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	It is torture’s cycle of impunity that keeps it alive by Amnesty International   On the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention against Torture, the man in charge of pushing states to stamp out the despicable practice, a torture survivor himself, looks back at his harrowing experience and the challenges facing the global fight against torture.   When one cold morning in 1975, young Argentinean human rights lawyer Juan Mendez saw two police officers vigorously walking towards him on a quiet street in Buenos Aires, he immediately knew he was in great danger.   It was a time of upheaval. As the violent military junta was in the process of taking power by force his work on behalf of political prisoners was a dangerous, life-threatening business.   Without uttering a word, the officers grabbed Juan, blindfolded him, shoved him into a car and took him to a police station. A few hours later they handed him over to the intelligence services.   “At the time I knew full well that all those accused of being ‘subversives’ were tortured ruthlessly. The first thing that came to my mind when the police took me is that I had to stay strong and not reveal anything that could lead to the detention and torture of other colleagues,” said Juan Mendez.   His suspicions were spot-on. The questioning, which went on for nearly three days, was ruthless. Interrogators electrocuted him while asking him about his work and the people he knew. They did the unthinkable to try and get him to reveal names, addresses, phone numbers and anything that would lead to more arrests and more torture.   On one occasion, an officer put a gun inside the Juan’s mouth and pulled the trigger. The gun was empty.   “I was very scared during the interrogations. Twice they had to call a doctor to check if they could continue torturing me without killing me. Only then did I realize that I could die. But when you are in that situation you live minute by minute, thinking of the moment when the torturers will get tired and stop so you can have a break,” he explained.   On the third day and without warning or an explanation, Juan was transferred to a prison. He was held there for 18 months, without charge, before being released and forced into exile. He was put on a plane and flown to France where he was reunited with his wife and young children, who were already living in exile.   “When I arrived in France I had mixed emotions as I knew I was leaving many people behind, in terrible situations. I was lucky to be able to leave but starting over with a young family was very hard,” he said.   “All the years I spent abroad I was obsessed with what was happening in Argentina. I moved to Washington and there I was in constant communication with human rights groups and became specialized in the issue of torture.”   Over the course of Argentina’s eight year-long violent dictatorship, thousands of people were arbitrarily arrested, taken to secret detention centres and tortured, many as punishment for their legitimate human rights work: 30,000 are still missing.   Similar stories of torture and other ill-treatment had been emerging from all corners of the world, but it wasn’t until the publication of Amnesty International’s ground-breaking study in 1973 that the true extent of the use of torture came to light.   The 225-page document kick-stated the world’s first ever global campaign against torture. Activists took to the streets demanding government action, celebrities started speaking out about the prevalence of the unlawful practice. It inspired lawyers to develop a convention that would provide concrete tools for preventing and prosecuting torture as an international crime. It was a treaty that would bind those states who had signed up to investigate torture wherever it happened, and bring those responsible to justice.   After years of serious, at times heated debate, the Convention against Torture was adopted at the 1984 United Nations General Assembly.   It was a landmark moment. “The Convention against Torture was a very significant milestone in the fight against torture because it incorporates very specific obligations on states to investigate, prosecute and punish every incident of torture,” Mendez said.   Among the 33 articles of the treaty, states agreed to create the Committee against Torture to oversee its implementation. In 1985, the post of Special Rapporteur on Torture was set up. Unlike the Convention, the Special Rapporteur’s mandate is not limited to those states that have joined it, but rather covers all UN member states.   Any victim of torture or other ill-treatment can complain to the Special Rapporteur, who then writes to the government with questions and at the very least issues implicit demands for action. The Special Rapporteur visits prisons and prisoners all around the world (at states’ invitation) and reports to the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council annually.   In 2010, Juan Mendez was appointed as Special Rapporteur on Torture. The effects of the challenge that the USA posed to the prohibition of torture in its response to the atrocities on 9/11 were still felt.   “Before 9/11 I think we had a clear consensus, a moral consensus around the world that torture was unacceptable and that there were no circumstance that could justify it. That is still true in legal terms, but in terms of the attitude of the public I think we have lost ground amongst fears of terrorism and common street crime. There is a sense that torture is inevitable, necessary and somehow acceptable,” Mendez explained.   Mendez feels his job as Special Rapporteur on Torture is sometimes impossible.   Mandated with keeping 194 countries in check you would expect to see a well-staffed office with experts and administrative support. It is not. It is just Juan and a part time staff member. Sometimes it is like David fighting against Goliath.   “If we had more resources, we could do a lot more. We have a lot of financial restrictions as we can only do a couple of missions a year. But the main problem is the lack of support from governments,” he explained.   The lack of political will from governments who often ignore his requests to visit or turn them down without explanation is what frustrates him the most.   During his four years in office, Mendez has visited more than a dozen countries – including Mexico, Tajikistan, Morocco, Tunisia and Kyrgyzstan. Many others have shut the door on him – such as Bahrain and Guatemala -- or even failed to respond to his requests.   Part of Mendez’s job is to persuade governments to agree to his visits, on his terms. He insists on having unlimited access to all detention facilities and be able to speak to anybody held there, unaccompanied by officials. But many governments do not agree to being inspected.   “Some experiences have been very frustrating. For example, I have just returned from a visit to Gambia and after arriving the government changed the terms of the visit which we could not accept so we ended up not visiting the prisons. The US government has also been challenging. I have been asking to visit Guantánamo for three years and they have accepted but say I would not be able to talk to any of the inmates so I was not able to accept that. Also, they have never responded to my request to visit prisons inside US territory.”   When visits take place, Mendez puts together a highly qualified team of consultants and volunteers including researchers, lawyers and forensic experts who travel with him.   They inspect prisons, pre-trial detention centres, police stations, mental health institutions and immigration detention centres speaking to inmates in private about the treatment they receive. While the visit to the country is coordinated with the government, visits to specific prisons are unannounced so authorities never know where and when the team will knock on their door.   Mendez says the struggle against torture is an uphill one but acknowledged there have been many successes.   Solitary confinement is now widely considered a form of ill-treatment and some countries have adopted laws to ban torture.   He says that many challenges remain before torture is truly stamped out.   “The only real way to eliminate torture is to ensure those responsible are brought to justice. It is torture’s cycle of impunity that keeps it alive. The Convention was a very positive development but the real challenge is to ensure States take aggressive and decisive action to end torture. It will not happen overnight but it can happen,” Mendez said.   http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Torture/SRTorture/Pages/SRTortureIndex.aspx Visit the related web page
	The global movement for a Robin Hood Tax has been steadily growing by Robin Hood Tax Campaign, Oxfam United Kingdom   Jan 2015   Senior Democrats throw their weight behind the Robin Hood Tax.   Yesterday, senior Democrat members of the US House of Representatives (America’s lower house, similar to our House of Commons) announced that they are backing a Robin Hood Tax based on the European model!   After a speech criticising the “high roller” nature of Wall Street banks, Representative Chris Van Hollen (who is the most senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee) announced that the party were looking to introduce a tax on financial transactions to curb “excessive speculation”, particularly in the form of “computerized high-speed trading”. He also recognised that - due to the sheer volume of financial trading - a Robin Hood Tax could be a powerful revenue-generating tool, good for at least tens of billions of dollars a year.   In the Democrats’ House Budget Committee Action Plan, Rep. Van Hollen noted how the...European Union is moving toward a trading fee of 0.1 percent that would raise as much as €37 billion (roughly $44 billion) per year and... that there is no reason why the United States should not also move forward in concert with others.   This is a huge step forward for our sister campaign in America who have tirelessly told their politicians about the Robin Hood Tax moving forward in Europe - demonstrating that taxing the banks to raise much-needed money is a sensible way to proceed.   http://www.cepr.net/index.php/press-releases/press-releases/baker-statement-on-ftt-and-democrat-proposal http://robinhoodtax.org.uk/latest/category/international http://www.tai.org.au/content/australia%E2%80%99s-tobin-tax-arguments-and-evidence http://www.oxfam.org/en/campaign-with-us/robin-hood-tax http://www.robinhoodtax.org/   Dec 2014   Our year started with a bang: we launched Future News, our latest film. Short, funny and informative – it has now been watched more than half a million times! At the end of the film, we asked you to back the Million Strong campaign – to get a million actions backing a strong Robin Hood Tax in Europe that helps the world’s poorest people and the planet.   You answered in your hundreds of thousands, with the petition now at more than 940,000!   This year, the global movement for a Robin Hood Tax has been steadily growing. In the US, in September, over a thousand Robins turned out for a climate march in front of the UN building in New York. In Australia, nurses calling for a Robin Hood Tax toured the country in November, ending up at the G20 in Brisbane. We held stunts outside the Italian finance ministry and the European Commission. These efforts culminated in a European Day of Action in December when massive projections were cast on government buildings in European capital cities demanding leadership on the Robin Hood Tax. And the public pressure is working: this month, Europe’s leaders threw their weight behind the introduction of a Robin Hood Tax during 2015 with revenues to start flowing by the end of the year.   But banks are fighting back. They’re hoping to worm out of paying to clean up the mess they’ve made of the economy; all this despite yet another scandal-ridden year, with billions in fines paid out for foreign exchange market rigging and other misdemeanors. They’ve found support in the guise of Chancellor George Osborne, who has spent nearly £200,000 of public money batting for bankers in Europe, including a failed legal challenge to block the European Robin Hood Tax. In response, we’ve taken the battle to the banks, hijacking coverage of Barclays AGM in London in June and highlighting their wrongdoings throughout the year.   Today we have helped break a story in the Independent that since 2008, banks and building societies have received 19.7 million complaints - that is a rate of one every ten seconds around the clock for 6 years. Even more astounding is the level of fines: an astronomical £166bn since the start of the financial crisis. I"m sure you"d agree that if they can fork out so much in penalties without making a fuss about it, they can certainly afford to pay a modest Robin Hood Tax without having to whine about it!   And the money is certainly needed. The age of austerity continues unabated with almost a million people visiting foodbanks in 2014. People are taking action in to their own hands with thousands calling on their local councillors to back a UK Robin Hood Tax. So far, 64 councils (representing a quarter of the UK population) have backed the campaign. They understand that an under-taxed financial sector can - and should - plug the holes in the economy. And with £20bn up for grabs, we’re looking to redouble our efforts in the run-up to May"s general election to make our political leaders understand that there are alternatives to relentless cuts and the Robin Hood Tax is a leading candidate.   http://robinhoodpetition.org/?lang=en http://robinhoodtax.org.uk/latest/great-year-sherwood   Nov 2014   Banks pay out £166 billion over six years: a history of banking misdeeds and fines, report Julia Kollewe, Jill Treanor and Shane Hickey.   From Libor rigging and sanction busting to forex manipulation, a look back at the global banking industry’s offences and penalties.   The global banking industry racked up more than £166bn in fines, settlement fees and provisions between 2009 and 2013, the CCP Research Foundation has found. Offences range from Libor rigging and currency market manipulation to breaching sanctions against Iran and Sudan, money laundering for Mexican drug barons and abusive mortgage practices in the US.   The latest penalties have seen five major banks being fined £2bn for rigging the £3.5tn-a-day foreign exchange markets.   Research led by academic Roger McCormick at the CCP Research Foundation shows 10 large banks, including RBS, Barclays, HSBC and Lloyds Banking Group, incurred £166.63bn in fines and provisions between 2009 and 2013.   This year is shaping up to be another big year for bank penalties. Bank of America’s $16bn (£10bn) settlement over allegations of mis-selling mortgage-backed securities took the total for the first eight months of 2014 to more than £31bn, surpassing the total for the whole of 2013. Some of this is already included in the CCP figure as provisions.   In 2012, five large US banks agreed to pay $25bn to settle charges over abusive methods to foreclose on homeowners. It was the largest US settlement since the tobacco industry agreed to pay more than $200bn compensation to victims of smoking-related diseases in 1998.   More was to come. A smaller, collective settlement of $8.5bn came in January 2013 when 10 big financial institutions settled claims of foreclosure abuses.   There have also been a number of individual settlements: Bank of America’s $16bn settlement in August was the biggest related to the sale of mortgage-backed securities.   Citigroup agreed to pay $7bn to settle a federal investigation into toxic mortgage products the bank sold in the runup to the crisis.   JP Morgan Chase agreed a $13bn settlement after a string of investigations into its risky mortgage deals.   Deutsche Bank settled for $1.9bn over the sale of mortgage-backed securities to US taxpayer-owned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.   Morgan Stanley agreed a £1.25bn settlement over the sale of faulty mortgage-backed securities.   UBS reached a $885m settlement over claims it mis-sold mortgage-backed bonds during the housing bubble.   Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks was fined $968m for abusive mortgage practices.   RBS is still awaiting a fine for these practices.   British and American authorities have fined banks more than $3bn as part of their ongoing investigations into rigging of the benchmark Libor rate. Fines from the Financial Conduct Authority alone for Libor rigging total £532m.   Barclays, which was at the heart of the scandal, was fined £290m by regulators in the US and UK. Lloyds was fined £218m. Swiss bank UBS and brokerage Icap have also paid penalties.   Five banks were fined a total of £2bn by UK and US regulators – £1.1bn from the UK regulator and the rest from US authorities.   The fines were a record from the FCA: UBS was given the biggest penalty, at £233m followed by £225m for Citibank, JPMorgan at £222m, RBS at £217m, and £216m for HSBC. Barclays has yet to settle. In the US, the regulator fined Citibank and JP Morgan $310m each, $290m each for RBS and UBS, and $275m for HSBC.   France’s biggest bank, BNP Paribas, reached a $8.97bn settlement with the US authorities in July 2014 for violating sanctions against Iran, Cuba and Sudan.   In 2012 Standard Chartered agreed to pay a $340m fine to the US regulator. It was accused of scheming with Iran to hide billions of pounds’ worth of transactions from the authorities, leaving the financial system susceptible to “terrorists” and “drug kingpins”.   In 2012, HSBC paid $1.9bn to settle US money laundering allegations, including for Mexican drug barons.   Barclays has been given a £330m penalty from US energy regulators for allegations of rigging electricity markets. It is contesting the fine. In May, Barclays was fined £26m for failing to stop the price of gold being manipulated.   Credit Suisse in May pleaded guilty to criminal charges that it helped Americans evade taxes, leading to a fine of $2.6bn.   Barclays has faced a series of fines, including a £50m penalty from the FCA for its actions during the bank’s fundraising from Middle Eastern investors in 2008. Barclays is contesting the fine. It was also fined £38m by the FCA in September for breaching rules requiring it to keep its clients’ money separate from its own.   UK banks have paid out more than £23bn in compensation to customers who were mis-sold payment protection insurance – but no fines have been imposed on them for what is now the UK’s biggest and costliest mis-selling scandal.   http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/12/banks-fined-200bn-six-years-history-banking-penalties-libor-forex Visit the related web page
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