A very disturbing situation

Eric Mirguet. This troubling observation simply confirms a disturbing tendency that has been noted over the years. In April 2016, ACAT carried out a survey in France on torture. Only 64% of respondents agreed with the statement “Any act of torture against any person regardless of the circumstances is always unacceptable”, compared with 73% in 2000. Two recent UN reports, one on torture and the other on summary executions, also came to a shocking conclusion: the Special Rapporteur on torture pointed to “a wide discrepancy between prohibition and worldwide complacency towards these violations”, and the Special Rapporteur on summary executions noted with alarm that human rights ideals have been undermined for the past five years.

The reasons for this descent are many, but they all seem to come from what Nils Melzer, who wrote the preface to the report Un monde tortionnaire (A World of Torturers), calls a “moral disengagement” which is shared by ordinary people, like you and me, as well by those who are in positions of power. He gave three root causes for why people resort to torture and inhuman or degrading treatment: denial of fact (self-deception through wilful ignorance), denial of responsibility (diffusion or displacement of responsibility) and denial of wrongfulness (trivialisation or utilitarian or discriminatory justification).

Thus, our fear, which is automatically triggered by traumatising events, is transformed into a collective perceived security threat. It is always necessary to dehumanise the cause of the threat in order to carry out the violent act.

For twenty years now, the fight against terrorism seems to justify all sorts of abuses, including the most serious ones. Government leaders, supported by public opinion, defy the rules of law. As upholders of the law, they are supposed to defend it. Instead, they ignore it with impunity. Over time, they and the public have grown accustomed to overstepping the line of legality. This leads to other violations, influencing other people in their indifference to or approval of these abuses. The situation is indeed very disturbing.

EM. Their roles are essential and have become increasingly complementary. The courts are called upon to apply the law and remind government leaders that they are not above certain laws regardless of the circumstances. The courts are there to ensure that human rights are universally applied and to hold individuals to account. NGOs are increasingly mobilising to bring cases to court. They also help the courts in finding ways to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes.

The protests by Syrian refugees in Germany and France helped a lot in the prosecutions against the Syrian regime. Sometimes aided by NGOs, they sought justice and accountability for the ordeals they suffered from state-sponsored torture. […] Prosecution organisations also act as representatives and help by informing them about how courts work and the importance of court decisions.

ACAT-France decided to push the fight against the eradication of torture further by filing a case before the UN Committee Against Torture. Morocco was condemned by the Committee, but they did not stop there. They have also called on Morocco to compensate the victims, carry out an independent and impartial investigation on the allegations of torture and ill-treatment, and prosecute the perpetrators. The Committee expects Morocco not to resort to any pressure, intimidation or retaliation that will likely damage the physical and moral integrity of the plaintiff and his family. Beyond individual cases, this forces the authorities to modify their behaviour. It also serves as an advocacy tool for activists campaigning for the eradication of torture in Morocco.

EM. The unjustified use of pre-trial detention is one of the most common evils in contemporary society. As the report shows, these abuses happen everywhere, in countries as different as France, Mauritania and the Ivory Coast. This has been going on for a long time: in 2011, the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) expressed shock in observing complacency towards the practice of extended periods of pretrial detention, resulting in overcrowded prisons and all the problems that come with that.

The people who are detained while awaiting their trial are often in a precarious social situation. Being marginalised or poor reduces their chances of a pre-trial release to almost zero. Moreover, foreigners are often considered to be a flight risk. All these factors make remand even more likely, compared to those who are more socially integrated, who have a job and who are financially stable.

As such, the abuse of pretrial detention makes prisoners more vulnerable.

These situations happen continually and are a key cause of prisons overcrowding, which violates human dignity due to a lack of space and insufficient structures that protect prisoners’ rights. They cause tensions resulting in violence among prisoners, but also between prisoners and prison staff. We often assume that only political prisoners or terrorists are subjected to torture, but this is not the case. Ordinary people, often with short sentences, regularly suffer from ill-treatment in prisons, and this is often the case in overcrowded facilities. To a certain extent, these particularly difficult prison conditions can also be considered as torture or as cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Moreover, abuses are not easy to detect because of a lack of contact between the prisons and the outside world.

States have so-called “positive” obligations: beyond the absolute prohibition of the use of torture and ill-treatment, they must do everything in their power to ensure that no one is subjected to this type of treatment, whether it is committed by the staff or is due to a lack of action to prevent these violations from occurring. Prison overcrowding and its devastating effects continue. This suggests that few states are acting in accordance with their international commitments on this subject. Régis Brillat, Executive Secretary of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), stated in his preface to the report: “it is sometimes difficult for the prevention committees to make the stakeholders involved (including politicians) agree to implement the necessary measures to prevent any form of inhuman or degrading treatment”. Thus, the fight for the eradication of torture is far from being over.