They heard the thud of wood on flesh. Boot on bone. On teeth. The muffled grunt when a stomach is kicked in. The muted crunch of skull on cement. The gurgle of blood on a man’s breath when his lung is torn by the jagged end of a broken rib. Blue-lipped and dinner-plate-eyed, they watched, mesmerized by something that they sensed but didn’t understand: the absence of caprice in what the policemen did. The abyss where anger should have been; the sober, steady brutality, the economy of it all.”
— Extract from “The God of Small Things”, by Arundhati Roy
The International Day for the prevention of torture should serve as a reminder that in the following countries of Asia torture remains the primary mode of criminal investigations; they are: 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 policeman is that of a tyrant and a torturer. In times of conflict the military also engage 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 fact of the ratification of the UN human rights treatises 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 UN 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 to modernize their police. Thus, in the practical operation of the legal system, torture is considered an indispensible instrument.
Sadly, those who stand as spokesmen and representatives of morality and ethics in these societies have failed to make any noticeable attempt 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 young takes place in an environment in which torture is not considered an unacceptable practice. The mentalities of the young are shaped by the old who find no shame in allowing their law enforcement agencies to use torture and to humiliate human beings in the worst possible ways.
This compromised position of the political, legal and social leadership in these societies is rooted in a reluctance to touch on the issue of police reforms, 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 such resistance to reform the police will reveal patterns of abuse of power and corruption in these societies. It is the police that 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 resist change into more rational forms of government, which are accountable to the people. The police are the guardians of those 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 man 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 rule of law, which are the aspirations of the common people cannot be realised 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 reforms. 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 Asian countries. To democratize a society its police must be democratized. To establish rule of law in a society, the police must be made to be law abiding. Law breakers by the night, who turn police stations into torture chambers, cannot by the day defend law and order or the moral values of society.
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. The Asian Human Rights Commission urges the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, the UN Human Rights Council, all UN treaty bodies and all international human rights organisations to make a very special attempt, on an urgent basis to bring police reform to the centre of their work for the protection and promotion of human rights in Asia. We also call upon all human rights groups in Asia and also all people who are 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 who, at the same time refuse to reform and modernize their policing systems.
