The world marked United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture on June 26. Around the world, activists, world leaders and ordinary citizens speak out against the horrors of torture and support its victims and survivors throughout the world.
When torture — defined as an act where an individual or group intentionally inflicts pain on another — is carried out by a government, or by a person or persons in a position of authority, it is usually done to try to obtain something in return: information or a confession, or acquiescence with a request. Or it can be used to punish, intimidate or coerce individuals. All too often, governments around the world sanction it behind closed doors.
“States should not only prevent torture,” said UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki-Moon on June 26, 2012. “They must also provide all torture victims with effective and prompt redress, compensation and appropriate social, psychological, medical and other forms of rehabilitation. “
However, in the past six years alone, more than three quarters of the world’s countries have used torture or other forms of mistreatment against their inhabitants. In some countries, this is a rarity, but in many others, it is widespread, as was revealed in a 2014 report by Amnesty International.
“This report does not necessarily reflect the full extent of torture worldwide. As these statistics err firmly on the side of caution, the actual prevalence of torture is probably even worse,” said the report’s editor.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, despite its official ban on torture in the early 20th century, is one of the numerous countries that features in the report. Iran is guilty of the widespread torture of its citizens, much like under the days of the Shah of Iran.
Ervand Abrahamian, a professor and author of Tortured Confessions. Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran, explains how under the Shah, physical torture, especially electrical and mechanical, was widely used on the Iranian people, which contributed to torture becoming a taboo topic after the revolution of 1979.
“That’s why the constitution today explicitly bans torture and why the Islamic Republic continues to claim it isn’t torturing anyone,” says Professor Abrahamian. “ But the loophole is that the regime doesn’t define whipping people, especially on the soles of feet, as torture, because it’s permitted according to their reading of Sharia law. This, according to the government, is punishment for people lying to them.“
However, Professor Abrahamian strongly disagrees with this analysis, explaining that the main objective of torture is to extract public statements from victims that reinforce the regime’s position.
“When they torture someone, their intention isn’t to kill but to get that prisoner to say what they want. During interrogations in Iran, they ask inmates questions and if they don’t get the right answers, that person is lashed 30 or 40 times on their feet,” Abrahamian says. “Then, they’ll ask the question again until they get the answer they want. If you’ve ‘confessed’ to attempting to overthrow the Islamic Republic, the hope is that in the next round of beatings, you’ll give more information so you have to cook up exact details as to how you did the crime you’re accused of.”
To date, Iran has not signed the UN Convention against Torture, which aims to prevent torture and other acts of cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment. However, it is a signatory of other international laws that stipulate that torture should not be used.
“Iran has signed and ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 7 of this prohibits torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, so Iran has a non-negotiable obligation to prevent such treatment,” says lawyer Helen Howard. “ And, yet, people are frequently subjected to torture at the hands of the state. For instance, journalists have testified that they’ve been beaten, gagged, jumped upon, and hung from the ceiling.’
Blogger Sattar Beheshti died while in custody in 2012, allegedly as a result of torture. The medical examiner’s report stated that he had died from internal bleeding in his lungs, liver, kidneys and brain. An impartial and thorough investigation into his death has yet to take place.
The regime also uses non-physical forms of torture on its citizens, including extended periods in solitary confinement, threats to family members of prisoners and locking people for multiple days inside small boxes, a process that was routinely used during the 1980s. By doing these things, the government hopes to extract confessions.
“In the early years of the revolution, it was mainly political prisoners who were forced to ‘confess,’ but since the 1990s, the regime has turned its attention to writers, intellectuals and journalists,” says Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari, founder of IranWire. Bahari was tortured into giving a false confession after his arrest following the disputed presidential election of 2009.
“People were arrested and forced to “confess” that they were part of a plot to overthrow the Islamic Republic and that it was all masterminded by the BBC, the CIA and a host of international NGOs. Anyone who opposed the results were supposedly part of this foreign plot,” says Professor Abrahamian.
Forced Confessions, a film by Maziar Bahari, tells the story of the Iranian regime’s attempt to legitimize its rule through force by extracting lies from its citizens – not criminals, but writers, journalists, and scholars.
In the film, interviewees discuss the trauma of being tortured and having to give a false confession on television. Faraj Sarkoohi, a journalist and the editor in chief of Iranian magazine Adineh, gives a chilling account of his experience.
“My confession damaged me permanently,” Mr Sarkoohi says. “I now understand how someone who’s been raped feels. The physical pain is quickly forgotten but not the psychological damage. I can still feel the pain of being raped.”
Maziar Bahari describes the day he gave his forced confession as “the worst day of his life.”
Torture is a traumatic experience for every victim, but it is something that everyone reacts differently to.
“Some Iranians are broken by torture. Others become more antagonistic to the regime, and some become so discouraged that they remove themselves from politics or their professions altogether,” says Abrahamian. “In fact a lot of the dissidents that now live outside of the regime were former reformers but now want the Islamic Republic overthrown.
He adds, “Regardless of what the regime wants to call it, beating someone until they confess to what you want them to is torture. Torture is common sense. There’s nothing subjective about it.”
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