Mr. LEACH. Let me turn for a minute to U.S. responsibility in this. One of the things about which Congress from time to time makes determinations is our role in potential training of police forces. Obviously there can be some positive implications to that. There can also be some negative spinoffs, if for example, such training identifies us a little too closely with a government particularly if the government is less than perfect.

Would you have any recommendations in terms of police training, first, whether we should proceed with it despite the down side; or second, if we do proceed with, it if it's better to have that training occur under multilateral auspices, like the U.N. or OAS, even if perhaps the same FBI or U.S. people might be involved or Canadians or Mexicans or whomever. Is that something that Amnesty has ever addressed?

Mr. Cox. Well, I'm not sure we have the expertise to go into very much of the specifics; we have addressed and in our recommendations we do address in fact the question of training because it's obviously a very important factor. And whether it should be done bilaterally or multilaterally, what's clear to us is that human rights and humanitarian principles have to be a very important part of that training.

And we would like to see the role of the Congress in monitoring such training, increase with a view to guaranteeing that adequate attention is being paid to human rights it is, I think, an opportunity to get at the source, rather than to wait until people we have trained begin to torture people and then get the allegations. It is a very important opportunity; I don't think we have the expertise to go into the specifics on exactly what the curriculae should be, but we certainly would strongly recommend that Congress monitor the training that is going on for foreign personnel and police personnel, and make sure that there is a large component of human rights education.

Mr. LEACH. Thank you very much.

Mr. YATRON. Thank you, Mr. Leach. Would you care to comment on that?

Mr. HEALEY. Could I comment on that, Mr. Yatron?

Mr. YATRON. Sure, Mr. Healey. Absolutely.

Mr. HEALEY. Thank you. I'd like to comment on Mr. Leach's point. It was said that in World War II that the Jewish pessimists were in London and now in our country the pessimistic refugees are here and it should be looked at very carefully before they are returned to their country, because they face torture when they go back.

We, at one time in the last 3 years, were saying that the situation in Ethiopia was bad because of the Communists and at the same time, our naturalization service was sending people back to Ethiopia, and they surely faced the torture.

The second point is regarding improvement, when human rights groups talk about improvement we do it with great hesitation because what is improvement. If 50 people are tortured in 1 week somewhere and it drops to 20, is that an improvement? We worry because of the sliding scale; we accept 5 percent unemployment in the country and it's sliding up to 10 or to 9. Maybe we're beginning to do that in our foreign policy.

We accept a certain amount of torture and that's what worries us in our foreign policy because there's a certain toleration level that's built into the system and we want to point that out, that if one person is tortured, that must stop. It need not have volume; God help us, if it has volume, if but if it does not have volume, it's one person, we would like our Congress to raise its voice.

Mr. YATRON. Thank you very much, Mr. Healey and Mr. Cox. I don't believe there are any more questions at this time. We want to thank you very very much for being here and giving us the benefit of your views.

The next panel witnesses will include country specialists and victims of torture. This panel includes Prof. Bob Goldman, acting dean of American University Law School; Alejandro Artucio, a Uruguayan victim of torture; Ms. Jeri Laber, executive director of Helsinki Watch; Mr. Buz, a Turkish victim of torture; Prof. Thomas Gouttierre, Center for Afganistan Studies, University of Nebraska at Omaha; and Mr. Mohammed Hanif Sadig, on behalf of Mr. Ghulam, an Afghani victim of torture.

Would you all please come to the witness table. And I would appreciate it very much if you would summarize your statements. Your entire prepared statements will be included in the record. Professor Goldman, will you please proceed.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT K. GOLDMAN, ACTING DEPUTY DEAN AND PROFESSOR, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL, DIRECTOR OR TRUSTEE OF AMERICAS WATCH, THE COUNCIL ON HEMISPHERIC AFFAIRS, THE INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW GROUP, THE INTERNATIONAL SECRETARIAT OF JURISTS FOR AMNESTY IN URUGUAY, AND THE WASHINGTON OFFICE ON LATIN AMERICA

Mr. GOLDMAN. Thank you Mr. Chairman. My testimony today will briefly focus on the widespread practice of torture in Uruguay and in general what the U.S. Congress might do to combat this illicit phenomenon.

For the past 10 years, Uruguay has had one of the highest ratios of prisoners to population in the world. From around 10,000 in 1975 to 800 at the present time.1 Amnesty International and other credible groups estimated in 1979, that since 1973, 1 in every 500 Uruguayans has been imprisoned for political reasons and 1 in every 50 has been detained for interrogation. Virtually all of these have been subjected to some form of torture.

The latter ratio perhaps has risen as a result of a series of mass arrests during the past 3 years. The true horror of these statistics becomes all the more clear when one realizes that we are talking about a country of less than 3 million people with close to a zero population growth during the past two decades, and where about 66 percent of the population lives in one city, Montevideo.

Consequently, few, if any families in this tiny country have escaped having a member either imprisoned, detained, or tortured. By the late 1960's, Uruguay began displaying what Amnesty International and others have called the preconditions of torture.

It was reliably reported at that time that the police routinely tortured suspected Tupamaros to extract information. During the 1 Mr. Goldman informed the subcommittee subsequent to the hearing that the figures should read "10,000 in 1974."

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early 1970's when the military were charged with eradicating these terrorists, the civilian government enacted emergency laws which effectively authorized prolonged arbitrary detention and military trials of civilians suspected of vaguely worded security offenses.

At the same time, the executive branch began detaining hundreds of suspected subversives without charge or trial in secret places of detention. It is precisely in such situations, where the detainee's whereabouts are unknown to his family and lawyer, that torture not only flourishes, but may actually be encourgaged by authorities. Despite the fact that the army utterly destroyed, by its own admission, the Tupamaros in early 1973, their use of torture did not abate, but increased dramatically.

By 1975, Amnesty, the International League for Human Rights, the International Commission of Jurists and others, all publicly charged that torture was a systematic practice in Uruguay, indiscriminately used by the armed forces and police against detainees of both sexes.

In fact, in its 1978 report on Uruguay, the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights cataloged some of the kinds of torture that were routinely used. These include the application of electric current to the genitals and other parts of the body; the hanging of the victim by his hands and knees from a horizontal bar; the dunking of a person in a tank of water often mixed with human excrement, vomit, urine and blood, until the victim nears asphyxia, and forcing prisoners to sit straddling iron or wooden bars which cut into the groin.

Among the psychological methods of torture were verbal threats and abuse, simulated executions, forcing detainees to witness the torture of others, either directly or by means of tape recordings, threats of the torture of spouses or children, humiliation, and techniques of sensory disorientation.

How could this oldest of Latin American democracies once known as the Switzerland of South America, have become what the late Senator Frank Church and others now call the torture chamber of Latin America? An understanding of the rather peculiar perception of Uruguay's military establishment, may provide some insight to the answer.

Unskilled in state craft and atrociously educated, Uruguay's military leaders, like their counterparts in Chile and previously in the Argentine, embraced with a Messianic zeal, a new doctrine of national security which postulates the division of the world into two opposing camps: the Christian West and the Communist atheistic East.

Uruguay's generals regarded themselves as the paladins of Western Christian civilization with a self-annointed duty to wage a permanent war against the opposing bloc. For them this war is a mortal struggle whose victory must be assured through the use of any means, including murder and torture. Initially, the Tupamaros personified the enemy; however, liberal democracy had permitted the enemy to infiltrate Uruguay with weapons of propaganda, culture, and ideas. Thus, although the military obliterated the Tupamaros in early 1973, their struggle against internal subversion, as they viewed it, was not over.

On the contrary, it was intensified for the avowed purpose of extirpating the roots of subversion, which according to this doctrine, are embedded in the social, cultural, educational, and moral fabric of the country. Accordingly, the Uruguayan military's perception of subversion encompassed not only those who shared the ideology of the Tupamaros, but inevitably came to include all those who peacefully opposed or who simply did not share the government's aims and methods.

Oppression then became generalized and indiscriminate. Individuals were imprisoned, tortured or killed, not for what they had done, but for what they thought, professed, or believed. Given this climate, the military also regarded the defenders of political prisoners as themselves engaging in subversion. Torture soon became a central feature of the Uruguayan military's brutal and frenzied struggle against internal subversion.

The principal casualty of the military's action over these past 10 years has been human dignity and the individual liberties of Uruguay's citizenry as a whole. If the ethical and moral values of Judeo-Christian thought affirm the worth and dignity of man as an individual, it is difficult to envision a doctrine in its application that is so exquisitely antithetical to, indeed utterly destructive of, the very values this perverse doctrine purports to champion.

As some members of this subcommittee might recall, the Congress with strong bipartisan support began in the late 1970's to attach human rights requirements to virtually all U.S. foreign assistance programs. In particular, section 502B of the Foreign Assistance Act, defines the term "gross violations of internationally recognized human rights" to expressly include, among others, torture or cruel inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.

Unfortunately, some Members of Congress, and most particularly, officials of the current administration, have lost sight of the purposes which prompted the Congress to enact these human rights laws. These purposes are clearly set forth in section 502B which declares, in part, that a principal goal of U.S. foreign policy in accordance with this country's obligations under the United Nation's Charter and in keeping with our constitutional heritage and traditions, shall be, I quote,

To promote the increased observance of internationally recognized human rights by all countries.

It also directs the President of the United States:

To formulate and conduct the international security assistance programs of the United States in a manner which will promote and advance human rights and avoid identification of the United States through such programs with governments which deny their people internationally recognized human rights.

This is a sound and an enduring statement of U.S. foreign policy goals. The engrafting of human rights conditions on U.S. foreign aid and security assistance programs not only poses no conflicts for our national security interests, but actually serves to promote those interests in the long run. There is nothing more detrimental to U.S. security interests and its international image than this country's aiding, training, and supplying the armed forces of a repressive regime which, particularly in the midst of an internal armed conflict, use that assistance in systematic disregard of basic

humanitarian law guarantees, such as the fundamental freedom from torture.

Like it or not, how these foreign governments use our assistance reflects on our Government and on us as a people. If they murder, torture and rape, we risk becoming identified with their actions both at home and abroad. No useful political or U.S. security interest can be served by such an identification.

Section 502B and the other human rights are the supreme law of this land. As such, the executive branch is constitutionally obliged to comply with and faithfully execute the unambiguous standards set forth in these laws. If the Congress is indeed serious about the Executive's compliance, then there simply is no need for additional legislation concerning the bilateral relations of the United States with governments that practice torture.

Apart from inducing the Executive's compliance with these laws, the Congress should support efforts by international and regional bodies and by nongovernmental organizations aimed at preventing and abolishing torture. Specifically, I would hope that this subcommittee would urge passage in both houses of Congress of resolutions endorsing the 12-point program for the prevention of torture adopted by Amnesty last October.

Most importantly, this subcommittee should urge its colleagues in the Senate to consent to the principle human rights conventions signed by President Carter in 1977, all of which contain express provisions against torture.

Ratification of these instruments not only will dissipate the embarrassing contradiction between this country's failure to formally subscribe to these conventions and our espousal of basic rights guaranteed therein, but will enable this country to participate in the organs established under these conventions to promote, protect and fashion regional and international human rights.

Finally, I would hope that the subcommittee would call on the executive branch to support the draft Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and when finalized, to submit that instrument to the Senate for its advice and consent.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Professor Goldman follows:]