?No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.? ?The Universal Declaration of Human Rights?.

Almost all countries on earth officially adhere to this sacrosanct principle. But, paradoxically, never has torture been in such widespread use as nowadays. In many totalitarian states, it has become instrumental to silence opposers. ?It is a phenomenon of our times,? wrote the director of the UN Commission on Human Rights.

Sadly, the practice of torture is as old as history. In the Middle Ages, suspected heretics were tortured, crucified and burnt to death by representatives of the Inquisition to make them recant while, in the twentieth century, Hitler?s concentration camps, Pol Pot?s prisons, Stalin?s gulags and Guantanamo Bay use institutionalised torture and brutality on a scale hitherto unknown.

Terrifying and unhuman methods

Torture is of two kinds: moral and physical. The most terrifying feature of torture is its institutionalisation. There is no appeal, no recourse to the kind of legal authority provided by the functioning courts. In Latin American and African regimes, many opposers have disappeared into the unknown, following waves of political arrests.

The methods used by the torturers are most terrifying and inhuman: electric shocks and beatings, insertion of bottles in the rectum, hanging weights from testicles, rape and such apparatus as a helmet that, worn over the head of the victim, magnifies his own screams. The wet submarine means near-suffocation of a prisoner by immersing him in water or, frequently, in urine.

A Brazilian invention called the parrot?s perch is used to hang the prisoner by the knees on a horizontal stick with hands and ankles tied together. Another common technique called the telephone consists of delivering sharp blows to both ears simultaneously, which drives the victim ultimately to complete deafness. In the hook, the victim is hoisted off the ground by his hands tied behind his back in such a way that it leads to paralysis of the arms. Yet another common form of torture is the removal of the victim?s fingernails or burning them with cigarette tips. Among the iron-curtain countries that used torture systematically, the ex-Soviet Union was probably the worst offender. The Kremlin regime tracked down dissidents and declared them insane and locked them away for years in asylums.

Over the years, the dissidents became human wrecks Consequently, the Kremlin regime could rest on its laurels without any fear of being opposed.

The French used torture as well during the eight-year Algerian war. The British tortured IRA terrorists in Northern Ireland to extract information. The aim of torture is everywhere the same: obtaining information by all means from dissidents and intimidating potential ones. The torturers try to wreck the morale and will-power of opposers and, at the same time, instil fear and strike terror in their hearts. Usually torturers hide their identity and wear masks. They refer to each other by nickna mes. Their business is to torture for a living and they believe that they are above the law.

If we remain passive when we see others submitted to atrocities, then we lose our right to call ourselves civilised human beings.

Philip LI CHING HUM