Torture Debate a Mockery to Africans

From the Business Daily (Nairobi) [HERE]
By Kumi Naidoo

When activists were tortured at the hands of the South African Apartheid state police, we looked to the democratic countries of the world to condemn police brutality and call on our government to abide by internationally recognised human rights.

Because of their active criticism of the use of torture, countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, among others, were able to use their relatively clean records to shame and pressure the South African state.While it is debatable whether these countries may have employed clandestine torture in covert politics of the cold war, none of them publicly acknowledged or condoned its use. And because of this, they were able to use their "moral authority" (premised supposedly on democracy and freedom) to influence the less democratic states.

In a frightening turn, however, torture has made its way back into the public debate, with the governments that supposedly advocate democracy and freedom at the helm of its defence.

Just last week, US President George Bush all but acknowledged the use of torture against suspected terrorists, and in vetoing a bill outlawing torture, essentially condoned its practice by US officials.

In South Africa, during apartheid, the notion of terrorism was used as an instrument of widespread and systemic human rights violations by the regime. But even the apartheid state, as brutal as it was, publicly denied its use.

The evidence of widespread and routine torture and ill-treatment accumulated by health and legal practitioners and human rights monitoring organisations was simply denied. Even such a pariah state knew that publicising its use of cruel interrogation methods would place it under an even hotter international spotlight.

The sometimes scathing US State Department Reports, highlighting the abuse of detainees in numerous countries, will now seem hollow and insincere. The efforts of US politicians to advocate for political freedom and good treatment of detainees are now called into question.

Even more worrying is that evidence obtained through official cruelty is now being used in military commission trials at Guantanamo Bay. As a result the US administration is undermining its own judicial system, meaning many who have been accused under terrorism laws undoubtedly receive unfair trials.

The real test of democracy is not refraining from human rights abuses when all is going well in a society; rather, the real test is whether we can hold true to these values when there are internal and external threats.