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The U.N. International Day in support of 'Victims of Torture' on June 26 should serve as a reminder that in the following countries of Asia, torture remains the primary mode of criminal investigation: Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Cambodia, Burma, Thailand, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Malaysia, Pakistan, India, China, Vietnam, and the Maldives. In all these countries, the image of the police officer is that of a tyrant and a torturer. In times of conflict, the military also engages in extraordinary forms of torture; the police engage in torture in times of both peace and conflict.
The political establishments of these countries tolerate torture and often directly approve of it. The ratification of U.N. human rights treaties makes no difference to the actual business of using the police as an instrument of brutality. The gap between the ideals proclaimed in constitutions and by signatures to U.N. human rights conventions and the day-to-day reality of the routine use of torture, coexist. The legislature, and even the judiciary, of these countries have been unable to take a firm stand to reform and modernize their police force. Thus, in the practical operation of the legal system, torture is considered an indispensable instrument.
Sadly, those who stand as spokespersons and representatives of morality and ethics in these societies have failed to make any noticeable attempts to stand firmly against the use of torture. Their talk of love, compassion, brotherhood and sisterhood and loving kindness is not associated with abhorrence for the use of torture by their law enforcement agencies. Thus, the moral and ethical education of the youth takes place in an environment in which torture is not considered an unacceptable practice. The old who shamelessly allow their law enforcement agencies to use torture and humiliate human beings in a merciless manner shape the mentalities of the young.
This compromised position of the political, legal, and social leadership of these societies is rooted in a reluctance to touch on the issue of police reform in order to bring the policing of their societies into conformity with the modern aspirations of their own people. Resistance to modernity expresses itself in the sharpest way by the attempt to keep the policing system in a very primitive state.
A search into the causes of this resistance to reform the police will reveal patterns of abuse of power and corruption in these societies. The police provide the very backbone of the skeleton that supports the abuse of power and corruption. Torture is therefore a political product. The politics of abuse of power and corruption resists change into more rational forms of government that are accountable to the people. The police are the guardians of these abusive and corrupt practices that the powerful people in these societies struggle hard to maintain.
The disapproval of torture is a common feature among the vast masses of these countries that are prevented from sharing the benefits of the natural resources of their lands. It is in this context that the common person sees the police as their enemy. On the other hand, the hardcore corrupt elements in these countries see the police as a friend. Democracy and the rule of law, which are the aspirations of the common people, cannot be realized due to the alliance among the abusers of power, the corrupt, and the law enforcement agencies.
Under these circumstances, demands for the elimination of torture, whether they come from local or international groups, remain meaningless unless these are accompanied by an uncompromising call for police reform. The elimination of torture and the modernization of the police are two sides of the same coin. As long as the police remain enemies of democracy and the rule of law, and friends of those who abuse power and are corrupt, torture will remain a very important ingredient of policing in many Asian countries. To democratize a society, its police must be democratized. To establish the rule of law in a society, the police must be made to be law abiding. Lawbreakers by night, who turn police stations into torture chambers, cannot defend law and order or the moral values of society, in the day.
This brings the greatest challenge to the human rights community, both local and global, on the issue of the elimination of torture, which is one of the core aspects of the defense of human rights and without which the concept of human rights is itself meaningless. Unless the human rights community makes police reforms one of the central pieces of their agenda, human rights will have little appeal to the populations of these countries.
Asian human rights groups should urge the U.N. high commissioner for human rights--Louise Arbour--the U.N. Human Rights Council, all U.N. treaty bodies, and all international human rights organizations to bring police reforms to the center of their work for the protection and promotion of human rights in Asia.
We also call upon all human rights groups in Asia, and all people concerned with the protection and promotion of human rights in their countries and in the region, to expose the duality involved in the declarations made by their governments regarding the prevention of torture and that, at the same time, refuse to reform and modernize their policing systems.
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(Basil Fernando is director of the Asian Human Rights Commission based in Hong Kong. He is a Sri Lankan lawyer who has also been a senior U.N. human rights officer in Cambodia. He has published several books and written extensively on human rights issues in Asia.)
