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I understand there is going to be a vote on the approval of the Journal which was postponed until 10:25, and/or a quorum called at that time.

What is going to be the procedure for the rest of the day then as far as this subcommittee is concerned, while the joint session is going on?

Mr. YATRON. I know the joint session of Congress will be going on with the President of Mexico. I thought if we could continue with the hearing, I would prefer to do that. We could go over to the floor, vote, and come back. Unfortunately, we would have to miss the President of Mexico's speech.

Mr. SOLOMON. OK. I have no objection.

Mr. YATRON. Unless there is objection, I'd like to proceed in that order.

Do you have an opening statement, Mr. Leach?

Mr. LEACH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have no opening statement.

I would like to welcome our distinguished Assistant Secretary, and suggest that if he sticks with his text, it will be an excellent statement.

I am sure you will not deviate from it, and we welcome it very much. This is an issue on which I think there is very little partisan division in the subcommittee, and we appreciate your coming this morning.

Mr. YATRON. Thank you.

Mr. Secretary.

STATEMENT OF HON. ELLIOTT ABRAMS, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE, BUREAU OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS

Mr. ABRAMS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Leach. With that kind of introduction, I can assure you I'll stick with the text.

Let me begin by saying that the Government of the United States is, of course, profoundly and unalterably opposed to any and all forms of torture. There can be no justification for such abhorrent practices, which offend the conscience of mankind and violate every moral law.

Yet, despite the various international covenants and conventions designed to promote universal adherence to human rights, the tragic fact is that torture is widely practiced by governments today. According to Amnesty International's report, "Torture in the 1980's," prisoners have been tortured or cruelly treated in at least one out of every three countries within the past 4 years.

The methods of torture range from the primitive to the sophisticated, and are a terrible reminder of mankind's capacity for inhumanity and evil.

Clearly, torture is a human rights problem of enormous magnitude. The fact that torture is practiced by so many governments in so many parts of the world suggests that there is no one explanation to account for its persistence.

Some regimes lack popular legitimacy and resort to torture in order to punish or intimidate dissidents. Other regimes feel them

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selves under siege by terrorists and regard torture as a means of self-defense. Still other governments believe that certain minorities, the Baha'i in Iran is an obvious example, deserve to be treated cruelly and inhumanely.

In short, it's very difficult to generalize about the causes of torture. There is one conclusion about torture, however, which I think can be advanced with a good deal of certainty.

Generally speaking, democratic governments are far less likely to engage in torture than nondemocratic governments. This is because such institutions of free speech, free press, freedom of assembly and associations, free elections, have built respect for human rights into the very foundations of democratic governments.

Thus, although cases of torture can and do occur in a democracy, democratic institutions are designed to bring these cases to light and to punish the culprits. Bringing torture to light is absolutely crucial, for as Justice Brandeis once observed, sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Among NGO's-nongovernmental organizations-none have been more active than Amnesty International in publicizing cases of human rights abuse. Amnesty's report on torture is a case in point, and we welcome this report, both for its wealth of information and for its specific recommendations.

I have already met with representatives of Amnesty International, and I'm pleased to note that one of the recommendations concerning the need to provide more information about secret detention centers is already receiving sympathetic consideration by the Department.

With its report, Amnesty has repeated its 12-point program for the prevention of torture, and I want to just call particular attention to 3 points.

Point 2 calls for the limits on incommunicado detention, and point 3 opposes secret detention. Amnesty has made a very valuable contribution in calling attention to the dangers of incommunicado detention, and, above all, secret detention.

These practices gravely increase the opportunities to torture undetected, and, thus, increase the chances that it will take place. In closed societies where we have little precise information on torture, I agree that we should take prolonged incommunicado detention and secret detention as red flags. They should alert us to the very real likelihood that torture is taking place.

Accordingly, we are considering how to give these factors greater recognition in our annual human rights reports.

Amnesty's point 8, prosecution of alleged torture, is also particularly significant. Let's take Turkey as an example.

For a long time, torture has been a serious problem in Turkey. Rather recently, the government has charged, tried and convicted police personnel accused of torture. Obviously, the problem of torture remains, but the existence of a risk of prosecution and incarceration must act in Turkey as a significant deterrent to acts of torture.

So, we should definitely pay special attention to whether officials are punished for torture or not.

I'd like to draw special attention to a section of the Amnesty report documenting allegations of torture in specific countries.

Generally speaking, these reports are consistent with our own information in the annual country reports. In fact, I think the Amnesty report and our report compliment each other quite well.

One principal difference concerns the time periods covered. Amnesty's report covers 1980 to 1982, primarily; while we, of course, did a 1983 report, though with a little bit of data from 1984.

The other difference is in the question of detail. Amnesty tends to go into greater detail because its book deals exclusively with torture, whereas our report deals with all other forms of human rights abuse as well. And, of course, Amnesty surveyed 66 countries, whereas we surveyed 160.

But, I think, in general, both reports reach similar conclusions about the practice of torture.

My one criticism of the Amnesty report concerns what I would regard as an error of omission. The Amnesty report completely ignores reports of torture in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Grenada. While it contains a report on the practice of torture in the Republic of Korea, South Korea, there is no corresponding report on North Korea.

I find the omission of real problem countries, such as Cuba, quite troubling. I firmly believe that these omissions simply reflect problems of access because we often do not have very much information about human rights abuses in closed societies.

These societies often tend to receive less attention and criticism than relatively open societies. Overcoming this built-in bias in favor of closed societies is a problem which all human rights reports, including the Department's, must grapple with.

I only wish Amnesty International had done more to overcome this problem.

This criticism notwithstanding, however, I think Amnesty is to be commended for a report that is a challenge to the conscience. Mr. Chairman, we in the Bureau of Human Rights and throughout the Reagan administration, regard ourselves as activists in this struggle for human rights.

Over the past 3 years, the U.S. Government has employed a broad range of instruments and techniques in responding to specific cases of human rights abuse, such as torture and cruel treatment of detainees.

In dealing with friendly governments, our initial response upon receiving reports of someone being illegally detained and maybe undergoing torture, is to engage in the kind of frank diplomatic exchanges often referred to as quiet diplomacy.

The phrase quiet diplomacy fails to convey either the intensity of our efforts or the depth of our concerns on behalf of victims of torture and brutality.

I want to stress, therefore, that quiet diplomacy refers only to the confidentiality of the channels we use, not to the intensity of our representations.

The truth is that this kind of diplomatic activity has proved its effectiveness in a number of countries. When diplomatic approaches do not avail or where we have very little diplomatic influence or access, we have disassociated ourselves from the odious human rights practices by utilizing established law and vigilant application of our human rights policies.

Human rights considerations are a key factor in examining and determining military assistance levels and where security and economic considerations are integral to that process.

In addition, we can and have used the tools at our disposal to deny economic assistance, vote against multilateral development banks, deny export of munitions control and crime control and detection equipment, and have issued public statements, in some cases, denouncing human rights violations.

The United States has also supported the creation of the U.N. Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture, which seeks to provide victims of torture with assistance in their physical and mental rehabilitation.

It is currently collecting contributions, and we hope in the nottoo-distant future to provide funding for it. We are currently providing funds under section 116(e) to a wide variety of human rights projects around the world.

No discussion of torture, I think, would be complete, Mr. Chairman, without pointing out that there are extremist groups which deliberately seek to provoke government repression and torture in an effort to polarize society and undermine democratic institutions. In all too many Third World governments, governments have fallen into this trap, set by revolutionaries as security forces brutalize the population in a vain attempt to restore order.

However, the experience of the Federal Republic of Germany, of Italy and of Japan, suggest that it is possible to develop a humane antiguerrilla strategy, and, this, in turn, underscores the need to provide governments under siege with the necessary assistance and training to develop such a strategy.

Unfortunately, the role of the United States in eliminating human rights abuses is constrained by section 660 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which precludes the use of foreign assistance to fund police training.

The report of the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America, the Kissinger Commission, so-called, had section 660 in mind when it wrote: "Another obstacle to the effective pursuit of antiguerrilla strategy is a provision of current U.S. law under which no assistance can be provided to law enforcement agencies." I won't read the entire report in the interest of time, but the Commission does note that "the paradoxical effect of 660 is to inhibit our efforts to improve human rights performance" as in the case of El Salvador, where we are unable to give the kinds of police training that we would like to give.

Mr. Chairman, I'm sure all this agrees with the intent of section 660, which is to prevent the United States from being associated with police forces which engage in brutality, is altogether praiseworthy, but if the effective 660 were to block efforts at improving human rights performance, then I would strongly argue that a reconsideration of its provisions would be warranted.

To inculcate in police and security forces more professional standards of conduct is one way, I think, of improving human rights performance in a variety of countries.

And, I would note that training procedures is one of the matters that is raised in Amnesty's own 12-point program.

There are still a large number of police forces in the world where they simply don't understand that they can effectively do their work without indiscriminate violence and brutality. Perhaps if they learned a little bit more about modern professional police tactics, they would be more effective and more compassionate.

There was a time in history when police and security functions were attended by brutality and torture as normal practices in almost every country. In many countries, this time is now very distant, and that is due, in part, I think, to the professionalization of police work.

In the process of professionalization, police and security forces ceased to think of themselves as the clutch of people with weapons and power, and started to think of themselves as a profession with its own standards of conduct.

So, I want to propose that we do need to rethink the blanket ban which is imposed by section 660, and wonder, I do wonder whether it is the most effective way of achieving the goals that it states.

Let me conclude these remarks by pointing out that just as there is no simple cause of torture, so, too, there is no panacea that can eliminate it quickly and completely.

As I've already noted, democracy is the nearest thing we have to a guarantee of human rights. For this reason, President Reagan has made the encouragement of democracy a central goal of our foreign policy.

Yet, until many more of the world's governments are democratic, it is safe to assume that torture will remain a human rights problem of the first magnitude.

For this reason, we must continue to oppose specific human rights violations such as torture over the short term, whenever we encounter them.

Such a policy is bound to be frustrating, it does not at all detract from the fact that it is the only honorable course of action open to us as Americans, and, indeed, as human beings.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Mr. Abrams' prepared statement follows:]

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