The Colegio has recently suggested to the Government the creation of a Code of Ethics for the officers in charge of enforcing the law.

What will be needed in the future in order to avoid this scourge? We said that our belief in what refers to torture and torturers is not that they are a group of psychotic persons, but the result of a society which permits the existence of this group and even its institutionalization.

It is encouraging to see that ethical values are coming back to life, that there is a search for the genuine, honest and worthy tradition of our country.

We believe that our task is to continue along this line, to support morally and materially the institutions that struggle to abolish torture, that, basically, we believe that the only real and definitive solution to the problem is for the country to recover our true democracy.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Dr. Gonzalez' prepared statement follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JUAN Gonzalez, M.D.

THE ETHICAL POSITION OF THE COLEGIO MEDICO ON TORTURE

We believe that the problem of torture, the fact that torturers do exist, that they continue to do their job and that they become an institution, shows that the society in which we live is sick. It would be far too easy to consider that the problem lies only in torturers understood as depraved and psychotic persons. This would be a fobic way of evading the social guilt that the problem involves. We have received many oral accusations-since denouncers are scared to do them in written formwe have investigated, but it is difficult to obtain witnesses and to prove facts completely.

Within this context, we determined which was the ethical position of the Colegio Médico de Chile on torture.

We realize that torture has been an instrument used by the authorities in Chile during the past 10 years.

A national awareness has come up recently, and especially during the last two years. Under these circumstances, in late 1981, the leaders of the Colegio Médico were democratically elected, and therefore, a more defined strife became possible. Before that time the authorities of the Colegio-like those of the other associations of professionals—were designated by the government.

The new leaders, consistent with the historical tradition of the association, assume the responsibility of being well informed, creating an awareness and struggling against torture up to where their slunted powers allow.

During those years, some physicians created groups to protect those who were persecuted, to support them and give them medical care and also to denounce what was happening. Basically, all these groups started and survived thanks to the support of the Catholic Church.

Torture was a common practice throughout the country after the coup d'etat. In a scared society, there are always less denounces of torture there should actually be. A record of these accusations has been kept basically by the Vicariate for Solidarity of the Catholic Church and it is known by the international public opinion.

Amongst these groups, some of the most prominent ones are the aforementioned Vicariate, the Commission for Human Rights and the National Commission against Torture, created in late 1982.

Physicians participate actively in all these groups and especially in the National Commission against Torture, presided by a physician who is at present National Counselor of the Colegio Médico.

The Colegio Médico de Chile made an important contribution against the participation of physicians in cruel, inhuman or degrading procedures by incorporating to its Code of Ethics a special article that prohibits direct or. indirect participation of physicians in said procedures.

This determination to denounce torture allowed to start investigating physicians who had participated in inhuman and degrading procedures. Said investigations

began a year ago, and they were initiated in the Department of Ethics of the General Counsel.

The internal summary that the Colegio Médico applies when a physician violated the Code of Ethics has been completed in only one case so far. Charges have been formulated. Another case is under way and there is a third case involving two physicians who, presumably, have been identified.

According to existing statements, prisoners are masked before being tortured, therefore direct identification has been virtually impossible, except in the four cases previously described where identification was possible due to exceptional circumstances.

The study of Court legal files revealed some problems in connection with medical certification. According to Chilean Law and the Code of Ethics of this Association, any person who is captured and put to jail or arrested in a public place destined to imprisonment must be examined by a physician when entering and leaving such a place. Nevertheless, we know that there are physicians who certify the physical condition of persons arrested in secret places without examining them at all or performing only a superficial examination. These health certifications have been used for different purposes, especially to give torture and arrest in secret places the appearance of legal processes and, what is worse, to certify in some cases the degree of torture an arrested person can withstand. The torturers' attempt to know the amount of torment to be inflicted. The written certificate is a matter of routine and it is granted with an illegible signature; therefore, it is impossible to know who was the physician involved.

This has been accepted without there being any evident objections, thus creating an anomalous situation which lead to a meeting of the leaders of the Colegio Médico with the President of the Supreme Court.

In November 1982, Mr. Sebastián Acevedo immolated himself, in a bizarre manner, in the main square of Concepción, because two of his sons were arrested and presumably tortured by C.N.I. officials. This had a national repercussion and the protest of the physicians of that region was particularly important. Eighty out of 100 physicians met in a colloquy on torture that was held in Chillán, a city of the region. It was the first time that something of this kind happened. This unusual protest of Mr. Acevedo made the Department of Ethics request a pronouncement from the Academy of Medicine.

Some physicians have suffered retaliation after denouncing or certifying acts of torture. Other activities of the Colegio Médico de Chile on behalf of Human Rights

are:

(a) The Department of Gremial Activities has organized a commission to support physicians who are suffering retaliation.

(b) Joint representation, together with the Confederación Médica Argentina, in A.M.M. (Venice), declaration on the respect of Human Rights of Physicians, condemnation of the participation of physicians in torture based on the declaration of Tokyo of the AMM, countersigned by the United Nations. The Assembly's support was unanimous.

(c) Divulgation of torture, for example, address by Dr. Castillo, "Vida Médica" (Medical Life), September 1983, through the Association's media and, if possible, press.

(d) Struggle for the protection of ethics.

In our efforts to prove the participation of physicians in torture, the very fact that there are physicians involved in such a monstrous activity which is contrary to the medical vocation, is much more important that the number of cases detected. It means being against the evolution of mankind. Accusing someone as being guilty of torture is so serious that our work is carried out with maximum discretion and secrecy. To cause the slightest doubt in this regard to a physician is an enormous punishment that will be very difficult to bear for him and his family. It is for this reason that the process is so long and is kept in such secrecy. And, this is also why we request maximum discretion from those who are acquainted with information on these matters. Once charges are made, they must be unquestionable.

To sum up, the task of the Colegio Médico has been to obtain information, to divulge its moral position against torture, to intimidate those physicians that_could feel tempted to act, to incorporate in the Code of Ethics an article-from the Declaration of Tokyo-against torture, participation of physicians in the different institutions created on behalf of human rights, and divulgation of ethics-related subjects in conferences and publications. The Colegio has recently suggested to the Government the creation of a Code of Ethics for the officers in charge of enforcing the law. What will be needed in the future in order to avoid this scourge?

We said that our belief in what refers to torture and torturers is not that they are a group of psychotic persons, but the result of a society which permits the existence of this group and even its institutionalization.

It is encouraging to see that ethical values are coming back to life, that there is a search for the genuine, honest and worthy tradition of this country. We believe that our task is to continue along this line, to support morally and materially the institutions that struggle to abolish torture. But, basically, we believe that the only real and definitive solution to the problem is for the country to recover a true democracy.

Mr. YATRON. Thank you, Dr. Gonzalez.

Our next witness is Mr. Juan Mendez.

Mr. Mendez, will you please proceed with your statement?

STATEMENT OF JUAN E. MENDEZ, DIRECTOR OF THE
WASHINGTON OFFICE, AMERICAS WATCH

Mr. MENDEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am an attorney admitted to practice in Argentina and in Washington, DC, and for the last several years, I have been living in the United States. I was only allowed to return to Argentina this year, after the state of seige was lifted after the elections in October 1983.

Like many lawyers of my generation, I practiced in the defense of political prisoners in the 1970's in Argentina. Many of our clients or defendants, almost all of them, I would say-had suffered torture.

So, a good portion of our work was efforts to stop the practice of torture, and then to show evidence that there had been torture.

At the same time, because of that work, we, in turn, became targets of repression ourselves. In my case, I was arrested in August 1975, in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, and for the first 3 days, my arrest was not acknowledged.

I was taken to three or four secret locations by the police of the Province of Buenos Aires, and I was tortured, mostly with electric shock.

On the first day of torture, I received five sessions of what is called a "picana," the electric prod. The one that they used on me was a more updated, sophisticated version of the cattle prod, which can be regulated.

In the course of those five sessions, I was repeatedly interrogated about my clients, about my contacts, about the relatives of my clients, about the ways in which lawyers like me were able to file petitions for habeas corpus hours after someone had been arrested by the security forces.

The way the electric prod is applied is, they stripped me naked and they tied me to a table, spreadeagled, and they applied the electric prod to all sensitive parts of my body, especially genitals, my mouth, the back of my head.

The effects are undescribable. The pain is really beyond words, and it does result in very serious sensory deprivations for many hours after the sessions are finished.

Fortunately, because of the work of my friends and colleagues and of my family, finally, my arrest was acknowledged. Then, I spent a year and a half in prison without charges in Argentina, until, in 1977, after being adopted as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, and after several Members of this House

took a special interest in me, I was one of the first Argentine detainees to be allowed to leave the country under what is called the right of option.

But, I wanted to discuss today our experiences as attorneys practicing in a country where torture is a very common, very widespread practice. And, I'd like to say that the context in which I graduated and started working on this field was one in which another military government was in power in Argentina, and there had been very serious disturbances toward 1969, mostly, and the beginning of the work of subversive organizations bent on the violent overthrow of the government.

As a response, the military government established a state of seige and arrested hundreds of people, some charged with violent offenses, and others basically held under state of seige provisions.

Almost all of them were tortured, and those were our clients. As soon as someone was detained, what we would do as lawyers was to try to establish the whereabouts of the detainees in order to stop torture, which we knew that very possibly was already happening.

Many times, that meant that we had to wake up judges in the middle of the night, and ask them to make inquiries by telephone or by telegram, or even in person, in police headquarters or in security facilities.

That was an effective way to at least put some limits on torture because those who had the prisoner in their power knew that at some point or other they were going to have to show the prisoner to a judge, and account for whatever physical mistreatment he had suffered.

Our object in doing this was both to stop the torture, but also to see if we could exclude evidence that might have been obtained under duress.

And, of course, a third objective was to try to prosecute, to discover evidence that would lead to the prosecution of torturers.

In this sense, especially in the early seventies, I think we were successful in the first two objectives. Generally, I think, we did put some limits on the extent and the nature of the torture.

We were also partly successful in some cases in having evidence thrown out of court because it had been obtained under duress. But we were woefully unsuccessful in obtaining prosecution of torturers, and I think that this de facto immunity for torturers played a very important role in what came afterward, when the military took over the government in 1976, and a total breakdown of the rule of law made it possible for torture to be much more widespread.

In the course of this, we joined organizations. We tried to get the bar associations to work with us, and the more that we did this, the more the security authorities and the military viewed many of us, and the organizations that we formed, as fronts for the subversion or organizations that were doing public work for the guerrillas.

This was basically not true. But, it is true that many of my colleagues did contribute to that perception by using a very politicized rhetoric. And, I think that is one of the shortcomings of those years, although I think the balance of our work was positive because we did put limits on torture and we saved many lives.

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I think the fact that we saw our work as of a political nature, and that we allowed ourselves to be isolated and identified with the guerrilla movement, rather than reaching out into the mainstream of society, made it possible for the military government, and even before that, for the Government of Isabel Peron, to persecute lawyers as a distinct target of repression, and also made it possible in the first, I would say, 2 years of the military government, 1976 and 1977, to have thousands of disappeared persons and security detainees almost all of whom were regularly tortured.

At that time, there was no one to defend them; there was no one to present habeas corpus', and for a good period of time, there was just no recourse to any defense.

But, fortunately, little by little, a new and very vigorous human rights movement was born out of those ashes, without much contact with the earlier group.

The new groups were formed in 1978 and 1979, when the peaks of repression were very high, and you are familiar with some of them. There are now eight distinct human rights organizations in Argentina, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo being the most wellknown.

And one of them especially, the Center for Legal and Social Studies, concentrates specifically on providing legal assistance and on documenting abuses of human rights.

It has a staff of attorneys that have basically taken up the work of the lawyers that practiced in the early seventies.

I think they have taken their task with at least as much commitment and courage as the lawyers of the early seventies, but with at least a couple of very significant improvements over their work. One is that although these lawyers, each of them has a political point of view, they make very clear that they work as lawyers and their work in human rights organizations is completely separate and distinct from their work with political organizations.

In fact, they generally belong to different political parties, and yet work together. They also enjoy and cultivate strong links to the international human rights movement, which gives them access to remedies of an international nature that was not our practice back in the seventies.

And, at the same time, they have achieved a much higher degree of organization that allows them to obtain funding, both in Argentina and abroad, and to make a much better use of staff and volunteer help by other pro bono lawyers.

I think the work of these organizations, especially the lawyers among them, was instrumental in putting limits to the repression in the eighties, that is towards the latter years of the military dictatorship, especially in 1982, after the Malvinas/Falklands fiasco, when the military was already in disarray.

It was possible for these organizations basically to curb and almost eliminate all forms of torture. In the sense that when there were arrests and incidents of torture in those years, there was so much publicity around them and there was so much pressure put on the Government that these actions were effectively stopped.

So the lawyers in Argentina now have concentrated on another aspect, that has generally not received as much focus, as much attention in other countries as it is receiving now in Argentina.