Tag: UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture

Jigme Gyatso before his incarceration and torture in Chinese prison
Jigme Gyatso before his incarceration and torture in prison

On 3 April 2013, after 17 years Jigme Gyatso was released from prison. He entered prison a strong and healthy 35 year-old and left with weak eyesight, heart complications and kidney damage that kept him from walking upright.  Eight years before his release Jigme Gyatso met the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, who strongly recommended Jigme Gyatso be released because his conviction for “endangering state security” by creating an illegal organization was based on information extracted by torture. During his 17 years imprisonment, he was electrocuted with electric batons and brutally beaten.  Today, three months after Jigme Gyatso’s long-awaited release from prison, is the International Day in Support of Torture Victims as Jigme Gyatso struggles with his broken body to live again.

International Day in Support of Torture Victims commemorates the entry into force of the Convention Against Torture, Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment (or Convention Against Torture) on 26 June 1987 with the goal of eradicating torture.

No act, except for slavery, has been prohibited as unanimously and repeatedly as torture.  The international community recognizes that the prohibition of torture, like genocide and slavery, is a jus cogens norm, a preemptory norm of international law from which no derogation is permitted.  The universal rejection of torture forces torturers to deny its existence and hide their victims from the world by placing them in “black sites” and secret detention facilities or denying their existence.

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The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) commemorates the 12th anniversary of the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture to recognise the pain and suffering that victims and survivors of torture throughout the world has gone through. The day reminds us that torture is a crime and provides us with an opportunity to stand united and voice our opinion against torture, a cruel violation of human rights. International law states that torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment or punishment can never be justified under any circumstances.

Adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1984, the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) entered into force on 26 June 1987. It was an important step in the much-needed process of globalising human rights and acknowledging that torture, and all forms of inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, are absolutely and universally illegal and should not be condoned. There can be zero tolerance for torture. In 1997, the United Nations General Assembly decided to mark this historic date and designated 26 June each year as the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. The Convention obliges States to make torture a crime and to prosecute and punish those guilty of it. It notes explicitly that neither higher orders nor exceptional circumstances can justify torture. 

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TCHRD commemorates the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture

AS 26 JUNE 2007 marks the tenth anniversary of the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) commemorates the day in support of victims of torture throughout the world.

Torture is one of the severest forms of human rights abuses, taking a terrible toll on millions of individuals and their families across the globe. In Chinese occupied Tibet, torture is endemic in the network of prisons and detention centres across the plateau. According to TCHRD documentation, the Chinese authorities’ systematic use of torture has resulted in the death of 89 known Tibetan political prisoners since 1987.

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