Investigations

PHR Research on Torture

Freedom from cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment is a fundamental human right established in international law. Since its founding in 1986, PHR's core mission has included investigating and reporting on the devastating consequences of torture on individuals, institutions, and society as a whole.

Health professionals can use their training in diagnosis to detect signs of abuse, even when they are not evident to traditional investigators. Where the torturer aims to silence the victim, PHR's work validates the survivor's voice. Where the torturer hides evidence of brutality, PHR provides physical proof of the violation. And, where the torturer uses the physician as an accomplice, PHR exposes the ethical travesty.

PHR has investigated reports of torture in many parts of the world. It sent physicians to interview and examine survivors of torture in Kashmir and Punjab, Haiti, Turkey, Guatemala, Kenya, Tibet, the Israeli Occupied Territories, and the United States, among others. PHR forensic pathologists have also traveled around the world to conduct or observe autopsies on individuals who have died as a result of torture.

PHR reports on torture include:

Break Them Down: Systematic Use of Psychological Torture by U.S. Forces -- Published a year after the Abu Ghraib photographs surfaced, this report examines the corrosive role of psychological torture and concludes that it was systematic and central to interrogating detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo.

Torture in Turkey and Its Unwilling Accomplices -- PHR's most comprehensive study of torture, this report documents widespread and systematic torture in Turkey and finds that Turkish law enforcement officials coerced physicians to conceal findings of physical abuse of prisoners.

PHR also developed the first set of international guidelines for investigating and assessing allegations of torture and ill-treatment. They became the Istanbul Protocol, a United Nations document published in numerous languages that is recognized as setting the international standard for such investigations.

Related links:

The Campaign Against Torture