Ten years ago, Octavio Roth created this artwork to support the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. The text comes from the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which came into force on this date in 1987.
Archive for the ‘Background’
No one shall be subjected
Waterboarding Historically Controversial
“Twenty-one years earlier, in 1947, the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian. The subject was strapped on a stretcher that was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor, and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gasping for air until he agreed to talk.
‘Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor,’ Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) told his colleagues last Thursday during the debate on military commissions legislation. ‘We punished people with 15 years of hard labor when waterboarding was used against Americans in World War II,’ he said.
Washington Post, October 5, 2006, by Walter Pincus.
Timeline: CIA rendition
“A recent history of the US programme of moving suspects from one country to another without due process.”
guardian.co.uk, February 21, 2008, by Louise Radnofsky.
Stand up and speak out to ban torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.