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Last January, for example, Brazilian President Ernesto Geisel dismissed General Eduardo D'Avila Mela, the commander of the second army in Sao Paulo and a notorious advocate of torture. That seemed to reduce the mistreatment of prisoners in the city, but there was a flurry of new charges that prisoners in Rio were being tortured. Some civil rights activists believe that the São Paulo torturers simply shifted their operations to Rio. "There is a national network of torturers," says one ex-prisoner and torture victim; "they coordinate their work. It is a system and therefore very powerful."
What, if anything, can be done? "Make torture as unthinkable as slavery," answers David Hawk, the executive director of Amnesty International's New York branch. As Hawk well knows, that laudable goal is not easy to achieve—no easier, certainly, than the abolition of slavery was. Amnesty itself has had some limited success in securing the release of individual prisoners by means of letter-writing campaigns and appeals to conscience directed at government officials.
Still Sensitive. Most countries are at least somewhat sensitive to foreign public opinion, if only because they fear that a bad human rights record could interfere with economic and military aid programs or foreign investments. Secretary Kissinger sensibly argues that U.S. foreign policy cannot be based on personal moral beliefs. Nonetheless, it does seem possible that regimes such as those of South Korea, Chile and Uruguay, which are heavily dependent on American support, could be nudged into loosening some of their grip by threats from Washington to withhold aid.
Little leverage, however, can be brought against such largely self-sufficient and comparatively wealthy states as Iran, Brazil and the Philippines—or for that matter even against such smaller countries as the African dictatorships.
One widespread hope is that torture-prone dictatorships will be overthrown, like the junta in Greece. But generally the odds are against such regimes being replaced by more benign ones, especially in countries where democracy and human rights have feeble roots to begin with. Another hope is that dictatorships will gain enough of a sense of security to cut out at least the routine use of the worst brutalities. Meanwhile, about the only avenues left are publicity and prayer—and, perhaps, keeping alive in memory a statement made by Vladimir Hertzog, a Brazilian journalist found dead a few hours after being detained in Sao Paulo last October. Said Hertzog: "If we lose our capacity to be outraged when we see others submitted to atrocities, then we lose our right to call ourselves civilized human beings."