Government to ratify protocol
against torture
The Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture is pleased
that the Rudd Labor government has indicated its intention
to ratify the Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention
against Torture. The Attorney-General, Robert McClelland,
said "Labor is committed to ratifying the Optional Protocol
on torture, and we will soon be consulting the states and
territories as to how that can be achieved."
An international treaty, the Protocol aims to prevent torture
by setting up a system of international and national visits
to places of detention, such as prisons, immigration detention
centres and psychiatric institutions, in the member country.
The ratification of the protocol had previously been rejected
by the Howard government. VFST, through the national network
of torture and trauma agencies, FASSTT, had made representations
to the previous government urging the ratification of the
protocol.
Further information: Click
here
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Edition 5 - July 2008
Letter to the Editor published in The Age newspaper, 20/1/06
No exceptions: not even for terror suspects
Ted Lapkin’s argument that “coercive questioning” of suspected terrorists is and should be legally permissible [20/1] is wrong on a number of counts.
Lapkin wrongly asserts that the UN Convention on torture – a treaty Australia and the USA are parties to - prohibits only torture and “merely urges” governments to forgo inflicting cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Convention Article 16 obliges governments “to undertake to prevent…cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”. The UN’s independent expert on the subject affirms “the absolute nature of the prohibition of torture and other forms of ill-treatment”. Such conduct is not permitted in any circumstances.
Lapkin wrongly argues that there is a clear distinction between “torture” – which he implies is legitimate to prohibit – and “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment punishment”, which he considers acceptable for suspected terrorists.
The dangerous implications of his argument were demonstrated in 2002, when US government lawyers wrote a secret memo advising that almost anything short of life-threatening physical abuse was not torture and so could be legally used by US officials. The memo was repudiated when it became public and highlights the potential for abuse by governments.
My organization works with thousands of people who were profoundly traumatised by experiences which the drafters of that memo would not have characterised as torture: rape, beatings and electrocution, and being forced to watch violence inflicted on loved ones including children. Commonly, the perpetrators justified their actions as necessary to protect national security.
US Senator McCain, who was tortured when captured as a soldier during the Vietnam War, recently sponsored legislation prohibiting US officials from subjecting detainees.
Paris Aristotle AM
Director, Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture 
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