The Philippines: the economics of torture
In every Philippine detention camp is an isolated building called the “safehouse.” Outside the soundproofed safehouses are the uninterrupted sounds of routine detention camp processing. Inside are the anguished cries of the men and women who are subjected day and night to the agony of physical and psychological torture.
Torture has been an integral part of President Ferdinand Marcos’ “New Society” since the imposition of martial law in September 1972. The objectives of the New Society programs are broadly stated to be political, social, and economic reformation. But the major issues dividing the people revolve around who controls the Philippine economy.
In the years prior to martial law the national mood increasingly attuned to economic independence. Labor unions, the press, the legislature, and the courts sought government resistance to control by outside economic interests. Their vision was of Filipinos regaining control of their economy, their industry, their capital, their agricultural production, and their trade.
This predominant mood was expressed in a decision by the Philippine Supreme Court only one month prior to the imposition of the martial law. Soon to expire was the parity treaty between the United States and the Philippines, which had given each equal economic treatment, equal access to resources, and equal right to own property. A Supreme Court decision would have confiscated much of the foreign-owned property and required corporations to be 60 percent owned by Filipinos, with Filipinos as executives and managers. Marcos’ reversal of this Supreme Court decision one month after the declaration of martial law demonstrated his firm opposition to the desire for economic independence.
Many prominent Filipinos from the government and news media were arrested under martial law and imprisoned without trial. Some were released after two years; others remain in prison. However, most of the estimated 1,500 to 4,000 victims of martial law came from the ranks of labor, from the fields, and from the campuses. These are the Filipino men and women who are led by Marcos’ soldiers to the stockades and safehouses.
The purposes of torture are intimidation and interrogation. As one victim has put it, “Torture has provided the government with a good deal of information, and even if they extract information from only a small percentage of those arrested, the government feels it is to their advantage to torture all in hopes of increasing that percentage.”
The methods of torture are painfully dehumanizing. Prisoners are systematically beaten, pistol-whipped, subjected to electric shocks, burned with lighted cigarettes and flat irons, forced to sit nude on ice blocks, and sexually abused. Addictive drugs are often administered to alter the detainee’s mental state. The treatment continues day and night, sometimes for weeks. For many, the result is death.
The connection between the repressive tactics of Marcos and the American presence in the Philippines is not hard to trace. The United States has for many years considered a presence in the Philippines a key to its Asian foreign policy. What that presence has meant for the Philippines is an economy dependent upon the United States. Capital, property, resources, and production have in large part been in the control of U.S. corporations. Especially because of its defeat in Indochina, the U.S. believes it needs to maintain a strong presence in the Philippines.
Since the imposition of martial law, U.S. military aid to the Philippines has doubled. That this aid contributes heavily to the repressive tactics of Marcos’ regime is evidenced in the testimony of Rev. Bruno Hicks, a former missionary to the Philippines: “When I was arrested, the soldier boasted that he was trained by an American adviser. He was carrying an American weapon. The police department where I was had been revamped and given new communications equipment. They had rebuilt the jail where we were imprisoned. It was all [done with] American funds.”
Does the United States want an independent Philippine economy and the friendship of 40 million Filipinos? Or does it prefer the friendship of Ferdinand Marcos -- which will nurse the American economic presence but simultaneously subject many hundreds of Filipinos to brutal repression and torture? The present American investment in the Marcos regime leaves no doubt about the answer to these questions.
Soviet Union: drugging dissenters
Today there are over 10,000 political and religious prisoners being held in the Soviet Union according to Amnesty International. Some are sentenced to prison, where it appears that physical torture as an administrative practice does not occur. However, most of these dissidents are sent to labor camps or psychiatric institutes where torture is the norm.
Conditions in labor camps vary according to camp regimen. Political prisoners are nearly always imprisoned under the two harshest regimens -- strict and special. As in most camps, compulsory labor is required. What is unique to a strict and special camp system is the hunger factor. Prisoners are kept at the near-starvation diet of 2,000 to 2,600 calories or special punishment diets of 1,300 to 1,500 calories. (3,500 calories is usually considered the minimum energy intake for people working actively.) Combined with hard physical labor and totally inadequate medical treatment, special punishment diets can be considered a form of torture because of their destructive effect upon the physical condition and psychological morale of the prisoner.
More brutal than the experience of the labor camp is confinement to a psychiatric institute. Psychiatric confinement of dissenters was widely practiced in the early 1950s but decreased soon after that. Since 1965, however, there has been increasing evidence of the renewal of this form of torture.
The most common legal procedure for commitment to psychiatric hospitals is to make a charge under criminal law. After the political dissident is arrested, the Soviet secret police (the KGB) may decide they want to avoid an open trial. The detainee is then sent for psychiatric diagnosis, usually to the Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry. The Serbsky Institute diagnosis, usually one of mental illness, is passed on to the court which nearly always endorses the Institute’s recommendation of hospital commitment.
Inside the mental hospitals, according to Amnesty International, political prisoners are subjected to a variety of stresses. Some are kept in crowded wards with insane inmates, where they are constantly exposed to violence and aggression. Others are kept in solitary confinement.
The worst treatment, however, and one given to nearly all “mental patients,” is the administration of drugs. Frequently used are aminazine, which causes depression and shuddering, and sulfazine, which causes the body temperature to rise to 104 degrees F, resulting in abscesses, rheumatism of the joints, headaches, and weakness.
The story of Leonid Plyushch, who spent two and a half years in a Soviet mental hospital, illustrates the harrowing mental manipulation of the political dissident. Plyushch, a 37-year-old Ukrainian mathematician and former member of the Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR, was arrested in Kiev on January 14, 1972. He was subsequently diagnosed at the Serbsky Institute as suffering from “creeping schizophrenia with messianic and reformist ideas.”
While confined to a mental hospital, Plyushch underwent drug therapy, including large doses of insulin (although he was not a diabetic) and two kinds of tranquilizers. Plyushch described what he had suffered in a statement submitted to a House sub committee on international organizations.
He said that he was given tranquilizers in large doses, without the corrective drugs necessary -- causing him to writhe in pain, his eyes rolling and tongue hanging out. He was also given drugs which degraded his intellectual, physical and moral state. As Plyushch put it, “After the injections I would have convulsions and was unable to speak, could only lie in bed, and lost interest in everything, even my own family.”
Because his case gained international recognition, Plyushch was released after only two and a half years. Most of the nearly 1,500 political prisoners sentenced to psychiatric hospitals have not fared so well. Groups like Amnesty International (see Seeds) have applied helpful pressure on Moscow to protest this crude treatment. They deserve our support.
Iran: Prisons of the Shah
outside doves perch everywhere
it is clear from
their cooings of love and delight
it is clear from
the whirr of their wings
wings which seem to fan me in my prisoner’s sleep
it is clear outside
doves perch everywhere
the night is like day on the other sides of the bars
on this side the day is like the night
The words of this poem, “The Doves,” were composed and scratched on the wall of cell 14 by Dr. Reza Baraheni during his 102 days of torture and solitary confinement at the hands of the Iranian secret police, SAVAK. The 37-year-old poet and professor of English at Teheran University was among the estimated 25,000 to 100,000 political prisoners who are currently held in SAVAK prisons.
A repressive political climate has been part of Iranian life since the 1953 CIA-supported coup which returned Shah Mohammed Riza Pahlevi to power as head of state. However, since Iran has become one of the wealthiest oil-producing countries, the suppression of human rights has drastically intensified. Last year ninety-five percent of the press was closed and only one political party, the Shah’s Resurgence Party, was legitimized. More devastating has been the arrest, torture, and, not infrequently, execution of opponents of the Shah’s regime.
Conditions of interrogation and torture at SAVAK headquarters were described by Baraheni, who is now in the U.S., in the journal Index On Censorship. After his arrest, Baraheni was taken to the third floor interrogation room at SAVAK central offices.
“There was a bed on the floor. There were also two other iron beds, one on top of the other, in another corner of the room. These last two, I later learned, were used to burn the backs, generally the buttocks, of the prisoners. They tie you to the upper bed on your back and with the heat coming from a torch or a small heater, they burn your back in order to extract information. Some times the burning is extended to the spine, as a result of which paralysis is certain. There were also all sizes of whips hanging from nails on the walls. Electric prods stood on little stools. The nail-plucking instrument stood on the far side. The gallows stood on the other side.
“Not every prisoner goes through the same process, but generally, this is what happens to a prisoner of the first importance. First, he is beaten by several torturers at once, with sticks and clubs. If he doesn’t confess, he is hanged upside down and beaten; if this doesn’t work, he is raped; and if he still shows signs of resistance, he is given electric shock which turns him into a howling dog; and if he is still obstinate, his nails and sometimes all his teeth are pulled out, and in certain exceptional cases, a hot iron rod is put into one side of the face to force its way to the other side, burning the entire mouth and the tongue. A young man was killed this way. At other times he is thrown down on his stomach on the iron bed and boiling water is pumped into his rectum by an enema.”
The response of the United States to these practices of the Shah and his SAVAK forces has been low-keyed at best. In fact the CIA and AID agents, along with the Israeli Secret Service have, in the past, been involved with the training of SAVAK agents. However, the key factors governing U.S.-Iranian relations are economic.
Iran is the largest purchaser of U.S. arms and training. Shipments include aircraft, missiles, and destroyers as well as a $1.9 billion contract for 80 Grumman F-14 fighter planes and 2,000 Maverick air-to-surface anti-tank missiles. About 900 Americans are serving in training and advisory rolls in Iran. Bell Helicopter has a contract to train pilots and mechanics; Raytheon is training Iranians in the operation and maintenance of HAWK missiles; and Westinghouse, Northrop, Emerson, Hughes, McDonnell-Douglas, and General Electric are also involved in training programs.
With U.S. policy relationships to Iran, as with so many other countries, issues of human rights are of secondary importance.
Joe Roos was on the editorial staff at Sojourners when this article appeared.
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