RESPONDING to ongoing reports that US personnel, including health professionals, have been involved in torture in US-run detention centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, health professionals from across the country are joining the "US Health Professionals' Call to Prevent Torture and Abuse of Detainees in US Custody."
The "Call" emphasizes that torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment are ethically and morally repugnant wherever and whenever they are inflicted. As the American Medical Association's Code of Medical Ethics provides, "Physicians must oppose and must not participate in torture for any reason."1
The signatories of the Call seek to reaffirm health professionals' ethical commitment to prevention of torture, expressing with one voice their grave concern over the mounting evidence of both physical and psychological torture and ill-treatment inflicted by US forces on prisoners and detainees.
The Call underscores the disturbing pattern of reported abuse: physical torture, such as beatings and shackling in stress positions, and psychological torture, such as mock executions, sleep and sensory deprivation, prolonged isolation, forced nudity, cultural and sexual humiliation, use of dogs to instill terror, threats of violence or death against detainees or their loved ones, and more. The US military itself has identified the deaths of at least 28 detainees as confirmed or suspected homicides.2 Even as evidence of abusive treatment accumulates, the signatories point out, current policies may continue to authorize the use of psychological torture, and these methods may still be in use.
Evidence of US military medical personnel having played a role in torture and ill-treatment of prisoners and detainees is of particular concern, as are current military guidelines that do not absolutely prohibit such complicity. Signatories to the Health Professionals' Call to Prevent Torture are concerned that medical complicity in torture and abuse comprises a severe breach of ethical duties that threatens to erode the culture and traditions of our profession as a whole.
Guided by the ethical tenets of their profession and fundamental principles of human rights, the signatories of the Call urgently call on all relevant authorities within the US government to
* Take all steps necessary to ensure that US personnel do not engage in torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of prisoners and detainees in US custody.
* Establish a bipartisan, independent commission, comparable to the 9/11 Commission, empowered to investigate fully all allegations of torture and ill-treatment; to determine how and to what extent official decisions and policy have led to such practices; to determine whether and to what extent medical personnel have been complicit; and to recommend steps necessary to prevent torture and abuse going forward.
* Rescind and reverse all legal opinions and policies that permit or condone torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.
* Establish and publicly disclose interrogation rules that are consistent with the prohibition against torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.
* Ensure accountability up the chain of command for all those responsible for torture and ill-treatment by US personnel.
* Ensure that all personnel who report evidence of torture and abuse to the appropriate authorities are protected from adverse consequences to their status or careers.
* Promote ethical practice by military medical personnel, including policies affirming health professionals' ethical obligations not to participate in torture or ill-treatment in any way, training for medical personnel in their ethical duties regarding torture and abuse, training for medical personnel in appropriate treatment and care for prisoners of war, and protecting military health professionals' clinical independence.
Concerned health professionals can sign on to the Call to Prevent Torture at the Physicians for Human Rights Web site, http://www.phrusa.org/no-torture/.
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