Thank you, Mr. President.
Mr. Melzer,
thank you for your work on shedding light on the often-overlooked issue of psychological torture.
We welcome the mention in your report of “torturous environments” as the combination of methods, techniques and circumstances deliberately designed to inflict pain or suffering of sufficient severity to achieve the desired torturous purpose. Would you say that the systematic vilification and persecution of human rights defenders by State authorities, including through cyber-technologies, may fall under this concept and be considered as psychological torture?
The OMCT has regularly been reporting on systematic, State-sponsored campaigns of harassment and intimidation of HRDs in countries such as Bahrain, Egypt, Guatemala, Honduras, Iran, Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Venezuela. We positively welcomed the conviction in 2016 of two Colombian Security Service agency officials over charges of psychological torture in the case of HRD Claudia Julieta Duque. However, we are shocked that this issue is still being overlooked and that governments and their officials continue to enjoy complete impunity in the vast majority of cases.
Mr. Melzer,
You mention in your report that a routine method of psychological torture is to attack the victims’ need for social and emotional contacts.
We would like to draw your attention on the practice of repeated prison transfers of detainees, in particular political opponents and HRDs, often hundreds of kilometres from their homes. This punitive practice aims to break the prisoners’ spirit and to isolate them from their families and support networks, leading to severe mental and emotional suffering, anxiety and depression. This is the case of for instance Max Bokayev in Kazakhstan but also of Azimjon Askarov in Kyrgyzstan, Germain Rukuki in Burundi or Jean-Claude Malitano and Etienne Tandelein in DRC.
Finally, we welcome the recognition that children are particularly vulnerable to psychological torture, and that the severity threshold is lower for children than for adults. However, during several prison monitoring visits, we observed that threats and verbal abuse are often seen as a legitimate disciplinary method towards children and we reiterate the importance to raise awareness towards the intensity and long-lasting trauma that may result from them.
Thank you.
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