'Children are tortured' (The Observer, 14 Oktober 1979)

=== [PDF page 1] === ‘Children are tortured' Mather, Ian The Observer (1901- 2009); Oct 14, 1979; ProQuest ‘Children are tortured’ by [AN MATHER TORTURE is commonly practised on children in many countries to obtain information about members of their families, says Amnesty International in a report published in London today. The report, issued to mark ‘Prisoner of Conscience’ week, outlines cases in 2i countries in which hundreds of children have been tortured, held as political prisoners or massacred. It accuses many governments of ignoring both the Geneva Convention, which bans torture, and the Ynternational Year of the Child. One particularly horrifying case documented by Amnesty concerns a_ three-year-ald girl who was tortured for four days in front of her mother in a detention centre in Chile. To obtain = information about the girl's father, a trade unionist opposed to the junta, the girl. was undressed and beaten with a leather whip. The mother said: ‘They put her in a barrel with ice water until she almost drowned. They threatened to rape her, and whipped her again. This was repéated four times a day for four days.’ Barbarous acts against children are not confined to governments of one particular creed. In 1977 and 1978 about 5,000 young people were killed during the ‘ Red Terror’ ordered by the Ethiopian Government. Aninesty accuses the Derg of systematic torture and summary execution of large numbers of children. In Indonesia the daughter af Sri Ambar, a woman trade unionist, was tortured in her mother’s Presence, then taken away and never seen again. Many children arrested in 1965 in Indonesia are still in prison. Wives and children have been transported to an island colony to join husbands and fathers, and there may now be 400 children living there in the same conditions as the prisoners. Babies are not exempt from brutal] treatment. Simon Antonio Riquel was anly 20 days old when arrested with his mother in Argentina. His mother was transported to a prison in Uruguay and the baby was never seen again. _Even childbirth is an occa. sion for torture. An Argentinian woman, who is not named for her own protection, while in labour was tortured with electric shocks, beaten on her abdomen with an iron bar, kicked, sexually humiliated and threatened with death. A doctor supervised the electrical torture. The woman was kept tied to the bed for five hours. The newborn baby was forced to sleep on the cell floor, Both mother and son were examined = and treated by Amnesty International doctors when they were released six months later. so ‘ a” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.