Although more than ten years have passed since the Spanish state
approved the European and UN treaties on torture and other degrading
punishments or treatments, it is still necessary to make known those
cases of ill-treatment and torture in a country like our own that has
signed these treaties. The reports published here include those cases of
ill-treatment and torture of which ACT is aware, all of them backed by
objective criteria, such as formal accusations in the courts, medical
reports, witnesses' testimonies, graphical reproduction, etc. However,
and despite the large number of cases, they do not include all of the
cases of ill-treatment and torture in the Spanish state. Many of those
reported we do not hear about, and others either never reached the
courts, a requisite for inclusion here on these pages, or the victim of
the aggression has requested that they not be included here or in other
publications, so as not to publicise the case.
Behind these requests we almost always find a feeling of impotence and
lack of confidence in the courts, or even a fear that an accusation will
result in a legal case against the victim, which often results in a
sentence after the counter accusation of the offending police or prison
worker. The courts are more likely to follow up such a counter
accusation than to accept any accusation against those police or prison
workers who are responsible of attacks on the dignity and integrity of
those persons in their custody.
At the same time, we see how Spanish society accepts the existence of
torture as commonplace, not threatening of social coexistence, or even
necessary on some occasions.
This attitude is motivated by the interested use of "social insecurity",
demanding more and more a "hard line" in police activity, and by an
increase in the discredit and stigmatisation of an increasing number of
persons and social collectives (criminals, FIES's, prisoners in general,
terrorists, drug dealers, gypsies, blacks, etc), and whose members,
perhaps unconsciously but very efficiently, are denied the right to be
considered as a citizen, as a human being, and who are described
publicly by certain persons in office and by parts of the mass media as
vermin, etc.
Once included in these groups, once their the right to be considered as
a citizen, as a human being, is denied, the use of torture in the real
sense on an arrested person, on a prisoner, a life imprisonment such as
that imposed on the FIES prisoners, the beatings inflicted on the
arrested by the police, the simple repression of social conflicts, etc,
all these become no longer an ethical and legal problem, no longer news.
Only the extraordinary cases give rise to concern in society.
For this reason, it happens that people who have never dreamed of having
a problem with the police turn to the A.C.T. to ask for help after
having suffered police aggression after a traffic accident or problem,
etc. Their indignation at having been treated as "delinquents" is
justified and healthy. Without saying so, they see it as logical and
normal that an arrested person should be beaten- but not that a citizen
who pays his/her taxes, who complies with his/her obligations, should be
beaten in the same way.
These attitudes, but above all the lack of any really effective response
on the part of the government to the existence of torture, the lack of
political will to end the aggression against persons detained, or not,
by members of the state security forces, the non-enforcement by the
state of the international commitments and regulations in defence of
human rights, all these justify the existence of the A.C.T, after 11
years of activity, and of other human rights organizations. They also
justify the publication of reports such as these, as an expression of
the right and civil obligation to control those rulers and civil
servants whose activity lies outside the law, to call those in office to
account for their governance, as was included in the International
Declaration of the Rights of Man, two centuries ago in 1789.
These reports include new cases of mistreatment and torture from the
corresponding year, together with other cases of torture which occurred
in previous years and which, on following them up, one discovers that
the judiciary, responsible for exercising the law, has, with honourable
exceptions, not fulfilled this obligation by not acting as they should.
Also described are the role of the forensic surgeons, the slowness of
the legal system, the absence of any real, exhaustive legal
investigation of the cases of torture denounced, etc.
For these reasons, we express our gratefulness once more to those
persons who, after having been victims of tortures or mistreatment and
despite all the difficulties and obstacles, have continued to defend
dignity and to exercise the right to control civil servants. It is they
who make our work possible, and they who, one day, will allow torture,
if not to disappear, at least to be a scourge in retreat in our society.
Translation by: Chris Nicol. cnicol@pangea.org