Investigations

Police and Military Brutality

Police officers and the military are empowered to employ appropriate force to protect society. When they abuse this public trust by using excessive use of force such as physical force or beatings, assault, verbal attacks, and threats, their official status can make it especially difficult to hold them accountable. But international treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protect every human being from not being arbitrarily deprived of life, and freedom from torture or ill-treatment. The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment requires that acts of torture be promptly investigated and those responsible brought to justice, and the Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979, says that force should be employed as a last resort when non-violent measures have failed or would be clearly inappropriate, and that in all cases the amount of force must be proportionate to the threat encountered.

After the South Korean government used more than 350,000 canisters of tear gas against demonstrators in 1987, PHR organized an investigative mission that concluded Seoul's indiscriminate use of massive amounts of tear gas was clearly excessive use of force. Since then, documentation of excessive use of force has been at the core of PHR's investigative work documenting violations of civil and political rights.

PHR reports on police and military brutality include:

In 1989, after Soviet troops in Tblisi, Georgia, used entrenching spades and toxic gas to break up a peaceful demonstration, at least 20 people died and hundreds more suffered injuries. PHR provided the technical expertise to confirm that the troops had deployed toxic gases, including tear gas and possibly chloropicrin, to suppress the demonstration. PHR's report, Bloody Sunday: Trauma in Tbilisi, describes the scientific evidence and documents that dozens of patients in the hospital suffered from the physical effects of psychological trauma or, as termed by the PHR team, "catastrophe reaction syndrome."

In the report, The Crackdown in Kashmir: Torture of Detainees and Assaults on the Medical Community, published with Human Rights Watch, PHR found that Indian security forces involved in counter-insurgency operations in Kashmir used excessive force against civilians and medical personnel.

A bloodless military coup toppled a popularly-elected government in Thailand in February 1991. A year later, one of the leading generals declared himself prime minister, sparking massive political opposition from a broad-based pro-democracy movement. Hundreds of protesters demanded the general's ouster and called for constitutional changes. The government responded by opening fire on a May opposition rally, resulting in 52 deaths, hundreds of injured, and many disappearances. Physicians and health workers were prevented from reaching the wounded and the police shot at ambulances. The PHR report Bloody May, investigates the allegations of excessive force and violations of medical neutrality.