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	Interview with Manfred Nowak - UN Special Rapporteur on Torture by Marion Kraske Der Spiegel Germany   Vienna. March 30, 2006   Manfred Nowak, the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, travels the world to expose human rights violations in so-called "rogue states." Now he is directing his attention at the United States.   When asked where torture conditions are cruelest in the world, Manfred Nowak frowns. Perhaps in Mongolia, he replies, thoughtfully. There, death row prisoners are abandoned for weeks at a time with their hands and feet bound. "Someone who"s waiting to be executed doesn"t need to be made to suffer in that way," he says.    For the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, a 55-year-old lawyer, human agony -- abused bodies, crushed skulls, broken bones -- is a daily concern. The post the UN Human Rights Commission assigned to him a year ago is a difficult one. For the next three years, he will work without pay to enforce the worldwide ban on torture. His work will take him to places where civilization ends and barbarity begins: the dungeons of countries that could care less about human rights. "There are quite a few of them," he says.   In everyday life, Nowak is a university professor at the Vienna University"s Law Faculty. Few would suspect that Nowak, is fighting torture in the far corners of the world.   The UN Human Rights Council, Nowak explains, will be a permanent forum. The Human Rights Commission that it will replace meets only once a year, in April. "So if you want to violate human rights," the lawyer advises his young listeners with a wry smile, "the best time to do it is May. Then it will take almost a year for the case to reach the UN."   "Torture takes many forms."   That"s the theory. In practice, things are much harsher. Each week, Nowak receives hundreds of calls for help from desperate relatives all over the world, via his UN office in Geneva. When the frequency of the reports increases, the torture expert pays a visit to the politically powerful and asks to be allowed into the dark world of penal institutions. Amazingly enough, he is often allowed in. Speaking to detainees, including those on death row, he traces the brutal paths of violence. "Torture," he says, "takes many forms."   Sometimes bare fists ram into defenseless bodies, sometimes rifle butts come crushing down on heads. Little could be more painful than when genitalia are wired up to electric currents. Burning cigarettes dig into raw flesh. And sometimes revolver barrels are thrust into open mouths of prisoners -- the trigger is pulled in a mock execution, putting the victim in a total state of mental agony.   But can torture be reduced to physical violence? There are subtler forms of the cruel craft, as the UN rapporteur has discovered repeatedly during his globetrotting travels. Like solitary confinement: In the Mongolian high-security prison Tahir Soyot, near Ulan Bator, the detainees are slowly and cruelly driven insane. The solitude of this rarely visited place, practically at the end of the planet, is infinite. For many detainees, Nowak is the first person they have spoken to in a long time. Nowak remembers how guards had to break open the cell of one death row prisoner. "They needed five minutes to open the security lock," the lawyer recounts, his voice quavering.   An Annual Treatise on Global Cruelty   Nowak fastidiously summarizes the accounts before passing them on to the Human Rights Commission. Each year, he must file his report by March, the deadline for the UN"s annual treatise on torture around the world.   There is no shortage of cases for Nowak to report. Take the example of the prison in Tbilisi, Georgia, where detainees are crowded together as if in a rathole. The cell is bitingly cold, damp and dirty. Forty-one prisoners share 16 beds. Still, despite the inhumanity he encountered in Caucasia, Nowak says it was a good trip -- thanks mainly to the cooperative authorities. "It was a fruitful starting point for working together," he says.    Back in the 1970s, a victim of Chile"s military dictatorship told the young lawyer about the terrible pain he had suffered at the hands of General Pinochet"s junta. It was an encounter that changed everything for the young assistant at Vienna University"s Institute for State and Administrative Law. "The stories were so cruel," Nowak remembers, "it was unbearable."   Today, he says, it"s not so much in "strong states" (as he calls them) but mainly in feebler political entities that policemen and military officers abuse their defenseless victims. Torture is an efficient way for extracting a quick confession. For years now, the Nepalese royal family has engaged in a ferocious war with the country"s Maoist rebels. The torture being practiced there is just as ferocious as the fighting. One popular method of torture in the Himalayan country is the so-called "falanga," which involves dealing carefully aimed blows to the soles of the victim"s feet. It is an extremely painful method that hardly leaves behind any visible traces. But Nowak isn"t easily deceived by the people in uniform he interrogates as part of his work. If he has to, he can use a harsh tone of voice. In Kathmandu, Nowak probed one prison guard until he finally elicited a reluctant admission: "A little bit of torture helps."   Nowak has no army or police force to help him gain access to torture chambers. In that sense, he"s engaged in a David vs. Goliath battle against the world"s torturers. His only real help comes from a handful of human rights defenders. Otherwise, Nowak must rely on cooperation from authorities in the countries he investigates.   But who wants to be closely observed if they have something to hide? Neither Egypt, Algeria nor Syria ever replied to Nowak"s requests for permission to visit. In drastic cases, Nowak can dispatch an "urgent action" notice -- his most powerful weapon. One such case was that of three young men who have been chained from head to toe in a Mozambique prison for almost six years. In such cases, Nowak writes to the Foreign Ministry and requests a clarification. But that"s about all he can do.   That, of course, makes Nowak"s most-recent coup even more astounding: he was the first UN delegate to be given permission by Beijing to visit the countless penal institutions scattered across the country. Members of the political opposition and dissidents of every kind are mercilessly locked away in the country. Re-education is the mantra the Communist Party invokes to secure its claim to total authority. The documented cases of abuse are countless. A respected businesswoman from the western Chinese city of Urumqi was placed in solitary confinement for years because she had spoken to members of the United States Congress about her country"s desolate human rights record. Day after day she had to sit on a small wooden stool and stare motionless at the ground for hours on end.   Notwithstanding official invitations and warm welcomes, Nowak repeatedly deals with cover-ups and carefully planned disruptive measures. Regime critics the Austrian lawyer wanted to meet in Beijing were temporarily taken out of the city and placed under police surveillance for days. Others were intimidated before he arrived. A member of the illegal Falun Gong sect was in tears when she told Nowak she couldn"t speak to him out of fear of repression.   Taking on Guantánamo   But these days, the human rights expert is directing his attention at a country that is not considered a so-called rogue state, but rather presents itself as the world"s bastion of democracy and human rights: the United States of America. Nowak believes the US has lost its innocence since the terror attacks of September 11. Of greatest concern to Nowak are the intensified interrogation measures employed by the superpower in its war against terror. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized 24 "resistance-breaking" interrogation tactics specifically for the scandal-ridden prison in Abu Ghraib -- forcing prisoners to remain in physically painful positions, threatening them with dogs and questioning them when they were naked. All these methods are part of the repertoire of countries classically affiliated with torture.   Nowak has harshly criticized this "take the gloves off" policy, as it was described by former CIA anti-terrorism chief Cofer Black. "Washington tried to set new standards," he says. But it"s a dangerous development and the UN expert fears that Washington"s moves may encourage other countries to interpret the international torture ban more loosely. "It must be possible to fight terror within the framework of international law," he states categorically, adding that "torture is an injustice -- in every instance."   So is it acceptable to put limits on human rights if it will help prevent terror? "There"s a limit," Nowak says. In the case of the US detention camp at Guantánamo, he adds, that limit has definitely been overstepped. "Detainees are kept there for years, without access to an independent court, without any formal charges. We"ve got enough proof." In February, Nowak and his colleagues at the UN published a report in which they sharply condemned the situation at Guantánamo and called for its closure. The treatment of the detainees, the experts concluded in their report, is cruel and unusual punishment. The practice of force-feeding detainees by violently inserting rubber tubes into their noses might even be seen as torture.   The US State Department rejected the report, saying it was "largely without merit," pointing out that the UN experts never set foot in Guantánamo Bay and claiming that the report had been based purely on hearsay. Washington had a point: Nowak had intended to inspect the detention camp personally. But US officials refused to let him go there and the limits to the rapporteur"s possibilities were exposed once more. The inspection of Guantánamo was supposed to take place under the same conditions as prison inspections elsewhere in the world. Nowak was supposed to be able to talk to prisoners without the presence of any guards, but Rumsfeld has categorically refused to permit such talks. Nowak is welcome to inspect empty cells, Rumsfeld has said, but direct contact with the detainees is out of the question.   "In the end, it"s just absurd," Nowak says. "The very government that urged China to respect the usual minimum standards during my visit to Beijing is now refusing to respect those standards itself."
	Resolving the past can bring solutions by Amnesty International Argentina   29 March 2006   The decision by the executive to open the military archives from the years of military government in Argentina should receive a positive and immediate response from the armed forces in order to fully clarify what happened during the country’s darkest years, said Virginia Shoppee, Amnesty International’s researcher on Argentina.   By having full access to the documentation contained in the armed forces archives, as decreed by the Defence Minister, the courts will have the opportunity to make progress in the investigations they have initiated, making it easier for them to find out what happened to the disappeared and ensuring that truth and justice are attained.   This measure, which victims’ relatives and human rights organizations have been demanding for three decades, is vital if the armed forces and the courts are to respond to the demands of the Argentinian people. It is also important to ensure that all necessary measures are taken to protect the documentation contained in the archives.   "The Argentinian Government has taken a key step in the search for truth and justice as regards past crimes," said Virginia Shoppee.   "However, a country that is truly committed to respecting human rights should also look to the present and take decisive action to protect all human rights, civil and political as well as economic, social and cultural. Human rights are indivisible and it is not possible to choose to protect just some of them, they are all crucial for human dignity and development. It is essential to establish the social and economic conditions, as well as the necessary legal guarantees, so that everyone can enjoy those rights and fundamental freedoms in practice," said Virginia Shoppee.   General information   On 22 March 2006, two days before the thirtieth anniversary of the coup, the Defence Minister, Nilda Garré, instructed the Secretariat for Military Affairs, by means of decree 825/05, to guarantee unrestricted access to any Armed Forces documentation or databases that may be of interest to investigations into the mass human rights violations committed under the military government (1976-1983).   The order extends to the archives of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces, the General Chiefs of Staff of the Army, Navy and Air Force, the Armed Forces Supreme Court and "any department or division" of the Defence Ministry. The documentation will be made available to the National Memory Archive.
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