This important issue can symbolize the struggles in favor of human rights in the present world. We saw in the last few days the new president of the United State, Barack Obama, declare that his country will not resort to torture any longer in the war against its enemies. Among his first actions in office should be the closing of the Guantanamo prison, where more than 200 people accused of “terrorism” are kept prisoners. There, the north-american State has openly had recourse to torture, backed by norms and laws approved by the Legislative power.
Given such dramatic picture for human rights, the global mass media exalts the measures taken against the violence in Guantanamo, without remembering that the same institutions that today are putting an end to this painful period, yesterday were giving norms to the violation of human dignity as the adequate way to treat suspects. However, we have to question if such measures are enough for us to have respectful relations among people, and, specially, between the national States and every individual that is in its territory.
To question the institutional policies for human rights is one of the great actions needed for a larger investment in the respect for life. And we are not talking only of the United States, but of most contemporary democracies. In Brazil, 2008 was intense in a similar debate. A share of brazilian society has been thinking about if it is possible to punish the torturers of the dictatorship or if we should forgive their crimes. Well, just like the new north-american president is applauded for his proposal, even though it doesn’t relate Guantanamo with a global policy of the State, also in Brazil we seem to talk on the issue of torture during the military regime without going deeper into the discussion on the same issue in democracy.
Recently the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch listed Brazil, together with so many others worldwide, as one of the countries that has torture as a chronic problem. Here, the national culture has assimilated in such a way the permissiveness of the violation to every right to life and dignity that, presently, even the outlaw groups torture their victims, in a perverse perpetuation of the practice of the security institutions.
We, brazilians, have seen in the last few years a policy of closure of large centers for the detention of infractor adolescents (the buildings of the old FEBEM). Such measure, just like the closure of Guantanamo, sought to end the constant violations of human rights, in this case the rights of people who were still developing and without full citizenship. However, several human rights organizations, observant in the treatment given to the infractor adolescent, denounced that the practice of torture and violence still takes place.
What is the relation of the torturer of the dictatorship, the prison of Guantanamo the infractor adolescents and the dilemmas of human rights? It is the realization that for us to dream, wish, and build a world without torture it is necessary to make a frontal and fearless attack on the impunity of such crimes. Without punishing the torturers of yesterday, there is no possibility of ending with the torture of today; the simple closure of a notorious center of violations to humanity will not be enough it there is no punishment for those responsible (in general in the USA, in FEBEM in the brazilian State, the violators remain in public jobs).
Torture symbolizes a series of disrespects for the right to life, like the right to food, transport, education, health, a life without violence. It is important that we leave the WSF aware that therapeutic policies, those that try to diminish the violations, do have some value, but with clear limits. We have to go beyond that. We have to determine the responsibilities and create a culture of rights, we have to believe that a world without torture is possible!
