PRESS CONFERENCE ON PLIGHT OF TORTURE VICTIMS

Press Briefing

PRESS CONFERENCE ON PLIGHT OF TORTURE VICTIMS

Member States of the United Nations should ratify and implement the United Nations Convention against Torture, Dr. Inge Genefke, Secretary-General of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture, said at a Headquarters press conference this morning sponsored by the Permanent Mission of Denmark. She said the low priority given by the United Nations to the issue of torture and the plight of victims was "shameful".

Dr. Genefke, a neurologist, said that 81 United Nations Member States had still not ratified the Convention, 13 years after it went into force. Of the 104 countries which had done so, many still needed to initiate actions to implement it. She urged correspondents to contact Missions to find out why the Convention had not been ratified or implemented. In 1997, the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture received only $3.4 million from 32 contributing countries. With an estimated minimum global need for funding of rehabilitation services of $25.3 million for 1997, she said there was still a wide gap to fill.

Dr. Genefke said she had been working for torture victims for more than 20 years in Denmark. The International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims was founded in 1986 to promote the provision of specialized treatment and rehabilitation services for victims of torture and their families globally. It had programmes in more than 100 countries.

She said that after many years of research, the organization now knew that torture produced a wide range of tragic physical and psychological after- effects. The primary aim of its use by about a third of the United Nations membership, she said, was to break down the identity and personality of strong people who worked for democracy. Torture methods used around the world were the same. It was used as an instrument of power against people who wanted democracy and freedom in their countries. She said: "They take them in and break them down. They send them back to their home, and there you have a formerly strong woman or man -- maybe a journalist -- not being a good journalist, or a good human rights fighter any more". They had acquired psychological and physical problems, she said, adding that the Rehabilitation Council now knew how to rehabilitate and help such victims. She also drew attention to the lack of support and resources for the medical professionals, some of whom were risking their lives, to assist victims of torture. She also called for more resources for the United Nations Special Rapporteurs for specific torture cases.

John Salzberg, Washington Representative of the Centre for Victims of Torture, said the Centre was the first comprehensive treatment centre to be established in the United States in 1985. Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, it had provided medical and psychological treatment for more than 600 survivors

of torture and their families throughout the United States. There were nearly a dozen treatment centres around the United States, he said. A few were attached to hospitals but most were independent and operated with little financial resources. The United Nations Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture was the largest regular financial source of support to the Centre for Victims of Torture for its treatment programmes.

He said the centres in the United States provided treatment to only an infinitesimal fraction of torture victims in the country. It was impossible to know their number, but it had been estimated that there might be as many as 300,000 to 400,000 victims of foreign governmental torture in the United States. "Clearly, we cannot rely only on the United Nations to provide care for these people", he said. He announced that legislation -- the Torture Victims Relief Act -- would be introduced in the United States Senate during the next session of Congress to address the needs of torture victims worldwide. A companion bill would also be introduced in the United States House of Representatives.

He said the legislation would increase United States support for the United Nations Voluntary Fund -- to which the United States was presently contributing $1.5 million -- and authorize the United States Agency for International Development to provide bilateral support for treatment programmes in other countries. It would authorize the United States Department of Health and Human Services to provide financial support for treatment programmes in the United States, as well as requesting implementation of article 3 of the Torture Convention, which prohibited returning someone to a country where that person was likely to be tortured. Under the legislation, guidelines and training would be provided for officers of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service on how to interview torture victims, and take into account the impact of torture on a victim in reviewing his or her application for refugee or asylum status.

His organization believed that the legislation would recognize the evils of torture, the need to eradicate the practice and to provide treatment to victims of torture. The fight against torture was crucial in the efforts to promote human rights and democracy around the world. Torture victims were often in the forefront of the struggle for human rights in their countries. Providing treatment to them identified the United Nations with their struggle, and helped to mobilize the world community in its efforts to ban the practice of torture, he stated.

Responding to a question, Dr. Genefke said her organization worked closely with Amnesty International but did not receive money from it, as the human rights agency had none to give away. She said it was important that perpetrators were brought before an international criminal court, because "impunity is an extremely important question". The sad fact was that there was rarely a torturer who had been punished. Former victims from some Latin

Torture Press Conference - 3 - 10 November 1997

American countries who had received treatment at the Denmark centre had reported seeing their torturers in the streets walking freely. She noted that there were provisions in the United Nations Convention against Torture whereby States parties should put on trial suspected torturers visiting their countries. It would help the fight against torture if States parties implemented those provisions.

Replying to other questions, she said that there were far more victims of torture than statistics indicated. Her organization was aware, for instance, that people were tortured in police stations in Turkey.

Mr. Salzberg said that in terms of the number of people entering the United States, either as refugees or asylum seekers, it was being discovered that a high number had been tortured or had some family member who had been a victim. There was therefore a greater need for treatment programmes in the United States. It was partly for that reason, he said, that he and Dr. Genefke had been invited by the Office of Refugee Resettlement of the Department of Health and Human Services to give an address on the subject of torture at the annual conference of the office next Thursday, 13 November.

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