( Hong Kong , 3 May 2016) “Conflict in Kashmir is the root cause of the problem. It has made the life, property, dignity and chastity of Kashmiri women insecure. With a revival of militancy this scenario of insecurity is increasing day by day,” notes Dr Sheikh Showkat Hussain, the Head and Dean of the Department of Law, School of Legal Studies, Central University of Kashmir.
The full text of this essay is available in the latest issue of the Torture: Asian and Global Perspectives (Torture Magazine), to be published soon.
Meanwhile, focusing on the legal systems in Asia, Associate Editor Lauren Glenmere argues, “Proper investigation and prosecution goes from unlikely to almost impossible when members of the elite or the police force itself stand accused.”
“Witnesses frequently go missing, are threatened or killed. The police force itself is misused during elections for suppressing political opposition”, she observes in her substantive account on the rule of law in Asia.
In his essay on psychological torture, Almerindo Ojeda seeks to define the practice through a lengthy investigation.
“In principle, there are two ways in which we could define psychological torture. One of them is to list all (and only) the practices that constitute psychological torture. The other is to identify the property or properties that practices must satisfy in order to count as instances of psychological torture. The former is the extensional definition of the term; the latter is the intensional one.”
Dr. Ojeda is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Davis. He was the Founding Director of the UC Davis Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas, and is the Principal Investigator of its flagship project The Guantanamo Testimonials Project.
Contributing his own analysis, Nepalese human rights lawyer Kamal Raj Pathak notes that, “Despite the commitments made by the government to protect victims of torture and to prosecute those responsible for acts of torture, victims and witnesses remain vulnerable”, in his article on the prohibition of torture in Nepal.
Our regular columnists, Tisaranee Gunasekara, Ron Jacobs, Binoy Kampmark, Ahlam Chemlali and Javeria Younes, contribute their regular column. This issue’s guest column is written by Urmila Pullat.
The online version of Vol.5 No. 1 will be available on www.torturemag.org soon.
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