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The_Business_of_Torture
| The Business of Torture
The European Court of Human Rights agreed yesterday - more than
two years after the applications have been filed - to hear six
cases filed by Chechens against Russia. The claimants accuse the
Russian military of torture and indiscriminate killings. The
Court has ruled in the past against the Russian Federation and
awarded assorted plaintiffs thousands of euros per case in
compensation.
As awareness of human rights increased, as their definition
expanded and as new, often authoritarian polities, resorted to
torture and repression - human rights advocates and
non-governmental organizations proliferated. It has become a
business in its own right: lawyers, consultants, psychologists,
therapists, law enforcement agencies, scholars and pundits
tirelessly peddle books, seminars, conferences, therapy sessions
for victims, court appearances and other services.
Human rights activists target mainly countries and
multinationals.
In June 2001, the International Labor Rights Fund filed a
lawsuit on behalf of 11 villagers against the American oil
behemoth, ExxonMobile, for "abetting" abuses in Aceh, Indonesia.
They alleged that the company provided the army with equipment
for digging mass graves and helped in the construction of
interrogation and torture centers.
This past November, the law firm of Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld &
Toll joined other American and South African law firms in filing
a complaint that "seeks to hold businesses responsible for
aiding and abetting the apartheid regime in South Africa ...
forced labor, genocide, extrajudicial killing, torture, sexual
assault, and unlawful detention".
Among the accused: "IBM and ICL which provided the computers
that enabled South Africa to ... control the black South African
population. Car manufacturers provided the armored vehicles that
were used to patrol the townships. Arms manufacturers violated
the embargoes on sales to South Africa, as did the oil
companies. The banks provided the funding that enabled South
Africa to expand its police and security apparatus."
Charges were leveled against Unocal in Myanmar and dozens of
other multinationals. Berger & Montague filed, last September, a
class action complaint against Royal Dutch Petroleum and Shell
Transport. The oil giants are charged with "purchasing
ammunition and using ... helicopters and boats and providing
logistical support for 'Operation Restore Order in Ogoniland'"
which was designed, according to the law firm, to "terrorize the
civilian population into ending peaceful protests against
Shell's environmentally unsound oil exploration and extraction
activities".
The defendants in all these court cases strongly deny any
wrongdoing.
But this is merely one facet of the torture business.
Torture implements are produced - mostly in the West - and sold
openly, frequently to nasty regimes in developing countries and
even through the Internet. Hi-tech devices abound: sophisticated
electroconvulsive stun guns, painful restraints, truth serums,
chemicals such as pepper gas. Export licensing is universally
minimal and non-intrusive and completely ignores the technical
specifications of the goods (for instance, whether they could be
lethal, or merely inflict pain).
Amnesty International and the UK-based Omega Foundation, found
more than 150 manufacturers of stun guns in the USA alone. They
face tough competition from Germany (30 companies), Taiwan (19),
France (14), South Korea (13), China (12), South Africa (nine),
Israel (eight), Mexico (six), Poland (four), Russia (four),
Brazil (three), Spain (three) and the Czech Republic (two).
Many torture implements pass through "off-shore" supply networks
in Austria, Canada, Indonesia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lithuania,
Macedonia, Albania, Russia, Israel, the Philippines, Romania and
Turkey. This helps European Union based companies circumvent
legal bans at home. The US government has traditionally turned a
blind eye to the international trading of such gadgets.
American high-voltage electro-shock stun shields turned up in
Turkey, stun guns in Indonesia, and electro-shock batons and
shields, and dart-firing taser guns in torture-prone Saudi
Arabia. American firms are the dominant manufacturers of stun
belts. Explains Dennis Kaufman, President of Stun Tech Inc, a US
manufacturer of this innovation: ''Electricity speaks every
language known to man. No translation necessary. Everybody is
afraid of electricity, and rightfully so.'' (Quoted by Amnesty
International).
The Omega Foundation and Amnesty claim that 49 US companies are
also major suppliers of mechanical restraints, including
leg-irons and thumbcuffs. But they are not alone. Other
suppliers are found in Germany (8), France (5), China (3),
Taiwan (3), South Africa (2), Spain (2), the UK (2) and South
Korea (1).
Not surprisingly, the Commerce Department doesn't keep tab on
this category of exports.
Nor is the money sloshing around negligible. Records kept under
the export control commodity number A985 show that Saudi Arabia
alone spent in the United States more than $1 million a year
between 1997-2000 merely on stun guns. Venezuela's bill for
shock batons and such reached $3.7 million in the same period.
Other clients included Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mexico and -
surprisingly - Bulgaria. Egypt's notoriously brutal services -
already well-equipped - spent a mere $40,000.
The United States is not the only culprit. The European
Commission, according to an Amnesty International report titled
"Stopping the Torture Trade" and published in 2001:
"Gave a quality award to a Taiwanese electro-shock baton, but
when challenged could not cite evidence as to independent safety
tests for such a baton or whether member states of the European
Union (EU) had been consulted. Most EU states have banned the
use of such weapons at home, but French and German companies are
still allowed to supply them to other countries."
Torture expertise is widely proffered by former soldiers, agents
of the security services made redundant, retired policemen and
even rogue medical doctors. China, Israel, South Africa, France,
Russia, the United kingdom and the United States are founts of
such useful knowledge and its propagators.
How rooted torture is was revealed in September 1996 when the US
Department of Defense admitted that ''intelligence training
manuals'' were used in the Federally sponsored School of the
Americas - one of 150 such facilities - between 1982 and
1991.The manuals, written in Spanish and used to train thousands
of Latin American security agents, "advocated execution,
torture, beatings and blackmail", says Amnesty International.
Where there is demand there is supply. Rather than ignore the
discomfiting subject, governments would do well to legalize and
supervise it. Alan Dershowitz, a prominent American criminal
defense attorney, proposed, in an op-ed article in the Los
Angeles Times, published November 8, 2001, to legalize torture
in extreme cases and to have judges issue "torture warrants".
This may be a radical departure from the human rights tradition
of the civilized world. But dispensing export carefully reviewed
licenses for dual-use implements is a different matter
altogether - and long overdue.
About the author:
Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of
Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain -
How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Central
Europe Review, PopMatters, and eBookWeb , and Bellaonline, and
as a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business
Correspondent. He is the the editor of mental health and Central
East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.
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