Human Rights

• Torture is when somebody in an official capacity inflicts severe mental or physical pain or suffering on somebody else for a specific purpose
• Authorities sometimes torture a person to extract a confession for a crime, or to get information from them
• Sometimes torture is simply used as a punishment that spreads fear in society
• Types of torture methods

  • Physical nature (e.g., beatings, electric shocks)
  • Sexual nature (e.g., rape, sexual humiliation)
  • Psychological nature (e.g., sleep deprivation, prolonged solitary confinement)
• Under international law, torture and other forms of ill-treatment are always illegal
• 172 countries have adhered to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which prohibits torture and other forms of ill-treatment
• 165 countries are parties to the UN Convention against Torture
• Many states have failed to criminalize torture as a specific offence under their national laws
• Between January 2009 and May 2013, Amnesty International received reports of torture in 141 countries, from every region of the world
• Torture can never be justified. It is barbaric and inhumane, and replaces the rule of law with terror
• No one is safe when governments allow the use of torture
• High-profile torture cases, such as the CIA secret detention programme, have led to a common misconception that torture is generally confined to issues around national security and counterterrorism
• Torture could happen to anyone, including petty criminals, people from ethnic minorities, protesters, student activists, and people who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time
• It is most often poor and marginalized people who get beaten, humiliated, or raped by police and other officials when there is no one to protect them or hear their cries for help
• During the 2011 uprising in Egypt, security forces used torture as a weapon against protesters
• Amnesty International believes that subjecting women to degrading procedures like "virginity tests" is torture
• In January 2014, Mahmoud Hussein was arrested for wearing a T-shirt with the slogan "Nation Without Torture" and spent more than two years in jail
• Authorities in Egypt passed a new counterterrorism legislation that eroded existing safeguards against torture
• Torture often happens in secret in police lock-ups, interrogation rooms, or prisons
• For more than 50 years, Amnesty International has been documenting torture, exposing the perpetrators, and helping victims get justice
• Amnesty International campaigns for the adoption and implementation of measures to protect people from torture and bring perpetrators to justice
• Amnesty's actions


  Documenting torture, exposing perpetrators, helping victims get justice, making people aware of their rights, ensuring governments who torture can't get away with it, campaigning for adoption and implementation of measures to protect people from torture and bring perpetrators to justice
• Measures to protect people from torture

  • Independent checks on detention centres
  • Monitoring of interrogations
  • Prompt access to lawyers and courts
  • Visits and communication with family members
  • Thorough and effective investigations into torture allegations
• Police officers tortured Moses Akatugba


  To force him to confess, using pliers to pull out his toenails and fingernails
• Moses Akatugba: '‘I didn’t know the campaigners before, I have not seen them before, but I cried for help and they responded massively to save me. I didn’t know that people still have such great love for their fellow human beings.’'
• Tools of torture


  • Spike batons
  • Electric shock vests
  • Thumb cuffs
  • Leg irons
  • Handcuffs
  • Truncheons
  • Pepper spray
• In 2006, Amnesty International and the Omega Research Foundation led to the EU adopting the world’s first legally binding regulation for controlling the trade in the ‘tools of torture’
• Current campaign


  Advocating for international regulation to prohibit the manufacture and sale of abusive equipment and regulate the trade in goods that can be misused
• Thousands of people have died in Saydnaya Military Prison, with many hanged in secret mass executions, dying of disease or starvation, or being tortured to death
• Abuses in Saydnaya Military Prison include being packed into filthy, overcrowded cells, torture from the moment of arrest, rape, forced rape, beatings, and extraction of false confessions leading to death sentences
• Torture methods can include stress positions, electric shocks, waterboarding, inhumane prison conditions, solitary confinement, denial of medical treatment
• Australia has been forcibly transferring refugees and asylum seekers to camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru since 2015, leading to punitive conditions, violence, denial of healthcare, high rates of mental illness and self-harm
• Hostility from the local population sometimes leads to violent physical or sexual assaults against refugees
• Refugees are denied access to adequate healthcare
• Refugees and asylum seekers suffer high rates of mental illness and self-harm
• Ongoing uncertainty is a major contributing factor to mental illness and self-harm among refugees and asylum seekers
• There have been 12 deaths on Manus and Nauru since the inception of the policies
• Australia’s “offshore processing system” amounts to torture and ill-treatment due to severe mental and physical harm experienced
• The offshore processing system is intentionally designed to harm people in order to deter others from coming to Australia
• Governments often use national security as a pretext for torturing people