Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/torture/Congo-ROC.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in the
Republic of the Congo (ROC). Some of these
links may lead to websites that present allegations that are unsubstantiated
or even false. No attempt has been made to validate their authenticity
or to verify their content. HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking
for material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on
this page and others to see which aspects of Torture by Authorities are of
particular interest to you. You might
be interested in exploring the moral justification for inflicting pain or
inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment in order to obtain critical
information that may save countless lives, or to elicit a confession for a
criminal act, or to punish someone to teach him a lesson outside of the
courtroom. Perhaps your paper might
focus on some of the methods of torture, like fear, extreme temperatures,
starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, suffocation, or immersion in freezing
water. On the other hand, you might
choose to write about the people acting in an official capacity who
perpetrate such cruelty. There is a
lot to the subject of Torture by Authorities.
Scan other countries as well as this one. Draw comparisons between activity in
adjacent countries and/or regions.
Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper
resources that are available on-line. ***
ARCHIVES *** 2020 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices: ROC U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, 30 March 2021 www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/republic-of-the-congo/
[accessed 8 July
2021] PRISON AND DETENTION
CENTER CONDITIONS Physical
Conditions: As of September the Brazzaville Prison, built in 1943 to
accommodate 150 inmates, held more than five times its designed capacity,
including women and minors. The Pointe-Noire Prison, built in 1934 to hold 75
inmates, held more than six times its designed capacity. In addition to these
official prisons, the government’s intelligence and security services
operated detention centers and security prisons that were inaccessible for
inspection. ARREST PROCEDURES
AND TREATMENT OF DETAINEES There were reports
authorities arrested detainees secretly and without judicial authorization
and sometimes detained suspects incommunicado or put them under de facto
house arrest. Police at times held persons for six months or longer before
filing charges. Observers attributed most administrative delays to lack of
staff in the Ministry of Justice and the court system. Family members
sometimes received prompt access to detainees but often only after payment of
bribes. The law requires authorities to provide lawyers at government expense
to indigent detainees facing criminal charges, but this usually did not
occur. Freedom House
Country Report 2020 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/republic-congo/freedom-world/2020 [accessed 14 May
2020] F3. IS THERE PROTECTION FROM THE ILLEGITIMATE
USE OF PHYSICAL FORCE AND FREEDOM FROM WAR AND INSURGENCIES? In July 2018, 13
young men were killed after being detained at a Brazzaville police station.
The Congolese Observatory of Human Rights said the youths were “tortured and
executed,” and condemned the ensuing police investigation as grossly
inadequate. Torture and
arbitrary detentions of dozens of people put freedom of expression under
severe strain Amnesty
International, 21 March 2018 [accessed 25 March
2018] Dozens of activists
and opposition members are languishing in prisons in Congo Brazzaville, some
for almost three years, simply for exercising their right to freedom of
expression, while the international community maintains a silence on the
human rights situation in the country, Amnesty International and four
organizations said today. The organizations
call on the authorities to release all those arbitrarily arrested and open an
investigation into allegations of torture. "The Congolese
authorities have not only resorted to arbitrarily arresting opposition
members and activists, they have often subjected them to torture too. Some of
the victims continue to bear the scars of such inhuman and degrading
treatments,” said Balkissa Idé Siddo, Amnesty International Central Africa
researcher. CONGO: Torture
commonplace in prisons - report UN Integrated
Regional Information Networks IRIN, Brazzaville, 6 November 2012 www.irinnews.org/report/96726/congo-torture-commonplace-in-prisons-report [accessed 19 Jan
2014] Torture has become
routine in prisons and police stations in the Republic of Congo, according to
a 2 November report by the Congolese Observatory for Human Rights (OCDH). "Torture
remains a sad reality in Congo. Several cases were followed by murder.
Numerous cases of torture are not reported for various reasons, such as fear
of reprisals and lack of knowledge of the mechanisms of protection,"
said OCDH executive director Roch Euloge Nzobo. "The majority
of acts of torture are committed in official places of detention, especially
in prisons, local penitentiaries, police stations, gendarmerie brigades, as
well as outside prisons. They occur at the time of arrest, during custody and
in detention," he said. ROUTINE AND
COMMONPLACE - "Torture is systematic everywhere. It is becoming routine
and commonplace. The perpetrators of torture enjoy impunity," said
Nzobo, urging the government "to establish an oversight committee, made
up of members of civil society and the government, to undertake ad hoc
inspections of detention centres". AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL From an old article -- URL not available Article was
published sometime prior to 2015 TORTURE AND OTHER
ILL-TREATMENT Members of the
security forces tortured or otherwise ill-treated detainees with impunity, in
some cases resulting in deaths. The judiciary failed to respond to complaints
by relatives of detainees who died in custody in previous years. Anicet Elion Kouvandila died on 2 June after he was detained for eight
days and severely beaten at Lumumba police station in the capital,
Brazzaville. Relatives found his body at a mortuary, registered under a
different name. A pregnant woman,
Blanche Kongo, was arrested on 17 October with her
child by police seeking her husband regarding an alleged theft. Blanche Kongo was severely beaten at Mbota
police station and suffered a miscarriage. On 28 August, an
army colonel severely beat Jean Karat Koulounkoulou
and Rock Inzonzi in a land dispute. The colonel
buried the men up to their necks, threatening to bury them alive. A local
government official and police officers stopped the ill-treatment but no
action was taken against the colonel. ENFORCED
DISAPPEARANCES A delegation of the
UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances visited the
Republic of Congo from 24 September to 3 October to gather information on
efforts to investigate and prevent enforced disappearances. Discussions
focused on the 1999 disappearance of some 350 refugees returning from the
DRC, and the 2005 trial of 16 security and government officials which failed to establish individual criminal
responsibility. The UN Working Group made several recommendations to the
government, including enactment of a law criminalizing enforced
disappearances. Search … AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL For current
articles:: Search Amnesty
International Website www.amnesty.org/en/search/?q=congo +torture&ref=&year=&lang=en&adv=1&sort=relevance [accessed 25 December
2018] Scroll
Down ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Human Rights
Reports » 2006 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, March 6, 2007 www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78729.htm [accessed 22 January
2013] 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78729.htm [accessed 3 July
2019] TORTURE
AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – Although the
constitution and law prohibit such actions, security forces frequently used
beatings to coerce confessions or to punish detainees. During the year there
were reports that abuses continued in the jail and prison systems. During the year
there were reports by Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that female
detainees were raped, and that members of the security forces beat citizens. There was no
reported action in the August 2005 case of a police officer who reportedly
beat a man for arguing with him. During the year
unorganized mobs often assisted property owners in beating and sometimes
killing suspected thieves in the southern sector of Brazzaville (see section
1.a.). Freedom House
Country Report - Political Rights: 6 Civil Liberties: 5 Status: Not Free 2009 Edition www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2009/congo-republic-brazzaville [accessed 22 January 2013] LONG URL
ç 2009
Country Reports begin on Page 21 [accessed 11 May
2020] Congo’s weak judiciary
is subject to corruption and political influence. Members of the country’s
poorly coordinated security forces act with impunity in committing human
rights abuses, and there have been reports of suspects dying during
apprehension or in custody. Prison conditions are life threatening. Women and
men, as well as juveniles and adults, are incarcerated together, and rape is
common. All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT
ARTICLES. Cite this
webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, " Torture by Police, Forced
Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment in the early years of the 21st
Century- Republic of the Congo (ROC)",
http://gvnet.com/torture/Congo-ROC.htm, [accessed <date>] |
