ShareThisA Day of Struggle and Solidarity for a just world
By Dr. Ishai Menuchin, Executive Directed of PCATI
Saturday 26 June 2010 is the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, a worldwide day of solidarity decided upon by the UN General Assembly in December 1997 as part of its worldwide campaign against torture, abuse and degrading and inhumane treatment of individuals. It is also a day, beyond identifying with the victims, should declare our obligation to a local and international struggle against the continued use of torture and abuse by the authorities against their victims. We, citizens of Israel, are committed to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, signed in 1984, not only because it is the morally just ting to do, but also because Israel signed the Convention in 1986 and ratified its signature again in 1991. Yet although more than 145 states have signed the convention, torture and abuse continues on a wide scale in Israel and in the world.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed in 1948 and today marking the universally accepted minimum basic requirements of human rights, states, No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984) defines the prohibition against torture as a prohibition on any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.... This complex, forced legal phrasing attempts to clarify that under no circumstances may representatives of state authority torture or abuse individuals.
The Convention states clearly that No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. Yet as a society in which the state of emergency has been the norm for more than sixty years, the security forces, in our names and under the auspices of assorted claims, true as well as deceitful, continue to torture security detainees. Continue to torture and abuse, and the law enforcement and judicial systems turn a blind eye. When in classical times the goddess of justice was drawn or sculpted with eyes covered, the message was that justice is blind to the influences of the two sides, not that justice does not see the victims. Today the Israeli judicial system does not see the victims of torture they hardly receive any judicial assistance. The law enforcement and judicial systems provide complete impunity for torture.
We at the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, believe that torture and abuse of all kinds, in any situation, do not stand up to the values of morality, democracy and law and order. We see with great apprehension the continuing use of torture by the security services and the envelope of complete impunity which the law enforcement provides to torturers. We hope that you will join us in our struggle for a world with no torture a new, more just world; a possible one.
