The Business of Torture

Title:The Business of TortureWord Count:1035Summary:As awareness of human rights increased, as theirdefinition expanded and as new, oftenauthoritarian polities, resorted to torture andrepression - human rights advocates andnon-governmental organizations proliferated.

Keywords:Article Body:On January 16, 2003, the European Court of HumanRights agreed - more than two years after theapplications have been filed - to hear six casesfiled by Chechens against Russia. The claimantsaccuse the Russian military of torture andindiscriminate killings. The Court has ruled inthe past against the Russian Federation andawarded assorted plaintiffs thousands of eurosper case in compensation.As awareness of human rights increased, as theirdefinition expanded and as new, oftenauthoritarian polities, resorted to torture andrepression - human rights advocates andnon-governmental organizations proliferated. Ithas become a business in its own right: lawyers,consultants, psychologists, therapists, law

enforcement agencies, scholars and punditstirelessly peddle books, seminars, conferences,therapy sessions for victims, court appearancesand other services.Human rights activists target mainly countriesand multinationals.In June 2001, the International Labor Rights Fundfiled a lawsuit on behalf of 11 villagers againstthe American oil behemoth, ExxonMobile, for\"abetting\" abuses in Aceh, Indonesia. Theyalleged that the company provided the army withequipment for digging mass graves and helped inthe construction of interrogation and torturecenters.In November 2002, the law firm of Cohen, Milstein,Hausfeld & Toll joined other American and SouthAfrican law firms in filing a complaint that\"seeks to hold businesses responsible for aidingand abetting the apartheid regime in South

Africa ... forced labor, genocide, extrajudicialkilling, torture, sexual assault, and unlawfuldetention\".Among the accused: \"IBM and ICL which provided thecomputers that enabled South Africa to ...control the black South African population. Carmanufacturers provided the armored vehicles thatwere used to patrol the townships. Armsmanufacturers violated the embargoes on sales toSouth Africa, as did the oil companies. The banksprovided the funding that enabled South Africa toexpand its police and security apparatus.\"Charges were leveled against Unocal in Myanmarand dozens of other multinationals. In September2002, Berger & Montague filed a class actioncomplaint against Royal Dutch Petroleum and ShellTransport. The oil giants are charged with\"purchasing ammunition and using ... helicoptersand boats and providing logistical support for'Operation Restore Order in Ogoniland'\" which was

designed, according to the law firm, to\"terrorize the civilian population into endingpeaceful protests against Shell'senvironmentally unsound oil exploration andextraction activities\".The defendants in all these court cases stronglydeny any wrongdoing.But this is merely one facet of the torturebusiness.Torture implements are produced - mostly in theWest - and sold openly, frequently to nastyregimes in developing countries and even throughthe Internet. Hi-tech devices abound:sophisticated electroconvulsive stun guns,painful restraints, truth serums, chemicals suchas pepper gas. Export licensing is universallyminimal and non-intrusive and completely ignoresthe technical specifications of the goods (forinstance, whether they could be lethal, or merely

inflict pain).Amnesty International and the UK-based OmegaFoundation, found more than 150 manufacturers ofstun guns in the USA alone. They face toughcompetition from Germany (30 companies), Taiwan(19), France (14), South Korea (13), China (12),South Africa (nine), Israel (eight), Mexico (six),Poland (four), Russia (four), Brazil (three),Spain (three) and the Czech Republic (two).Many torture implements pass through \"off-shore\"supply networks in Austria, Canada, Indonesia,Kuwait, Lebanon, Lithuania, Macedonia, Albania,Russia, Israel, the Philippines, Romania andTurkey. This helps European Union based companiescircumvent legal bans at home. The US governmenthas traditionally turned a blind eye to theinternational trading of such gadgets.American high-voltage electro-shock stun shieldsturned up in Turkey, stun guns in Indonesia, and

electro-shock batons and shields, anddart-firing taser guns in torture-prone SaudiArabia. American firms are the dominantmanufacturers of stun belts. Explains DennisKaufman, President of Stun Tech Inc, a USmanufacturer of this innovation: ''Electricityspeaks every language known to man. Notranslation necessary. Everybody is afraid ofelectricity, and rightfully so.'' (Quoted byAmnesty International).The Omega Foundation and Amnesty claim that 49 UScompanies are also major suppliers of mechanicalrestraints, including leg-irons and thumbcuffs.But they are not alone. Other suppliers are foundin Germany (8), France (5), China (3), Taiwan (3),South Africa (2), Spain (2), the UK (2) and SouthKorea (1).Not surprisingly, the Commerce Departmentdoesn't keep tab on this category of exports.

Nor is the money sloshing around negligible.Records kept under the export control commoditynumber A985 show that Saudi Arabia alone spent inthe United States more than $1 million a yearbetween 1997-2000 merely on stun guns.Venezuela's bill for shock batons and suchreached $3.7 million in the same period. Otherclients included Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mexico and -surprisingly - Bulgaria. Egypt's notoriouslybrutal services - already well-equipped - spenta mere $40,000.The United States is not the only culprit. TheEuropean Commission, according to an AmnestyInternational report titled \"Stopping theTorture Trade\" and published in 2001:\"Gave a quality award to a Taiwaneseelectro-shock baton, but when challenged couldnot cite evidence as to independent safety testsfor such a baton or whether member states of theEuropean Union (EU) had been consulted. Most EU

states have banned the use of such weapons at home,but French and German companies are still allowedto supply them to other countries.\"Torture expertise is widely proffered by formersoldiers, agents of the security services maderedundant, retired policemen and even roguemedical doctors. China, Israel, South Africa,France, Russia, the United kingdom and the UnitedStates are founts of such useful knowledge and itspropagators.How rooted torture is was revealed in September1996 when the US Department of Defense admittedthat ''intelligence training manuals'' were usedin the Federally sponsored School of the Americas- one of 150 such facilities - between 1982 and1991.The manuals, written in Spanish and used totrain thousands of Latin American security agents,\"advocated execution, torture, beatings andblackmail\", says Amnesty International.

Where there is demand there is supply. Rather thanignore the discomfiting subject, governmentswould do well to legalize and supervise it. AlanDershowitz, a prominent American criminaldefense attorney, proposed, in an op-ed articlein the Los Angeles Times, published November 8,2001, to legalize torture in extreme cases and tohave judges issue \"torture warrants\". This may bea radical departure from the human rightstradition of the civilized world. But dispensingexport carefully reviewed licenses for dual-useimplements is a different matter altogether - andlong overdue.