66 Casualties of War

when making visits. This burden is increased by the practice of
moving prisoners around the country without notice and keeping
them for prolonged periods in solitary confinement. The policy
towards paramilitary prisoners contrasts strongly with the compas-
sionate treatment received by British soldiers charged with serious
offences in Northern Ireland. They are routinely returned to Britain to
serve their sentences. Indeed, the only regular soldier to be convicted
of murder while on duty in Northern Ireland, was rapidly transferred
to a prison in Britain, and though sentenced to life imprisonment was
released on parole within 21⁄2 years and returned to his regiment.

Censorship

The record of the British media in covering events in Northern Ireland
has been a sorry one. Ranging in their approach from the superficial to
the positively misleading, both the newspapers and the broadcasting
services have done little to clarify the reasons for the conflict. They
have presented the differences between Northern Ireland's two com-
munities as a curious, archaic, tribal struggle between people who
cannot live peaceably beside each other as normal people supposedly
do. The paramilitaries, especially the Republicans, are shown solely as
murdering madmen with no respect for human life or the rule of law.
Overall, media coverage has concentrated on violence and 'terror'
shorn of any political context - and hence of any rational basis, and of
any hope of its ending.

In part the distorted and inadequate media presentation of Northern
Ireland is due to the views of journalists and those directly controlling
broadcasting and the press. However, it also reflects the degree to
which media - in particular television - coverage is shaped by govern-
ment demands. Over the years both the BBC and the IBA have
repeatedly bowed to political pressure to modify programme content.
The best known and most public example of television censorship
occurred in 1985 when a film in the BBC series Real Lives was with-
drawn following representations by the government. In this film,
Martin McGuiness, a leading member of Sinn Féin, and Gregory
Campbell, a prominent Loyalist, were interviewed at length. The
home secretary objected strongly and the BBC's governors withdrew
the programme even though it was already complete and advertised in
the Radio Times. However, following a widely supported protest
strike by BBC journalists, the governors backed down and agreed to

Casualties of War 67
put on a modified version of the film in which Martin McGuiness was
shown in a more unfavourable light.

Yet the Real Lives incident is only the most publicized in a long
series. Since 1968 some 50 major programmes have been banned,
delayed, cut or altered in accordance with government objectives, for
the most part without the public knowing that any of these interven-
tions have occurred. Most affected have been news or current-affairs
programmes (including This Week, Tonight, Panorama, World in
Action, 24 Hours, and also a large number of documentaries), but other
programmes have also fallen foul of the censorship process. Thus, in
1981, BBC's Top of the Pops was forbidden to screen a video which
included a collage of street scenes from Northern Ireland (described by
The Times as 'utterly uncontentious'). Several plays have also been
delayed or dropped.

The rules governing the screening of television programmes about
Northern Ireland are contained within two documents. BBC pro-
grammes must be dealt with according to the Corporation's News and
Current Affairs Index (see Appendix 6), while those on ITV are subject
to the Independent Broadcasting Authority's Official Guidelines. Both
of these documents specify that all programmes dealing with Northern
Ireland must be 'referred upwards' for approval by top-level manage-
ment. No other political topic is subject to such rigid oversight. It amounts
in effect to a form of managerial censorship, and ensures the content of
programmes is centrally controlled and coverage of Northern Ireland
determined in accordance with government priorities.

This does not quite result in Republicans being kept off TV screens
altogether. However, their appearances are rare, and when they do
appear, the manner in which they and their views are presented
is never positive, and generally very unsympathetic. Senior BBC
personnel have stated explicitly that it is Corporation policy to give
Republican spokespersons a hard time, and to treat them as 'hostile
witnesses'. Republican interviewees are subjected to hostile question-
ing, repeated interruptions and sharp contradiction. In addition they
are always balanced by a countervailing view. By contrast, pro-British
politicians are frequently interviewed; they are rarely met with
hostility; and it is normal practice that no rebuttal is included from the
Republican side.

None of this is surprising. No state engaged in military struggle
allows genuinely unpartisan coverage of their opponents' viewpoint.
However, it does underline how the conflict in Northern Ireland
makes nonsense of the supposed independence of the British media.

The erosion of civil liberties resulting from the conflict in Northern
Ireland extends beyond the United Kingdom. It also affects the Irish
Republic, where a whole series of special measures have been used to
control the IRA.

In the 1940s hundreds of Republicans were interned and six IRA
members were tried by military tribunal and executed. In 1972 a
'Special Criminal Court' was set up in Dublin, in which trials would
be conducted by three judges sitting without a jury. Since then around
2,000 Republicans have been tried in this court, of whom three-
quarters have been convicted and sentenced to imprisonment.

Alongside this judicial apparatus, there is also a severe system of
censorship designed to prevent Republicans obtaining any exposure at
all in the official media. Under section 31 of the Broadcasting Act it is
illegal to interview on public radio or television any member of Sinn
Féin, or of any organization banned in the North by the British
government, or to publicize the activities of any of these organizations.
This is a more overt form of censorship than exists in either Britain
or Northern Ireland. It means that news and current affairs coverage
in the Republic is badly distorted. For example, while hard-line Loyal-
ist MP, Ian Paisley, can be broadcast, the Sinn Féin MP for West
Belfast, Gerry Adams, can not. Indeed, when Adams retained his seat
in the 1987 general election, the Republic's radio and television
services carried interviews with his opponents commenting on why
they had lost, but nothing from Adams himself. To hear the Sinn Féin
MP, southerners had to rely on radio and TV from Northern Ireland,
where he was interviewed.

In fact, the operation of section 31 is so extreme, it can be quite
absurd. If anyone, from a champion dog breeder, to the duly elected
chairperson of a local council highways committee, happens to be a
member of Sinn Féin, she or he cannot appear on radio or television,
even to be interviewed about dogs or holes in the road. Section 31 has
been severely criticized by, for example, Irish trade unions and
Cardinal O'Fiach, Catholic Primate of All Ireland. A poll carried out
in 1986 by the National Institution of Higher Education in Dublin

Casualties of War 69
showed that 53 per cent of people disapprove of section 31 and 73 per
cent think Sinn Féin should have access to public radio and television.
Approval of the ban was concentrated in upper-middle-class people
over 50. However, this law remains in force today.

Twenty years into the present Northern Ireland 'troubles' the abuse
of civil liberties has now become the norm in Britain as well as
Northern Ireland, and also in the Irish Republic. Internal banishment,
detention without cause on entering Britain, no-jury trials - all are
sanctioned by law. Arbitrary arrests, shooting dead rioters or suspected
'terrorists', fabricating trial evidence - none of these are legally sanc-
tioned, but all have happened and all have gone unpunished. Deaths
and injuries have occurred on a scale whose immensity is only masked
by the small size of the Northern Ireland population.

Meanwhile, news in the media is censored and manipulated. As
a result, people in Britain are denied the opportunity to arrive at an
informed opinion about Irish events, and about policy making in this

area.

An Appraisal of Torture in International Law and Practice: The Need for an International

Convention for the Prevention and Suppression of Torture

By

M. CHERIF BASSIOUNI

Professor of Law, De Paul University

Secretary-General, International Association of Penal Law Dean, Internat. Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences With the Assistance of

Daniel Derby

J. D., De Paul University

Assistant to Professor Bassiouni

SECTION I

Torture in historical and geographic perspective

An examination of the scope of occurrence of the practice of torture reveals that it has existed through all periods of history, spanning each of the twenty-one recorded civilizations in the world. In some times and places the practice has been more frequent or widespread than in others, but the phenomenon has been remarkably similar throughout history and geography. The following is a brief survey of torture through time and space intended merely to provide perspective. It will demonstrate that the practice of torture is neither new nor confined to any single political system, regime, culture, religion or geographical location.

The coercive leverage of torture was, like the lever itself, a discovery of early Man that was already flourishing and leaving its mark on societies when their first records were written. For those who would erase torture from world civilization, it is worth considering how long it has been in use.

The first traces of the practice of torture can be found in some of the earliest historical records left by Man. Drawings have been discovered showing tax collectors of ancient Egypt beating the soles of the feet of peasants in order to coerce them into revealing hidden stores of grain (1). The practice apparently occurred in other contemporary civilizations, but the Egyptian use depicted in these drawings represents a degree of sophistication uncharacteristic of that era, since torture was generally at that time no more than a form of punishment.

In ancient Greece, both Aristotle and Demosthenes expressed the view that torture was the surest method for obtaining evidence and slaves in Athens were frequently subjected to it. However, free men were expressly exempted by a psephism passed in the arconship of Scamandrius. In that period torture was frequently administered in open court by such means as the rack. A list of tortures is presented in Aristophanes' Ranae, and at least two Greek despots, Zeno and Anaxarchus, are reported to have used torture widely (2).

The evolution of the practice of torture under Rome provides

a curious insight into the European heritage in this regard. No existing fragment of the Twelve Tables alludes to the practice, and Cicero argues that torture was based upon custom. Writers have described torture by masters of their slaves during the Republic, but during the early empire restrictions were imposed on this practice. In the later empire, the laws relating to torture were codified, largely under the titles De quaestionibus in the Digest and the Code. Under these laws only slaves were subject to torture in civil cases, but in criminal cases only certain classes of high ranking persons and their families were exempt and a thorough procedural and substantive guide for the practice was in force. However, the use of torture was restricted to situations where evidence from other sources had already been assembled and a confession by the accused was the only way to fill the remaining gap (3).

In other, non-Western, classical civilizations torture also flourished and was still in use when early Western travellers first visited these regions (4).

It has been suggested that torture may be defined as suffering inflicted for a purpose. Thus, if torture is to be dissected for study, it must be divided according to its different purposes, and these purposes vary according to the context in which torture occurs. Historically, three general contexts can be distinguished: war, administration of criminal justice and destruction of political adversaries.

The use of torture in connection with armed conflicts reflects the evolution of the art of warfare. Under classical era principles of warfare, defeated persons, whether former combatants, and whether non-combatants of a hostile state or of a state formerly subjugated by one's opponents, were subject to enslavement or any form of treatment expedient to the conquering forces (5).

In the Orient, where sophistication came earlier to human civilizations, regulation of warfare to minimize incidental suffering was first undertaken. Thus by the fourth century B. C. the customs of war in China had been recorded by Sun Tzu, and among them were provisions for sparing the wounded and elderly (6). At about the same period the Book of Manuscriptu cronicled Hindu regulations for the conduct of war (7). Other efforts to limit needless suffering in war were made in the Greek, Roman, Hebrew, Babylonian and Muslim civilizations (8). But the first major efforts in the West aimed specifically at minimizing