26/06/2006
Vincent Saldanha

Chairperson, honoured guests Comrades Ahmed Kathrada and Farieda Omar, the new director of the Trauma Centre, Ms Vimla Pillay, the previous director of the Trauma Centre Ms Nomfundo Walaza, friends, comrades, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you for your kind invitation.  I am honoured to be amongst old friends and privileged to share this important day with you.

We live in a country of great contrast, of abundant wealth with abject and dehumanising poverty.  A country with one of the strongest constitutions in the world yet we continue to remain anxiously concerned about the abuses of fellow human beings through torture and those who suffer cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.  This is a worrying and yet necessary concern.  We come from a past where we know the extent of the abuse of power – both public and private, abuse that brought out the worst kind of monsters the world has ever seen.  We believed that we slew the monster when we overcame the scourge of apartheid and adopted a progressive Bill of Rights and committed ourselves to the international and regional conventions and declarations.

But alas Chairperson this very institution, the Trauma Centre, this memory, this monument of our past – Cowley House remains a stark reminder that we must never ever drop our guard, never become too complacent about the monster that continues to reside in the dark recesses of those who exercise power.

On the 12th and 13th February 2002 a number of experts, human rights activists and government officials, from all over Africa assembled in Cape Town under the aegis of the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights and the international non-governmental organization the Association for the Prevention of Torture (ATP).  We discussed with heady seriousness, with desperate urgency and thoughtfulness what mechanisms could be put in place to prevent and combat the continuing scourge of torture and that of cruel and inhuman treatment that continues to plague so many countries on the continent.  After three days of debate, discussion and drafting we agreed on what is now known as the “Robben Island Statement and Guidelines.

The Guidelines deal with a number of important issues such as:

A re-commitment to the provisions of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, the founding  principles of the  constitutive Act of the African Union, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, the United Nations Convention against Torture and all other instruments that deal with proscribing and preventing  the wanton and arbitrary use of violence.

We called for the:

i) urgent ratification of all regional and international instruments by every state on the continent.
ii) promotion, support for, and co-operation with international mechanisms.
iii) the criminalisation of torture at the domestic level.
iv) a restatement of our commitment to the principle of non-refoulement.
v) putting in place mechanisms to combat impunity.
vi) putting in place appropriate mechanisms for fair and impartial investigative procedures.
vii) the prevention of torture through putting in place:
a) basic safeguards for those deprived of their liberty;
b) appropriate safeguards during the pre-trial process.
c) ensuring that the conditions of detention comply with the United Nations standard on the minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners.
d) appropriate mechanisms of oversight.
e) appropriate training and empowerment programmes.
f) ensuring that there are proper civil society education and empowerment programmes.

Finally we called for ensuring that there are appropriate responses to the needs of victims through:

i) being offered appropriate medical care.
ii) access to appropriate social and medical rehabilitation.
iii) provision of appropriate levels of compensation and support.

In the Statement we made urgent recommendations to the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights to:

• accept the guidelines by resolution;
• create awareness within their countries of the commitments under the Guidelines.

Chairperson, notwithstanding the statement and guidelines made at Robben Island, we unfortunately lament the fact that our government has to date not ratified the Optional Protocol on the Convention Against Torture.  This Protocol was initially mooted at the World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna in June 1993.  Participating states and NGOs at that conference committed themselves to put in place mechanisms and processes to prevent torture.  The General Assembly of the United Nations subsequently adopted a resolution on the 18th December 2002 on the Optional Protocol.

The aim of the Protocol is primarily to prevent torture and other forms of ill-treatment by establishing a system of regular visits to places of detention which are  to be carried out by independent international and national bodies.

On the 23rd May 2006 the governments of  Bolivia and Honduras simultaneously ratified the Protocol thus bringing the required ratifications to 20.  The Protocol came into operation on the 22nd June 2006.

Unfortunately our government has been tardy in the ratification of the Protocol.  This is therefore an appropriate day on which we call upon the Trauma Centre and other organizations of civil society to take up the challenge to  actively and publicly campaign for the ratification of the Optional Protocol by our government  without further delay.

In the same spirit we should also charge the Trauma Centre with the responsibility of mobilizing civil society to ensure our government’s fullest  compliance with the Robben Island Guidelines.

There is a further general comment which I wish to make.
We cannot commemorate International Torture Day without reference to the ever-increasing erosion of the hard won civil and political rights within an international climate of fear, intolerance and violence.This climate has also brought about  some of the most arbitrary measures taken to combat international terrorism.  We have seen in the past few months what horrendous accesses and abuses that took place in Abu Gharaib Prison in Iraq and the conditions under which suspected terrorists are being held at Guantanemo Bay.  These conditions are simply unacceptable and erodes the very advances that we achieved since the end of the Second World War.  We also note with growing concern the notion of “rendition” by which persons suspected of international terrorism are clandestinely whisked off to detention centres where they are faced with torture and incommunicado detention.  We need to be unequivocal in our condemnation of such “renditions” which undermine the Rule of International Law and violates the provisions of the International Convention against Torture.  We call upon our government to condemn such “renditions” and maintain the moral high ground it has held internationally since 1994 in upholding fundamental human rights and the Rule of Law.

In conclusion, Cowley House remains one of the institutions that embodies our collective conscience.  Let us not betray the memories of those who passed through these hallowed doors and passages during the darkest days of apartheid en route to visit their beloved family members and friends on Robben Island.  Let us commit ourselves to meet again next year on International Human Rights Day and hopefully celebrate with a measure of pride progress by our government in ratifiying the Optional Protocol and the implementation of the Robben Island Guidelines.