The report 2002 about torture in the Basque Country is available at
the Basque Information Centre in the Netherlands. TAT is a part of
the Basque Observatory for Human Rights Behatokia, where also
Etxerat, the organisation of family-members of political prisoners
who are prosecuted for their political beliefs, Eskubideak, the
organisation of Basque lawyers, and Gurasoak, the organisation for
parents whose children have become a victim of police-repression,
are part of.Behatokia is an organisation who wants to become involved in dialogue with other groups who are specialised in the above mentioned and other non-governmental organisations to come to a broad-based denunciation of torture. Behatokia also assists juridical to people who try to complain in the international bodies to denounce torture. TAT summarized the most relevant parts of the statements from 97 Basques who were tortured in 2002.
And it is not only torture, but a wide scale of things the mostly young people (roughly between 17 and 32 years old) are subjected to. The choosing or even seen of a lawyer, the choosing of a doctor who you trust, communication with family, is is all being made impossible. Count to this that it is hardly of any use to file a complaint (are not taken into account) and the rare convictions of police-officers for torture, and if convicted later amnestied, and it comes as no surprise that this is the ideal situation in which torture can exist, and can continue to exist.
What is almost the same in most statements, is that most of the people are released after being held 4 or 5 days incommunicado- detention, with a self-incriminating statement, on which they will be arrested some day in the future. The methods of torture are the ones who leave no visible traces: exhausting physical exercises, standing for hours with your knees bend, smashed with a phone- book at the back of the head, putting guns in the mouth for a fake- execution, depriving of food, water, sanitary, threatening with rape or sexual violence (as well as by women as by men) and of course the notorious plastic bag (Bolsa), to get people to faint by shortness of air. Favourites by the Spanish Police and the Ertzaintza (Basque Police) are the pulling of all kinds of hair from the body, threatening with electro-shocks (sometimes doing it) and beating up friends before the eyes of the suspects.
Most of the time the suffering starts with the arrest, a bag is put over your head and the suspect has to sit with his or her head between the knees during the long drive to (most of the times) Madrid. The reason for the arrest is not important; the statement on which they will later prosecute you has to be fabricated still. The arrest is primarily meant to break, scare off, make paranoia, and make the person powerless. The scientifically tested torture methods attack the person personally, the persons surroundings, the family, friends, the society in which the person lives. All certainties have to disappear.
The book contains the history of torture, the methods of torture, about the complaints, the role of the medics, the attitude of the international human rights organisations who file recommendations to ban torture to the Spanish authorities every year again. Also the 9 points TAT made to get rid of torture, you can find in the book. A complete book, which is accompanied by, as long as we have them, by a CD-Rom of TAT, with among others photo’s, drawings, video-images, statements of international human rights organisations.
Torture in the Basque Country, report 2002. Pay 10 euro to postbank giro 1936332 of Schism, PoBox 2884 3500 GW Utrecht.
