The fight against human rights violations

While we use the most modern hi-tech weaponry in modern warfare, we still seem to be using the ancient, most brutal and barbaric act of torture against prisoners.

Torture is indeed an ancient practice, but it is also a modern day paradox. There remains a perception that torture is carried out by 'lesser civilised societies.' Well we have all seen the most civilised and so called responsible governments using torture as means of repression. Governments employ torture as part of state policy in order to deter real or suspected dissidents. Regimes use torture as part of a continuum of repressive measures and suppression of democratic rights.

Torture is never practiced alone; it has become a constituent part of mechanisms for domination. Torture is not intended to kill the body but the soul of a person. It constitutes an aggravated and deliberate form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

According to the Institute of Human Rights police brutality is very much apparent in Sri Lanka right now.

Also, according to the Canadian Centre For Victims of Torture (CCUT) between the year 1998 and 1999 there were 73 Sri Lankans who sought the services of CCUT.

Looking at Iraq, one really wonders what must be going on in Guantanamo Bay.

Torture and other human rights violations still continue to take place in many countries all over the world. The Israeli army uses the most degrading inhuman type of torture on Palestinians.

Victims and survivors of torture include women and men, the young and the elderly, the wealthy and the poor, the educated and the illiterate. Those who have experienced torture and other human rights abuses are from all social classes, cultures and groups.

The methods used in torture are generally, used to break the individual's spirit. Prolonged beatings, sensory deprivation, electric shocks, mutilation, use of muscle paralysing drugs, sexual violence, sham executions. Techniques of organised violence are massacres, disappearances, institutional lies, arbitrary arrests, systematic harassment and abuse of power and creation of cultures of fear through victimisation.

Torture is a life altering experience. Individuals who have survived are faced with the reality that their lives are in fact irreversibly altered. While the physical scars may heal faster the psychological scars continue throughout their lifetime.

The United Nations declaration against torture defines torture as; "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental is intentionally inflicted by or at the instigation of a public official on a person."

Human rights are said to be universal in three ways:-

All humans, as humans, possess them. No one is entitled to violate them. All humans, as humans, should be able to exercise them. The right to live in one's homeland is a universally guaranteed right under the United Nations declaration of human rights. Refugees are denied this right.

Human rights violations such as torture have existed for thousands of years and have impacted all societies.

It is time we stood up against this gross human rights violation to protect mankind from degeneration.

"Hope after the horror" is the mandate of the Canadian Centre for victims of torture. Based in Canada the centre aids survivors to overcome the lasting effects of torture and war.

- Shyamalee Murugesu