within and outside of Uruguay. Eyewitness testimonies and other credible evidentiary sources confirm that 93 Uruguayans, many of whom were under the official protection of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, were abducted in Argentina by Uruguayan government operatives and subsequently transferred to Uruguay in flagrant violation of international conventions to which both countries are parties. International and Regional Organizations' Condemnation of Uruguay's Military Government The persistence of Uruguay's grave human rights violations has been denounced repeatedly by international organizations and prominent groups. Since publication of its 1978 Report, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has published several annual updates on Uruguay's human rights violations, and the Organization of American States' General Assembly has consistently requested Uruguay to curb these abuses and implement the In addition, the United Nations' Human Rights Committee, charged with monitoring and protecting the rights guaranteed in the International Covenent on Civil and Political Rights, published on August 31, 1979 and May 7, 1981, for the first time in any case, its conclusion that Uruguay had seriously violated the most basic rights protected in the Covenant. In October 1979, the International Labor Organization, at a regional meeting, condemned Uruguay for its continuing repression of workers and their unions. The Ninety-Three members of the World InterParliamentary Union, at their annual meeting in September 1979, unanimously passed a resolution condemning Uruguay for its continuing human rights abuses. In December 1979, the two major political rights groups of the European Parliament similarly protested Uruguay's human rights record, indicating that this situation posed a serious obstacle to improving relations between Uruguay and EEC members. Moreover, since March, 1978 until recently, Uruguay has been one of the few countries on which the United Nations' Human Rights Commission annually has held private meetings and taken confidential measures under procedures set forth in ECOSOC Resolution 1503 (1971) -this resolution concerns situations which reveal a consistent pattern of gross violations of human rights. This is the identical legal standard incorporated by the Congress in Section 502 (B) of the Foreign Assistance Act. Political Prisoner Population in Uruguay For the past ten years, Uruguay has had one of the highest ratios of prisoners to population in the world, ranging from a high of around 10,000 in 1975 to 800 in early 1984. Amnesty International and other credible groups estimated in 1979 that since 1973 1 in every 500 Uruguayans had been imprisoned for political reasons and 1 in every 50 had been detained for interrogation; the later ratio has actually risen as a result of a series of mass arrests during the last 3 years. The true horror of these statistics becomes all too clear when one realizes that we are talking about a country of less than 3 million people, with close to zero population growth during the past two decades, and where 60% of the population lives in the capital city, Montevideo. Few families in this tiny country have escaped having a member either imprisoned or detained. The Institutionalization of Torture By the late 1960s Uruguay began displaying what Amnesty 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 early 1970s when the military were charged with eradicating these urban 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 power, yielding to the military's pressure, began administratively detaining hundreds of suspected subversives without charge or trial in secret detention center. 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 encouraged by the authorities. Despite the fact that the army utterly destroyed the Tupamaros by early 1973, their use of torture did not abate, but increased dramatically. By 1975, Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists and other human rights groups publically charged that torture was "a systematic practice" in Uruguay, indiscriminately used by the armed forces against detainees of both sexes. In its 1978 Uruguay Report, the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights catalogued numerous methods of such torture, including, inter alia, blows to all parts of the body, the application of electric current to the genitals and other parts of the body, "el pau de arara' the hanging of the victim by his hands and knees from a horizontal bar, and "the submarine"--dunk ings in a tank of water, often mixed with vomit, urine, and blood, until the victim nears asphyxia, and forcing prisoners to sit straddling iron or wooden bars which cut into the groin "caballete." Among the psychological methods of torture are 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. It is now well established that torture ordinarily occurs in a large number of barracks belonging to the different branches of Uruguay's armed forces, as well as in the police force's intelligence branches. According to the information available to Amnesty International, detainees arrested in 1981 and 1982, who were subsequently indicted by military courts, were taken after their arrest to the following places of detention: Cuartel de Caballeria No. 9 The military barracks of the Naval Fusileers (Fusileros Navales, FUSNA, in the port of Montevideo) The military barracks known as "La Tablada" The military barracks of the Grupo de Artilleria No. 1 ("La Paloma ") The barracks of the Batallion of Armoured Infantry No. 12 (Batallon de Infanteria blindada No. 13) in Montevideo, commonly referred to as "El Infierno", Hell Batallon Florida de Infanteria No. 1 The Fifth Department of the Police (Departmento No. 5 de la Policia) Comisaria No. 4 de la Policia Comisaria No. 9 de la Policia Moreover, the extent of ongoing torture had been corroborated by the detailed testimonies of Hugo Walter |