U.N. Convention against Torture

THE U.N. DAY in support of the victims of torture was observed on June 26. It was on this day 14 years ago that the United Nations adopted the Convention against Torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading practices. On the occasion of the 14th anniversary, Mr. Justice Verma, Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, pointed to India's deeply disappointing failure to ratify the Convention. On the one hand, it is hard to defend torture. On the other hand, custodial torture is rampant; either to get the victim to confess, or, perhaps, given the tardiness and tedium of the legal process, simply to `teach him a lesson'. So far is this carried that a number of people die in police custody every year. The question of torture, specifically, was taken up by the U.N. only in 1973, following the Report on Torture that was put together by Amnesty International. But the way this issue has been dealt with since then has been in keeping with the precedent set 50 years ago by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. First of all, carefully keeping aside the question of culpability, states are persuaded to agree that this or that violation of human rights is very sad; that it is totally unacceptable. The attempt is to establish a desirable standard of achievement or an ideal.

The next step is to pressure states to move towards this ideal; to put them on the defensive. Over the past 15 years or so, the U.N. has achieved major strides in this respect by enthusing the press and by the active sponsorship of non-governmental organisations. This tactic has been rendered a great deal more effective because of the way that the human rights issue can be manipulated to isolate a regime from the world and from its own people. Because of this it is sometimes desirable to temper one's enthusiasm, but this does not alter the fact that the trend towards ever more refined standards is generally desirable. Administrators may not think it practicable; but it is nevertheless definitely desirable.

The U.S. has aggressively used the human rights plank to further its strategic interests (and has perhaps thereby inadvertently done more for the furtherance of human rights than would have been possible on the basis of sentiment alone), but like many other countries it has consistently sought to keep itself free from scrutiny; most recently in respect of the proposed war crimes tribunal. But in the end these things have a logic of their own. On June 26, the U.S. Supreme Court pitted itself against the U.S. Congress to declare once again that even voluntary confessions would be inadmissible as evidence if police failed to provide suspects with what have come to be described as the Miranda warnings: that they had the right to remain silent, that anything they said could be used against them, that they had the right to the presence of an attorney, and that if they could not afford an attorney one would be appointed for them prior to any questioning if they so desired. The dissenting judge felt that this was going too far; that there was an important difference between `compelling a person to incriminate himself, and preventing him from foolishly doing so of his own accord'.

In the U.S., as in India, standards keep moving ahead faster than the realities of everyday life. One day a New York court completely acquits four policemen who had pumped 19 shots into an unarmed man at pointblank range (he reached for his wallet; they thought he was going for his gun). The next day the U.S. Supreme Court overturns a narcotics conviction because the evidence was discovered by squeezing a bus passenger's carry-all baggage; this violated his right to be free of unreasonable searches. The gap between what is and what ought to be may be lamentable; but it is this that drives the whole system.

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