Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) commemorates the seventh United Nations international day in support of victims of torture on 26 June 2004. The UN proclaimed day is in support and solidarity with those who have suffered from torture and undergone physical pain and mental trauma. The day also calls for the end of torture throughout the world.
Torture is a regular feature in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) despite the fact that the PRC ratified the UN Convention Against Torture (CAT) and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment in October 1988 and outlawed certain forms of torture in the revised Chinese Criminal Procedure Law, that came into effect in 1997. Systematic torture is still endemic in the Chinese administered prisons in Tibet. Torture is still being used for purposes of extracting confessions, to defeat Tibetan prisoners nationalist spirit, to intimidate prisoners and to cause humiliation and mental trauma that affect the prisoners for the rest of their lives.