PRO ASYL Press Release
26. February 2003
PRO ASYL: present debate on torture is a political tabu-breaking
- PRO ASYL: Die aktuelle Folterdebatte ist ein politischer Tabubruch
- PRO ASYL: present debate on torture is a political tabu-breaking
INFO
(partially translated)
This is a machine translation by the IBM-supported PERSONAL TRANSLATOR plus. It is slightly edited by combining its results with the translation of SYSTRAN. But you should not rely on it. If you want to use a translated text append or reference the original text.
PRO ASYL blames politicians like Mr. Joerg Schoenbohm and Mr. Norbert Geis for using the debate on the controversial hearing methods of the Frankfurt police in the case of Jakob von Metzler in order to take advantage for a political tabu-breaking. Where an unambiguous confession for the absoluteness of the torture ban and the universal core of the human rights is demanded, an state of emergency debate is pursued by political troublemakers with the aim, making torture conceivable in the state of emergency also in democracies. Completely separated from the case Metzler scenarios of allegedly over-legal state would be designed at the moment, where the absolute torture ban under international has to stand back behind allegedly higher ranking legal goods.
Who qualifies the torture ban, is introducing an erosion of the international law. Who is clearing in this country a lane for torture, has to be questioned, with which right he stands up against torture in Turkish police stations, in Iraqi prisons, in Russian „infiltration camps“ in Chechnya. Many people, who were tortured or have sought protection against threatening torture in Germany, can report from their own experience, that torture in their countries of origin is often justified or accepted with tacit consent as necessary investigation method, or special crime-detecting technique, or under reference to a state of emergency.
Many scenarios, in which torture is represented at present as possibly justified, refer to situations of threat of terror. The core of the current tabu-breaking is: It is tried making an extension of state violence in the context of the fight against terror socially acceptable. Basic and human rights are discredited as fair weather guarantees.
