Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/torture/Guinea-Bissau.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in
Guinea-Bissau. 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: Guinea Bissau 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/guinea-bissau/
[accessed 22 July
2021] TORTURE AND OTHER
CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT In October members
of the Public Order Police beat two members of the political party MADEM-G15,
detained them in the prison facilities of the Ministry of Interior in Bissau,
and released them soon thereafter. As of November the Ministry of Interior
and the Prosecutor’s Office reported that the case was under investigation.
Political parties criticized the incident, and the local nongovernmental
organization Human Rights League accused the Ministry of Interior of “state
terrorism.” PRISON AND DETENTION
CENTER CONDITIONS Physical
Conditions: Conditions of confinement were poor. Except in the prisons in Bafata and Mansoa, electricity,
potable water, and space were inadequate. Pretrial detention facilities generally
lacked secure cells, running water, adequate heating, ventilation, lighting,
and sanitation. Detainees’ diets were meager, and medical care was virtually
nonexistent. ARREST PROCEDURES
AND TREATMENT OF DETAINEES Arbitrary Arrest:
Police arrested persons arbitrarily and detained them without due process. In
May a member of parliament was arrested and severely beaten by public order
police for allegedly having offended President Sissoco
Embalo. He was released hours later the same day. Freedom House
Country Report 2018 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/guinea-bissau/freedom-world/2018 [accessed 12 May
2020] F3. IS THERE PROTECTION FROM THE ILLEGITIMATE USE
OF PHYSICAL FORCE AND FREEDOM FROM WAR AND INSURGENCIES? Corruption is
common among police, and officers often fail to observe legal safeguards
against arbitrary arrest and detention. Very few criminal cases are brought
to trial or successfully prosecuted, partly due to the limited material and
human resources available to investigators. Most of the population lacks
access to the justice system in practice. Angola and Guinea
Bissau take positive steps to address torture International
Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims IRCT, 08-10-2013 www.irct.org/media-and-resources/irct-news-1.aspx?PID=13717&M=NewsV2&Action=1&NewsId=3826 [accessed 13 Jan
2014] irct.org/media-and-resources/latest-news/article/876 [accessed 26 July
2017] Since the IRCT sent
an open letter to the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP) less
than a year ago, both Angola and Guinea Bissau -- two of CPLP’s eight members
-- took positive steps to address torture within their jurisdictions. On the same
occasion, both countries signed the Optional Protocol to the Convention,
thereby pledging to establish a mechanism to allow regular preventive visits
to places of detention, such as prisons, police stations and detention centres. In Guinea Bissau,
following last year’s military coup and counter-coup, there have been reports
of abuse and torture by the military and intelligence forces. AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL From an old article -- URL not available Article was
published sometime prior to 2015 UNLAWFUL KILLINGS
AND EXTRAJUDICIAL EXECUTIONS Luis Ocante da Silva, a close friend of the former Chief of
Staff of the Armed Forces, José Zamora Induta, died
as a result of beatings by soldiers. On 6 November he was taken from his home
by a group of soldiers, beaten and taken to an undisclosed location. Two days
later soldiers took his body to the morgue in the central hospital. His family were allowed to see only his face and were not
allowed to take the body for burial. No investigations
were carried out into these killings or other human rights violations by the
military. Impunity also persisted for political killings since 2009. TORTURE AND OTHER
ILL-TREATMENT Following the coup
in April, soldiers searching for deposed government officials beat their
families, friends and employees and vandalized their homes. Most ministers
went into hiding, where they remained for several months; a few fled the
country. Members of civil society groups were also targeted. Some, including
several members of the Human Rights League, received threats against their
lives and took refuge in embassies. The day after the
October attack on the military base, soldiers arrested and beat Iancuba Indjai, president of the
opposition Party of Solidarity and Labour and
spokesperson of the Anti-Coup National Front, a grouping of political parties
and civil society groups who opposed the April coup. Iancuba
Indjai was abandoned by the roadside some 50 km
from Bissau. Local residents found him seriously injured and alerted his
family. He was subsequently taken to a hospital abroad. Later the same day,
soldiers went to the Bissau office of Silvestre Alves, a lawyer and president
of the Democratic Movement party; they beat him and took him away. He was
later found unconscious by a road 40km from the city by local people who took
him to a hospital. He was taken abroad for medical treatment. Search … AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL For current
articles:: Search Amnesty
International Website www.amnesty.org/en/search/?q=guinea+bissau+torture&ref=&year=&lang=en&adv=1&sort=relevance [accessed 2 January 1, 2019] Scroll
Down ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61574.htm [accessed 29 January
2013] 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61574.htm [accessed 4 July
2019] TORTURE
AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – The law
prohibits such practices, and there were no reports that government officials
employed them. The government rarely punished members of the security forces
who committed abuses. 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- Guinea-Bissau
", http://gvnet.com/torture/Guinea-Bissau.htm, [accessed <date>] |
