 states, remain unsolved. When a person is secretly abducted, detained or killed by a state agent, this constitutes the human rights violation of enforced disappearance. Like torture, The victims are often tortured while secretly detained.

Such practices were common during the dictatorships in Latin America around the 1970s and 1980s. In Argentina, an estimated 30,000 disappeared, and only recently, with the help of forensic NGOs, have families received the remains of those missing for more than three decades.

Enforced disappearances — like torture — happen in secrecy, between four walls. As Manfred Nowak, former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, wrote in the 2012 Global Reading, “Prison walls have a double function: to lock people in and the public out.” Not only are family members kept from the knowledge of their loved ones whereabouts, but justice cannot find the disappeared. Not seeing and not knowing means there is little recourse for justice and impunity remains.

With no record of the disappeared, how can you label the crime? Was the person tortured? Were they killed? Who is responsible? Without evidence, it is difficult to find and prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes. In countries such as Mexico, Bolivia, Pakistan, Morocco, Thailand, China, and the US, few have been held to account for the thousands of victims of enforced disappearance.

Bringing these crimes to light and ensuring the public remains aware when someone is disappeared is our role, but everyone can help. Our voice is one of the strongest weapons against these crimes and a strong challenge to the reign of impunity.

By Tessa, Communications Officer at IRCT

News roundup

News roundup for the week includes: stories on solitary confinement in the US; Palestinian children in Israel detention; new Supreme Court decision in Mexico may stomp out impunity; Argentina’s torture problem. 

Human Rights Watch estimates that, on any given day, there are 80,000 US prisoners in solitary confinement; many who have been subjected to this form of torture for years, even decades in some cases. Photo by x1klima on Flickr; available through Creative Commons License.

United States:
An editorial at Al Jazeera notes that media and perhaps legislative consensus is growing around the issue of long-term solitary confinement as torture. UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez has previously stated that solitary confinement longer than 15 days can constitute torture. Some prisoners in the US detention system have been in some form or another of solitary confinement for as long as 40 years. The editorial also indicates that this form of punishment and cruel treatment may be more often applied to black prisoners, such as the infamous Angola 3.

Occupied Palestinian Territory:
Defence for Children International, an international children’s rights NGO, has released a staggering report on abuse of Palestinian children in Israeli detention. “The first 48 hours after a child is taken are the most important because that’s when the most abuse happens,” DCI’s lawyer Gerard Horten told Al Jazeera in an interview, echoing the findings of an upcoming IRCT report on children and torture in the Philippines, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Most children are detained for allegations involving throwing stones at Israeli troops. Some are as young as 12, and can be detained for months without access to a lawyer or their parents. A majority of those detained faced verbal threats or harassment, physical abuse, interrogation by officials, and were blindfolded and restrained. Read the full report here [PDF].

Mexico:
Human rights group in Mexico have celebrated a recent Supreme Court ruling that military human rights violations may be turned over to civilian, rather than military, courts. “The Supreme Court ruled Thursday to send the case of Jethro Ramses Sanchez, a 27-year-old auto mechanic who authorities say was tortured and killed by soldiers at a military base last year, to civilian court,” reports The Washington Post. Human rights groups say this ruling may be a blow to the consistent impunity for military human rights violations in Mexico.

Argentina:
Several torture cases in Argentina have been widely reported in the media recently. And just this week, a report emerged that there have been as many as 7,000 human rights violations in Argentine prisons. Some point to the lack of reform in the prison system since the military junta that ended in the 1980s and that was marked by several thousand extra-judicial killings and torture, the so-called ‘dirty war’. Read about a visit to many of the sites of the ‘dirty war’ by IRCT’s Brita Sydhoff here.

Torture in black and white: books on torture

Recently, on our organisation’s website, we wrote about a new book from former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Professor Manfred Nowak. The book, titled Torture: the banality of the unfathomable (in German: Folter: Die Alltäglichkeit des Unfassbaren) chronicles Professor Nowak’s experiences in documenting torture around the world, both during his professional career and during his mandate for the UN, where he traveled to almost 20 countries in all regions of the world.

However, Nowak’s book is only in his native German; but it started us thinking about other books – both fiction and non-fiction – that address torture and its impact on the victims and their families. Similarly to our previous list on the top films, we present here our top books on torture. If there are any we have left off or neglected, please remind us in the comments.

To start, it’s fitting to point to the current UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Professor Juan Mendez, and his recent book Taking A Stand: The Evolution of Human Rights. Mendez, who is himself a torture victim from the Argentine Dirty War, describes it as; “a way to illustrate and enable people to understand how far we’ve come to make the international human rights groups diverse in their composition”. The book provides a very moving and in-depth telling of his own experiences as a torture victim in Latin America in the late 70s, and how since, he has dedicated his life to furthering the cause of human rights.

 

 

 

 

 

Many staff here at the IRCT recommended Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals. Mayer examines the legal justification and excuses for the use of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ AKA torture, on terrorism suspects by the CIA. As a long-time foreign correspondent, war reporter, and now at the New Yorker, Mayer’s journalistic background and method in writing creates a well-researched and gripping account.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Professor Juan Mendez actually recommended this historically-derived drama in an interview when his own book was published. Set in Chile, Dorfman chronicles a country seeking justice and peace after the violent Pinochet regime. Set several years after the end of the Pinochet dictatorship, Death and the Maiden follows the perspective of a women who hears the voice of the man who raped and tortured her several years prior – a man who is now a guest in her kitchen. Beautifully written, Dorfman’s play points to the long-term impact of torture.

 

 

 

 

 

While this may come as a surprise for some, George Orwell’s classic novel about a totalitarian state depicts well one of the tools of repression, fear, and control that occurs in such regimes. Although better known for its creation of terms such as ‘Orwellian’, ‘Big Brother’ and ‘though police’,  the final chapters focus on the torture and interrogation of  protagonist Winston Smith. Smith seeks love and individuality in this dystopian novel, only to find it snuffed out by apparatuses of the state.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The third book in our list written by a current or former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, The Treatment of Prisoners Under International Law is a seminal work on torture, human rights, and international law by Sir Nigel Rodley. Places of detention, such as prisons, immigration detention centres, police lock-ups, or psychiatric centres, are the most common space in which one would find torture in any given country. As such, Rodley’s book and descriptive analysis is a fundamental read for those interested in how international human rights law came to be applied to a wider manner of human rights concerns, such as the inhumane or ill-treatment of detainees.

 

 

 

 

 

Horacio Verbitsky, author of Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior, is among the most well-known investigative journalist and human rights advocate in his native Argentina. After the ‘Dirty War’, the decades of human rights violations, extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances, and torture in Argentina, the former perpetrators of these crimes – largely the military branches under the regime – kept silent. Impunity prevailed. Verbitsky’s book is a first-hand account of the confessions of retired navy officer Adolfo Scilingo, the first man to break the military’s pact of silence and come forth with the crimes.

 

 

 

 

 

Torture: Does It Make Us Safer? Is It Ever OK?: A Human Rights Perspective is a series of essays and analysis from some of the top human rights thinkers, experts, and anti-torture activists in the world on a range of timely, current issues in human rights and the discourse around torture, particularly in the era of the so-called ‘war on terror’. For example, Minky Worden, Media Director of Human Rights Watch, conducts a survey of countries that torture. Eitan Felner, formerly of the Center for Economic and Social Rights and B’Tselem, writes on the Israeli experience. Twelve essays comprise the book.

 

 

 

 
There were a lot of memos that comprise the almost bureaucratic and systematic manner in which the U.S. government most recently approved the use of torture in interrogation. Among the most famous of these memos was a series of notes from former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. After 18 pages of interrogation techniques that defied well-established law on torture, Rumsfeld approved, thus leading to such atrocities as Abu Ghraib in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay Prison and Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Are there any we have missed? Please let us know in the comments.

2011 – We look back at a year of human rights

Happy New Year, to all our readers from World Without Torture.

As we look to start 2012, we would like to take a moment to look back at 2011 – the events, revolutions, human rights defenders, and victorious moments that shaped us and will undoubtedly shape this upcoming year.

Note: These are in no particular order. Click any photo for slideshow view.

While it may be for only a handful of cases, nonetheless, several perpetrators of heinous crimes of torture were brought to justice this year. This included some high-level authorities during Argentina’s ‘dirty war’. Pictured at left is one of the Mother of La Plaza de Mayo, whose family members are among the estimated 30,000 tortured or disappeared victims of the junta. At left is Ratko Mladic, the former Serbian Army general who was arrested and extradited to the Hague for crimes, including the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim boys and men.

The second trial against the main authorities of the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia began this year for thousands of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and torture. Pictured here is Nuon Chea, one of the four on trial currently.

Despite the ouster of several dictators in the MENA region, Syria’s Assad has held firm, doing so through a brutal crackdown on protesters. Experts estimate that 5,000 people have been killed, and several hundred have been detained and tortured. We will continue to monitor this situation as it progresses to the new year.

While the election will only happen in 2012, the Republican primary season in the U.S. led to a shocking statement of consensus among the candidates – almost all of them declared their support of torture in U.S. interrogation policy. Sadly, the year also ended with a New Year’s Eve signing by Obama of the National Defence Authorisation Act, which allows the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens.

In the Persian Gulf island of Bahrain, protesters joined the Arab Spring movement, taking to the streets throughout early spring to demonstrate against their undemocratic government. What followed was one of the most brutal crackdowns in the Middle East, with hundreds of allegations of torture and extra-judicial killings. Shockingly, even several doctors and surgeons were arrested, tortured, and sentenced for doing their jobs – treating the injured and wounded protesters. The situation in Bahrain continues today.

This year, UN torture investigator Juan Mendez declared long-term solitary confinement as a form of torture. Pictured here are two of three American hikers who were detained and tortured by Iran. The final two were released this year, while the third, Sarah Shourd (left) wrote about her experience in Iranian prison and the torture she endured through long-term solitary confinement there.

In another example of the impact of Arab Spring revolutions, rebel forces took control of Tripoli by the end of the summer 2011, and led to the removal and killed of dictator Muammar Gaddafi. We look to the next year with hopes for the rehabilitation of the several thousand torture survivors.

2011 marked the final year of our project on forensic evidence in the fight against torture, and we were able to make huge strides in this – our forensic expert team were used in several cases, in particular in Egypt with Khaled Said and in Iraq. Pictured here is Dr. Maria Dolores Morccillo Mendez, a forensic medical doctor from the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences in Colombia who won the IRCT’s competition for best poster or oral presentation on human rights or torture related issues at the recent joint conference.

Khaled Said was the face of a revolution. The 28-year-old Egyptian was tortured and killed by police in 2010, but his face lent fire to the fury – protests and demonstrations beginning in January eventually led to the ouster of dictator Hosni Mubarak, currently on trial for the deaths of several thousand protesters. The Arab Spring, seen most vividly in Egypt, was in part an outcry against state abuse and torture.

Facing a history of torture

Brita Sydhoff, IRCT Secretary-General, receives the Emilio Mignone Prize, a human rights award, on behalf of the 140 member network of rehabilitation centres around the world. Sydhoff (second from left) stands with (from left to right) Isabel Mignone, Argentine Minister of Foreign Affairs Héctor Timerman, and Mignone colleague, human rights activist and writer Horacio Verbitsky. Photo by Josefina Nacif Casado

Looking at the massive memorial Parque de la Memoria – Monumento a las Víctimas del Terrorismo de Estado, I noticed a familiar name etched in the dark grey stone. It was the name of a young man from Sweden– my home country – the son of a vicar my father knew who was in Argentina during the junta period and was also among the ‘disappeared’. I remembered the horrific disappearance from the Swedish newspapers at the time.

The memorial stands starkly in a park, facing the waters of Río de la Plata, where many of the victims of the regime are believed to have been killed. Estimates range from 12,000 to 30,000 disappeared – the victims who were taken by military police and never seen or heard from again.  The memorial holds the names of 8,000 men, women, and children with space for up to 30,000 names in total upon the certification of further deaths.

I was in Argentina for about a week to receive the Emilio Mignone Human Rights Award on behalf of the IRCT and the 150 centres that comprise our membership and provide rehabilitation and support for victims of torture worldwide. Bestowed by the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs, part of the prize is to visit with government, civil society, and human rights organisations  in Argentina in the week leading up to the award ceremony.

The Parque de la Memoria was among numerous visits to places of memory that filled me with both solemnity and humbleness. The torture and disappearances that took place during the military regime had left deep scars in Argentina and the people here; but places like the Parque and the living museum at the Naval Engineering College– more commonly known as the torture centre at ESMA – were testament to a country facing its past.

My first stop was to our member centre, the vastly impressive EATIP (in English, the Argentine Team of Psychosocial Work and Research). The group of psychologists, psychiatrists, medical doctors, among others – an entirely volunteer group – provides much-needed work in documentation of torture, support to victims and witnesses during trials, and, most significantly, their specialisation in psycho-social rehabilitation and support for survivors of torture and the families of victims. They have just finished a book, the most recent of several they have published, which will be translated into English as part of the IRCT project to collaborate and share knowledge across regions.

At their offices, I was introduced to a survivor of torture. Now an active member of an organisation documenting torture, he had spent two and a half horrendous years in the torture centre ESMA.

He was among only 400 estimated survivors of ESMA, the former naval engineering school where 5,000 people were tortured during the junta. I visited there during this week as it has now become a place of memory of its past horrors.

I was taken to Building 23, where many of the officials at ESMA lived. In the basement was a torture apparatus and centre; in the attic were so-called ‘dog houses’, 1 meter by 1 meter boxes where victims were hooded and detained. Many victims were sedated at ESMA only to be flown over the river and pushed out of airplanes. The complex also had a maternity ward, where pregnant detained women gave birth before they were killed. Many of these stolen babies were given to military families, raised without knowledge of their origins, and only now a few are being reunited with their aging grandparents.

It’s undoubtedly a shocking place. But now has become a place of education, part of a memorial to the victims of torture, disappearance, secret detention, and murder. Nothing, of course, can ease the pain and suffering of these crimes, but it seems that Argentina, through living museums like ESMA and places of memory has begun to address its past.

This was never more keenly felt than at the awards ceremony and my time spent with the family of Emilio Mignone. As I learned during my time there, Mignone was a fearless and unceasing advocate of human rights. Together with Horacio Verbitsky, the famous writer and activist, they founded the impressive organisation CELS (in Spanish, Centro de Estudios Legales Y Sociales). I was privileged to meet with the Mignone family, and Isabel Mignone was present at the award ceremony, in addition to the Minister of Foreign Affairs Héctor Timerman, and Mr. Verbitsky. Emilio Mignone’s legacy is so much alive through the work that continues at CELS and the award that bears his name.

However, as I write this, torture continues in Argentina. Many of the organisations and government officials I met with during my week stay discussed the ongoing cases that continue to be filed. While there have been many good intentions – for example, the country has taken seriously the dissemination of reparations to survivors and victims’ families – many have failed to adequately address conditions of detention, reform of the police or continued impunity. One organisation summed it up as, “The slow implementation of good intentions” to tackle continuing torture in Argentina. And sadly, “torture still goes on,” another told me.

Thankfully, organisations like IRCT member EATIP are still there to care for the survivors and to push forward the movement against torture.

 By Brita, IRCT’s Secretary-General

IRCT accepts Mignone Prize for Human Rights

The prize was awarded to IRCT Secretary-General, Brita Sydhoff, by Héctor Timerman, Argentina’s Minister for Foreign Affair. Photo by Presidencia de la República del Ecuador under the CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license.

Last night, in the Argentine capital, IRCT Secretary-General Ms Brita Sydhoff collected the 2011 Emilio F Mignone International Human Rights Prize on behalf of the IRCT’s membership of some 150 centres around the world working for the rehabilitation of survivors of torture. The prize was awarded by Héctor Timerman, Argentina’s Minister for Foreign Affairs.

Established in 2007, the Emilio F. Mignone International Human Rights Prize grants recognition to foreign organisations or individuals fighting impunity against systemic violations of human rights. The prize is regarded as the region’s premier human rights prize.

In bestowing the prize the Minister explained that it was given for “The importance of the IRCT’s work with torture victims, and in the prevention and prohibition of torture in the world, as well as the seriousness with which the IRCT performs its work.”

The Argentine Minister also expressed his wish that in giving the prize to the IRCT, Argentina would “give visibility to the issue of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, at a time when Argentina is attempting to change entrenched practices that could constitute torture.”

Read the full story here (también en español).

We previously wrote about the award when we were notified, and we continue to be honoured and humbled by this award. Brita will return to Copenhagen Friday and will write a blog about her experiences in Argentina (she was able to travel and meet with government officials and NGOs during her time there), so keep a look out next week for that.

For Spanish speakers, there are also two stories in Argentine media about the award.

IRCT wins key international human rights award

Press release from our website:

The International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) has been awarded the 2011 Emilio F. Mignone International Human Rights Prize, by the government of Argentina.

“This prize belongs to the entire movement of 150 IRCT member centres globally who work tirelessly for the rehabilitation of torture survivors, access to justice and the prevention of torture”, said IRCT Secretary-General Brita Sydhoff.

“We are immensely grateful for the recognition, especially from Argentina – a country that has worked so hard to overcome its own history of torture – which in providing international visibility to our work will aid the protection of so many of our colleagues working under inhospitable conditions around the world,” concluded Sydhoff.

Established in 2007, the Emilio F. Mignone International Human Rights Prize grants recognition to foreign organisations or individuals fighting impunity against systemic violations of human rights. The prize is the first human rights distinction to be awarded by a developing country.

We are truly humbled by this selection. Read the full statement here.