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UNITED NATIONS, Feb 07 (IPS) – Hinting at “Western hypocrisy”, a senior UN official as soon as advised a gaggle of reporters, maybe half-jokingly: “While you go on a kind of sight-seeing excursions in Europe, they’ll present you their palaces and castles– however by no means their medieval prisons or torture chambers.”
The world’s torturers, in response to Western nations, have been principally in international locations equivalent to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and in authoritarian regimes of the Center East -– with a notoriety for whip lashes, blind folds, leg irons, electrical shock gadgets and public hangings.
In newer years, torture and water-boarding have been widespread types of punishment in US-run Guantanamo Bay, within the Abu Ghraib jail in US-occupied Iraq and on the Bagram American air base in Afghanistan.
And within the coronary heart of Amsterdam are a “Torture Museum” and a “Museum of Medieval Torture Devices” displaying among the tools of a bygone period.
Final month, the London-based Amnesty Worldwide led a coalition of over 30 civil society organizations (CSOs) calling for a treaty to regulate the commerce in instruments of torture used to suppress peaceable protests and abuse detainees world wide.
Dr. Simon Adams, President and CEO of the Middle for Victims of Torture, the biggest worldwide group that treats survivors and advocates for an finish to torture worldwide, advised IPS it’s sickening and outrageous that despite the fact that torture is prohibited all over the place, always, and in all circumstances, greater than 500 corporations from 58 international locations are nonetheless manufacturing, advertising and promoting items utilized in torture on the world market.
“It’s time to strictly regulate items which might be intentionally misused by some safety forces to commit torture, and to impose a world ban on items that haven’t any use aside from torture.”
“We have to outlaw this immoral commerce in unspeakable human struggling. The UN Common Meeting is our international parliament, and worldwide legislation obligates states to assist stop torture”.
So, the Common Meeting ought to instantly transfer in direction of the adoption of a Torture-Free Commerce Treaty and prohibit folks and firms from benefiting from torture,” he famous.
Within the declaration signed in London January 20, the civil rights organizations (CSOs) launched a marketing campaign calling for a treaty to ban the manufacture and commerce in inherently abusive tools equivalent to spiked batons and body-worn electrical shock gadgets, in addition to the introduction of human rights-based controls on the commerce in additional normal legislation enforcement tools, equivalent to pepper spray, rubber bullets and handcuffs.
These things are sometimes used to commit acts of torture or different ill-treatment, that are categorically prohibited below worldwide legislation, the coalition mentioned.
Requested whether or not such a treaty ought to originate on the United Nations, Verity Coyle, Amnesty Worldwide’s Regulation & Coverage adviser, advised IPS: “Sure, Amnesty Worldwide world wide is campaigning for a Torture-Free Commerce Treaty by way of our Flagship Marketing campaign – Shield the Protest.
When the Group of Governmental Specialists (GGE) report was printed on 30 Could 2022, Amnesty printed this PR response.
She mentioned the 193-member UN Common Meeting (UNGA) is the logical discussion board given 2019 decision, together with the GGE report suggestions.
The Alliance for Torture-Free Commerce (60+ members) is coordinated by the EU, Argentina and Mongolia.
In June 2022, Amnesty was invited to current its evaluation of the GGEs report back to a gathering of the Alliance “and we proceed to carry common conferences with the EU specifically in anticipation of decision being introduced ahead requesting a negotiating mandate”.
Civil Society in Latin America, Coyle identified, is talking often to Argentina concerning the course of.
“Our Sections world wide are about to embark on a sequence of foyer conferences in capitals”, mentioned Coyle, who sits on the worldwide Steering Committee of the Marketing campaign to Cease Killer Robots, of which Amnesty Worldwide is a member.
In September 2017, the EU, Argentina and Mongolia launched the Alliance for Torture-Free Commerce on the margins of the UN Common Meeting in New York.
The Alliance at the moment includes over 60 states from all areas of the world pledging to “act collectively to additional stop, limit and finish commerce” in items used for torture, different ill-treatment and the dying penalty.
In June 2019, the UN Common Meeting adopted Decision A/73/L.94, In the direction of torture-free commerce, initiating a course of for “analyzing the feasibility, scope and parameters for attainable widespread worldwide requirements” for regulating worldwide commerce on this space.
The primary stage on this UN course of resulted within the July 2020 publication of a UN Secretary Common’s examine of member states’ positions, which discovered that almost all of respondent states supported worldwide requirements, with most believing these needs to be by way of a “legally binding instrument establishing measures to regulate and limit commerce in items used for capital punishment, torture or different types of ill-treatment”.
In the meantime, the UN Particular Rapporteur on “the promotion and safety of human rights and basic freedoms whereas countering terrorism”, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, is endeavor a “technical go to” to the US.
Between 6 and 14 February, she’s going to go to Washington D.C. and subsequently the detention facility on the U.S. Naval Station Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Over the course of the following three-month interval, Ní Aoláin can even perform a sequence of interviews with people in the US and overseas, on a voluntary foundation, together with victims and households of victims of the 11 September 2001 terrorist assaults and former detainees in international locations of resettlement/repatriation.
The go to takes place in accordance with the Phrases of Reference for Nation Visits by Particular Procedures Mandate Holders.
Apart from Amnesty Worldwide, the CSOs campaigning for the treaty embody American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Article 36, Asia Alliance In opposition to Torture, Affiliation for the Prevention of Torture (APT), Harvard Regulation Faculty’s Worldwide Human Rights Clinic, Worldwide Fee of Jurists, Worldwide Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, The Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates and the Ladies’s Worldwide League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), amongst others.
Coyle of Amnesty Worldwide additionally identified that tools, equivalent to tear fuel, rubber bullets, batons and restraints, have been used to intimidate, repress and punish protesters, human rights defenders and others, throughout the policing of demonstrations and in locations of detention, in all areas, in recent times.
“1000’s of protesters have sustained eye accidents ensuing from the reckless use of rubber bullets, whereas others have been hit by tear fuel grenades, doused in extreme quantities of chemical irritants, overwhelmed with batons, or pressured into stress positions by restraints”.
Regardless of this, there are at the moment no international human rights-related controls on the commerce in legislation enforcement tools. Nevertheless, the UN Common Meeting now has a historic alternative to vote to start negotiations on a treaty, she declared.
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© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
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