From Le Figaro with AFP
Published 2 hours ago, updated 2 hours ago
Bangladesh police use “lathis,” long wooden or bamboo sticks, to quell a demonstration. MUNIR UZ ZAMAN / AFP
Spiked batons, cage beds, thumb cuffs, spiked shields… These tools worthy of the Middle Ages are still used by law enforcement agencies around the world.
A UN expert specializing in torture prevention called on Thursday, October 12, for a ban on 20 “modern torture tools” used by law enforcement agencies around the world, some of which are worthy of “Middle Eastern torturers.”
“The items on my prohibited list are nothing less than modern-day torture tools. They are as terrible as the torture rods and thumbs used by torturers in the Middle Ages,” said Alice Edwards, Special Rapporteur on Torture, presenting her report to a UN General Assembly committee. These 20 tools are “inherently cruel, inhumane or degrading” and were designed “with the sole purpose of causing pain,” she added during a press conference.
Unbearable pain
On this list are “old-fashioned” instruments such as spiked sticks, cage beds, thumb cuffs, spiked shields, “sjamboks” (traditional whips), “lathis” (long wooden sticks or bamboo) or even chains that bind prisoners together. Some “remember the painful and degrading images associated with slavery and servitude,” denounced the expert commissioned by the United Nations, who does not speak on behalf of the organization.
The list also includes balaclavas, headbands and spit protection hoods as well as electric shock weapons, but also more sophisticated equipment such as millimeter wave weapons. These energy weapons are designed to “heat the top layer of skin when aimed at a crowd, causing people to scatter from the unbearable pain without knowing where it is coming from,” she explained.
A “significant increase in torture allegations”
According to his research, 335 companies in 54 countries in every region of the world manufacture or market these 20 tools. Beyond their immediate ban, countries are asked to take stock of their law enforcement equipment and destroy these tools if they are part of it. The rapporteur also called for an international treaty banning trade in these tools, whose “tentacles extend throughout the world,” and hoped for a UN General Assembly resolution to begin negotiations in this direction.
More generally, she also noted that there had been a “significant increase in allegations of torture” over the past year, particularly “war-related torture.” She pointed the finger at Russia, whose forces in Ukraine face “credible allegations”: “My recent visit to Ukraine confirmed the worst, this pattern suggests that torture is a Russian state policy.” “Unfortunately, in torture and other inhumane treatment in the conflicts in Haiti, Mali, Burma, Sudan and Yemen,” she added, expressing concern about the frequency of “sexual torture.”