Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/torture/Trinidad&Tobago.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Trinidad &
Tobago. 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: Trinidad and Tobago 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/trinidad-and-tobago/
[accessed 10 August
2021] TORTURE AND OTHER
CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT Although the law
prohibits such practices, there were reports that police officers and prison
guards sometimes used excessive force. Despite government
steps to punish security force members and other officials charged with
killings or other abuses, open-ended investigations and the generally slow
pace of criminal judicial proceedings created a climate of impunity. PRISON AND DETENTION
CENTER CONDITIONS Physical
Conditions: Gross overcrowding was a problem. All prisons had inadequate
lighting, poor ventilation, and inadequate sanitation. Conditions at the sole
women’s prison were better than those in other prisons. ARREST PROCEDURES
AND TREATMENT OF DETAINEES Pretrial Detention:
Lengthy pretrial detention was a problem. Pretrial detainees constituted more
than two-thirds of the prison population. Most detainees’ trials began seven
to 10 years after their arrest, although some spent even longer in pretrial
detention. The length of pretrial detention frequently equaled or exceeded
the maximum sentence for the alleged crime. Freedom House
Country Report 2018 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/trinidad-and-tobago/freedom-world/2018 [accessed 15 May
2020] IS THERE PROTECTION
FROM THE ILLEGITIMATE USE OF PHYSICAL FORCE AND FREEDOM FROM WAR AND
INSURGENCIES?
- The police have been criticized for excessive use of force and many abuses
by the authorities go unpunished. Lengthy pretrial detention
is a problem, and approximately 60 percent of the prison population is made
up of pretrial detainees or remand prisoners. Many prisons are overcrowded
and have poor sanitation. Where Are the
Missing People? Peter Richards,
Inter Press Service News Agency IPS, Port Of Spain, 6 Jan 2009 www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45311 [accessed 1 January
2011] www.ipsnews.net/2009/01/trinidad-where-are-the-missing-people/ [accessed 31 August
2016] When 15-year-old Devika Lalman left her home a
few days before Christmas to buy school supplies for the new academic term,
her parents had taken all the necessary precautions to ensure her
safety. The mother of the Form Three
student said she had also given her daughter a cell phone, but all calls to
that phone have gone unanswered and the daughter has not been seen since. "Almost all
the women who disappeared left behind a pattern. Their cell phones were
switched off. We also heard that they were transported from one house to
another before being shipped out."
The Sunday Guardian newspaper, which carried out its own
investigation, said that the "clandestine local trade, which operates
through a well-organised network and is supported
by several powerful agencies, is linked to an international human trafficking
ring". The paper said that
children were being sold for as much as 34,000 dollars and adults for half
that amount. "They are mostly
used as sex slaves and sometimes for slave labour.
Sometimes, they are used to make pay-offs in the drug trade," the paper
said, noting that the trafficking also includes young women who were being
brought into the country from "We recognise that legislation is critically important at
this point because without proper legislation, which is really one of the
handicaps in the social areas, we could not possibly move forward in terms of
consequences for human traffickers," said the party's deputy leader, Dr Sharon Gopaul McNicol, a clinical psychologist. She told a news conference that most of
the human trafficking "takes place in small boats where people are
drugged and shipped off to other countries, primarily those countries that people
don't speak English so there is little chance of the victims being able to
get away without much difficulty." AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL From an old article -- URL not available Article was
published sometime prior to 2015 POLICE AND SECURITY
FORCES
- There were continued reports of unlawful killings by police. Official
claims that police had fired in self-defence were
frequently challenged by eyewitnesses. Atiba Duncan was fatally
shot by police in April in the community of Mt D’or
Road. Police officers claimed he had pointed a gun at them as they tried to
arrest him. However, a forensic pathologist found that he had been shot in
the back. Investigations were continuing at the end of the year. Search … AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL For more
articles:: Search Amnesty
International’s website www.amnesty.org/en/search/?q=trinidad+tobago+torture&ref=&year=&lang=en&adv=1&sort=relevance [accessed 15 January 2019] Scroll
Down ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Human Rights
Reports » 2008 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, February 25, 2009 www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/wha/119175.htm [accessed 14
February 2013] 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/wha/119175.htm [accessed 7 July
2019] TORTURE
AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – Although the
constitution and the law prohibit such practices, there were credible reports
that police officers and prison guards mistreated individuals under arrest or
in detention. Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, March 8, 2006 www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61700.htm [accessed 14
February 2013] 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61700.htm [accessed 7 July
2019] TORTURE
AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – The law
prohibits such practices; however, security forces reportedly tortured
detainees to elicit confessions and discourage resistance. The forms of
torture and other abuse included: electric shock; submersion of the head in
water; beatings with hands, sticks, and police batons; suspension, sometimes
manacled, from cell doors and rods resulting in loss of consciousness; and
cigarette burns. According to AI, police and prison officials used sexual
assault and threats of sexual assault against the wives of Islamist prisoners
to extract information, to intimidate, and to punish. Charges of torture
in specific cases were difficult to prove because authorities often denied
the victims of torture access to medical care until evidence of abuse
disappeared. The government maintained that it investigated all complaints of
torture and mistreatment filed with the prosecutor's office, and noted that
alleged victims sometimes accused police of torture without filing a
complaint, which is a prerequisite for an investigation. According to
defense attorneys, local human rights groups, and AI, police routinely
refused to register complaints of torture. In addition, judges dismissed
complaints without investigation and accepted as evidence confessions
extracted through torture. The government may open an administrative
investigation of allegations of torture or mistreatment of prisoners without
a formal complaint; however, it was unlikely in those cases to make the
results public or available to the lawyers of affected prisoners. Consistent with an
effort to extract information or coerce confessions, more reports of torture
came from pretrial detention centers than prisons. Human rights activists,
citing prisoner accounts, identified facilities at the Ministry of Interior
as the most common location for torture. Political prisoners and Islamists
allegedly received harsher treatment than criminals. Several domestic
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), including the National Council for
Freedoms in Tunisia (CNLT) and the Association for the Fight Against Torture in
Tunisia (ALTT), reported on multiple torture cases throughout the year. For
example, on June 25, according to CNLT, 25-year-old Zied
Ghodhbane appeared in court in a state of physical
and psychological distress, bearing marks of abuse on his body. He reportedly
testified that officials at the Ministry of Interior tortured him by
beatings, electrocution, and holding his head under water in detention
facilities at the interior ministry after his extradition from Algeria to the
country. Defense lawyers for the accused requested that the judge recommend a
medical examination, but the judge reportedly ruled that such a request
should come from the general prosecutor. In April
authorities sentenced the "Bizerte Group," 11 defendants arrested
in 2004 and charged with various terrorism-related crimes, to prison terms
ranging from 10 to 30 years. On July 2, the court acquitted five of the
defendants, while the remaining six received sentence reductions. The
Committee of the Defense of Victims of the Law on Terrorism released multiple
communiqués charging that authorities gathered confessions from the group
using torture (see section 1.e.). Authorities did not
charge any police or security force official with abuse during the year. 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- Trinidad
& Tobago ", http://gvnet.com/torture/Trinidad&Tobago.htm,
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