Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/torture/CoteD'Ivoire.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Côte
d’Ivoire. Some of these links may lead
to websites that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even
false. No attempt has been made to validate their authenticity or to
verify their content. HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking
for material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on
this page and others to see which aspects of Torture by Authorities are of
particular interest to you. You might
be interested in exploring the moral justification for inflicting pain or
inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment in order to obtain critical
information that may save countless lives, or to elicit a confession for a
criminal act, or to punish someone to teach him a lesson outside of the
courtroom. Perhaps your paper might
focus on some of the methods of torture, like fear, extreme temperatures,
starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, suffocation, or immersion in freezing
water. On the other hand, you might
choose to write about the people acting in an official capacity who
perpetrate such cruelty. There is a
lot to the subject of Torture by Authorities.
Scan other countries as well as this one. Draw comparisons between activity in
adjacent countries and/or regions.
Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper
resources that are available on-line. ***
ARCHIVES *** 2020 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices: Côte d’Ivoire U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, 30 March 2021 www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/cote-divoire/
[accessed 8 July
2021] DISAPPEARANCE There were at least
two reports of disappearances carried out by or on behalf of government
authorities at the end of 2019 and during the year. The alleged victims both
emerged alive after their disappearances. TORTURE AND OTHER
CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT Human rights
organizations reported that prisoners were subject to violence and abuse,
including beatings and extortion, by prison officials and that the
perpetrators of these acts went unpunished. Human rights organizations
reported mistreatment of detainees between arrest and being booked into
prison. PRISON AND DETENTION
CENTER CONDITIONS Prison conditions
were harsh and unhealthy due to insufficient food, gross overcrowding,
understaffing, inadequate sanitary conditions, and lack of proper medical
care. Physical
Conditions: The government acknowledged prison overpopulation was a problem
and that existing facilities, originally built to hold no more than 8,000
prisoners, were insufficient to hold the total prison population of 21,430 as
of late August. In at least one prison, the inmates reportedly slept packed
head-to-toe on the floor. ARREST PROCEDURES
AND TREATMENT OF DETAINEES The government
revised the law in 2019 to allow the state to detain a suspect for up to 48
hours without charge, subject to renewal only once for an additional 48
hours. The law specifies a maximum of 18 months of pretrial detention for
misdemeanor charges and 24 months for felony charges, subject to judicial
review every eight months. Freedom House
Country Report 2018 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/cote-divoire/freedom-world/2018 [accessed 11 May
2020] F3. IS THERE PROTECTION FROM THE ILLEGITIMATE USE
OF PHYSICAL FORCE AND FREEDOM FROM WAR AND INSURGENCIES? Overall levels of
violence in the country are lower than during the height of the
political-military crisis in 2010–11. However, physical violence against
civilians in the form of extortion, banditry, and sexual violence, sometime
perpetrated by members of the state armed forces, remain
common. Human
Rights Watch World Report 2015 - Events of 2014 Human Rights Watch,
29 January 2015 www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/...
or
www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/wr2015_web.pdf [accessed 18 March
2015] COTE d'IVOIRE SECURITY FORCE
ABUSES
- Members of the security forces including soldiers, gendarmes, and police perpetrated
numerous serious human rights abuses, including mistreatment and torture of
detainees, sometimes to extract confessions; extrajudicial killings; rape;
and extortion. Several commanders implicated in serious human rights abuses
remain in key positions in the security forces. When A Sentence To
Jail Can Be A Sentence To Death UN Integrated
Regional Information Networks IRIN, Dimbokro, 17
May 2005 www.irinnews.org/report/54460/cote-d-ivoire-when-a-sentence-to-jail-can-be-a-sentence-to-death [accessed 10 March
2015] Dozen or so minors
being held, most of whom are street children.
During a short guided tour, it became clear that many detainees were
being held without trial, in extended provisional custody. A female street vendor of unlabeled
medicine had been in custody for 2 years; a 12-year-old boy was thrown in
prison a year ago for smoking cannabis and had never seen his parents or a
lawyer since Côte d’Ivoire: New
Spate of Abuses by Military Human Rights Watch,
Paris, November 19, 2012 www.hrw.org/news/2012/11/19/c-te-d-ivoire-new-spate-abuses-military [accessed 22 January
2013] Forces Used
Torture, Inhuman Treatment in Response to Recent Security Threats Côte d’Ivoire’s military
was responsible for widespread human rights abuses in August and early
September 2012, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The
abuses included arbitrary arrests, illegal detentions, extortion, inhuman
treatment, and, in some cases, torture. The 73-page report,
“‘A Long Way from Reconciliation’: Abusive Military Crackdown in Response to
Security Threats in Côte d’Ivoire,”details the
brutal crackdown that followed a series of violent attacks on military
installations around the country in August. The attacks were allegedly
committed by militants loyal to former President Laurent Gbagbo. The
resulting crackdown recalled the grave crimes committed during the 2010-2011
post-election crisis, in some cases under the same commanders previously
identified as responsible for brutal abuses, Human Rights Watch found. The
government of President Alassane Ouattara needs to ensure the prompt investigation and
prosecution of forces who committed serious human rights abuses, including
torture and inhuman treatment, in response to these security threats, Human
Rights Watch said. Human Rights Watch
interviewed five victims of torture who had been detained at the Adjamé camp. They said military personnel subjected them
to beatings, flogging, and other extreme forms of physical mistreatment,
generally during questioning related to the location of guns or alleged
suspects, or to extract a confession. Several had scars allegedly from the
physical abuse. They also said that other detainees had come back to their
cells with bruised faces, severe swelling, and open wounds. The detention
conditions described were grossly inadequate, including severe overcrowding,
near complete denial of food and water, and humiliating practices like being
placed in a room with excrement all over the floor as punishment. A former detainee
at the military police camp described his mistreatment: “I was there for a
week, and they questioned me every day but the last one. Each day they pulled
me out and took me to another room for questioning…. ‘Where are the guns?’ ‘I
don’t own a gun, I’ve never held a gun.’ Whack! They’d wrap their belt around
their hand and hit me in the head, the face, the side. The metal [ring] of
the belt was on the end they hit you with, [I think] to inflict the most
pain…. I had a lot of wounds, from when they’d strike you just right with the
metal ring.” AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL From an old article -- URL not available Article was
published sometime prior to 2015 TORTURE AND DEATHS
IN CUSTODY The FRCI regularly resorted
to torture and other ill-treatment against people suspected of armed attacks
and political plots. Suspects were sometimes held for long periods in
unrecognized places of detention before being brought before a judge and
transferred to prison. In March, a member
of the former regular armed forces, detained in an FRCI camp in Abidjan, was
undressed, handcuffed to an iron bar, beaten and had molten plastic poured on
his body. In August, police
staff sergeant Serge Hervé Kribié
died on the day he was arrested while being subjected to electric shocks in
the FRCI command post in San Pedro. His fate remained unknown to his family
for three weeks. HUMAN RIGHTS
VIOLATIONS AND ABUSES IN THE WEST Insecurity remained
persistent in the west of the country. Members of ethnic groups, including Guérés, who were perceived to have been supporters of
Laurent Gbagbo, were targeted by FRCI and Dozos and
were victims of extrajudicial killings, beatings, torture, unlawful arrests
and enforced disappearances. Search … AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL For current
articles:: Search Amnesty
International Website www.amnesty.org/en/search/?q=cote+torture&ref=&year=&lang=en&adv=1&sort=relevance [accessed 25 December
2018] Scroll
Down ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61565.htm [accessed 22 January
2013] 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61565.htm [accessed 3 July
2019] TORTURE
AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – The law
prohibits such practices; however, security forces beat and abused detainees
and prisoners to punish them or to extract confessions. There were also
reports of rape and torture. Police officers forced detainees to perform
degrading tasks under threat of physical harm. Police detained persons
overnight in police stations where they often beat detainees and forced them
to pay bribes (see sections 1.d., 1.f., and 2.d.). Police also harassed and
extorted bribes from persons of northern origin or with northern names (see
section 1.f.). According to an
ONUCI human rights report, 22 detainees claimed they were tortured while
being transferred from Duekoue Prison to Daloa Prison (see section 1.d.). In the rebel-held
part of the country, rebel military police operated with impunity in
administering justice without legally constituted executive or judicial
oversight (see section 1.g.). Rebels often harassed and abused local citizens
with impunity, often on the basis of ethnic or political background. There
continued to be reports that rebel forces beat persons who supported
President Gbagbo and the ruling FPI. NF members raped women and girls in the
north, and there continued to be reports that rebel soldiers arrested,
tortured, or killed suspected government loyalists or allies of rival rebel
Ibrahim Coulibaly in the zones under their control,
regardless of their ethnic background (see section 1.g.). Incidents of ethnic
violence resulted in injuries, especially in the west and the southwest (see
section 5). All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT
ARTICLES. Cite this
webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, " Torture by Police, Forced
Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment in the early years of the 21st
Century- Côte d’Ivoire ", http://gvnet.com/torture/CoteD’Ivoire.htm,
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