No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treat-in ent or punishment.
—The Universal Declaration of
Human Rights
Virtually every nation on earth subscribes to that straightforward principle. Yet like most other U.N. pledges, the clause is widely and brutally ignored. It is one of the grim truths of the second half of the 20th century that rarely before in history has torture been in such widespread use. Amnesty International, the widely respected human rights organization headquartered in London, estimates that in the last decade torture has been officially practiced in 60 countries; last year alone there were more than 40 violating states. From Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay to Guinea, Uganda, Spain, Iran and the Soviet Union, torture has become a common instrument of state policy practiced against almost anyone ruling cliques see as a threat to their power. Torture, says Marc Schreiber, director of the U.N.'s Commission on Human Rights, "is a phenomenon of our times."
Throughout much of the world, army barracks, police stations, offices and special wards in hospitals have been turned into interrogation centers, whose express purpose is inflicting hideous and often unbearable pain. There is a new subculture of terror with its own language and rituals (see box). There is also a new technology, involving sophisticated devices that can destroy a prisoner's will in a matter of hours, but leave no visible signs or marks of brutality.
Overwhelming Evidence. Governments that routinely use torture as an instrument of state policy generally deny that such practices exist. At the same time, the difficulty of making unhindered investigations of conditions in closed societies and police states virtually guarantees that many abuses remain uncovered. Torture, moreover, is a most murky area, rife with exaggerated claims, politically motivated propaganda and just plain misinformation. Nonetheless, independent human rights organizations, reporters and others have managed through interviews and on-the-scene investigations to compile a credible and apparently accurate record of torture in many parts of the world.
In some places the evidence of torture is overwhelming and irrefutable. The brutality of General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte's regime in Chile, for example, has become something of an embarrassment to the Ford Administration. Last May, Treasury Secretary William Simon helped secure the release of at least 49 political prisoners. Shortly afterward, at the June meeting of the Organization of American States in Santiago, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made his strongest statement yet on human rights. "A government that tramples on the rights of its citizens denies the purpose of its existence," Kissinger announced, adding: "There are several states where fundamental standards of human behavior are not observed."