Torture is a phenomenal weapon that defies any human comprehension. It robs its victims of their dignity and transforms their lives in an irreversible way. Yet the perpetrators of
acts of torture have been renowned for relishing the show and good in using the weaknesses of the international protection regime to escape the arm of justice. What has proven difficult except consistent with the exoneration tactics
of psychologist is what pushes humanity in this age of constriction and information blitz to such level of bestiality. Many psychologists have advance the argument that understanding the mind of those who engage in torture and insane
acts of cruelty will some how answer the question as to why they do it. Hitler’s mind was greatly examined and he was seen as man who lived a troubled life, uncared for and a man whose childhood was robbed from him. So it turned out
the only way he could gain recognition in his life was through violence. Honesty not psychology will argue that if peoples and individuals tortured, degraded to regain what they lost, the black man in America will be in an all out
war, the African who has suffered deprivation, humiliation and abuse would have been wielding the bayonet in revenge and against those who robbed them and their grandparents of their childhood.
Torture is an instrument to demand submission, it is and remains a domineering weapon and like Dubois recognized about social change, torture will not be legislated out of existence, for it has always been
a weapon of choice by both state actors and those acting on their behalf to inflict pain and suffering on vulnerable victims. It has been sanctioned form of cruelty that in hundreds of years was never coded in any international law.
The debate about the nature of humanity has been one which has been heated and the various thoughts, writings and articulations of different philosophies gave rise to different forms of governance in the world. Those who thought man
was inherent bestial and brutish in nature thought and advocated in their writings authoritarian forms of governance that held sway over personal liberty and rights of humankind. Contrary to such thoughts were other philosophers like
John Locke who advocated for a government base on consent, limited authority and with a triad mandate to protect liberty, property and human rights of its people. Such prescriptions were base on his
believe that man voluntarily entered into a social pact, relinquishing some basic rights into a supranational authority as a testimony of mans devotion to self preservation. It is a truism that irrespective of the form of authority
that has sort to manage the lives of people, most have sort to accumulate unwarranted authority. This process of accumulation of authority without the consent of the contracting party has always led to a respond by the masses who have
called for a review of the social contract. The respond of governments has been varying depending on the time in history and the nature of the regime. Before the period of legitimate authority that went unregulated, the respond by
authorities to the call of a review of the social contract had been typically brutish. The French revolution is typical in history as a massive revolt by a people challenging the accumulation of unwarranted authority by the powers
that be. Its aftermath has been seen as a period where John Locke’s prescription of the nature of supranational authority really took hold.
The brutality of the Second World War was enough to rally the world to strengthen international respond mechanisms to respond to such acts of impunity that shook the foundation on which western civilization had thrived. The Convention
against the crime of genocide was effectively adopted on 9th December 1948 after the necessity to seek consensus watered down the definition to reflect the political atmosphere of the moment. The Polish Jewish publicist
Raphael Lemsky who happened to have formulated the word had given it a far reaching definition in his book, “Beyond the axis of a divided Europe.” The most fundamental aspect of
the genocide Convention was not only its codification into international law as a crime but the premise that the intent of such acts will be viewed with the same severity gave credence to the criminal justice system differentiation
between the act of murder and manslaughter. Yet while the white world was pushing through the codification of the crime of genocide, new criminal terminology was being codified into law in South Africa. Apartheid as a legal form of
discrimination with its impunity and ugliness would thrive for more than fifty years. This was the ambiguity of a world increasingly at odds with its own reality. The same year that Apartheid became a legalized
form of dominion the universal declaration of Human Rights in its article 5, declared that no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Yet it will take another 35 years for a Convention against
Torture to be opened for ratification and subsequent codification into international law.
The Convention against Torture is an essential international human rights instrument which is legally binding and coded in customary international law base on natural law which has its source from natural rights. The premise of natural
rights rest on the perception that it is inherently universal and acquired as a virtue of our existence. Governments thus under such premise should be guarantors and custodians of these rights. On the other hand authorities have acted
as though rights were dished out by some benevolent monarchial authority acting on Hobbes premise of a brutish and nasty humanity brutish, egoistic in nature and out for a war of all against all. It has always been difficult to
comprehend the level of cruelty inflicted on victims of torture and humanity has always been baffled with such level of inhumanity. Western psychologists have always scrambled with theories meant at explaining the mindset of those who
have used torture to demand conformity and cap dissent. Such explanations have constituted bizarre and sometimes weird historical track record of abuse and neglect of these individuals which always ended up in blaming someone else for
their weirdness permitting them to escape the punitive arm of justice. To those who torture dissent is forbidden, conformity mandatory and the upholding of any convention and respect of individual liberty of person out of the question.
The Convention against torture and other cruel inhuman and degrading treatment is an international human rights instrument which means its dual premise of non binding declaration and legally binding convention concluded under
international law and thus enforceable by a UN mechanism. The Convention remains one of the most compelling UN instruments that forbid an act of cruelty without right of derogation under any circumstances and eventually transforms the
premise of article 5 of the UDHR and article 7 of the ICCPR into legally binding obligations. Article 2(2) of the convention issues the most adamant statement yet that torture is so uncivil that its prohibition is absolute even though
the premise of article 2(1) has always provided signatories with maneuvering possibilities. By ratifying the convention and enacting legislation that makes it part of domestic law, nations have given a false public impression of their
willingness to make torture criminal and their willingness to abide by the spirit of the Convention.
Like the premise of non refoulement of refugees to countries where they could suffer persecution, nation states are forbidden to extradite or deport persons to
countries where they could be subjected to torture or where torture is practice. Not only are western countries as the supposed moral defenders or the protectors of human dignity not respecting this sacred contract, they are the most
prolific violators of the article 3(1) in their practice of the outsourcing of torture or rendition. The inability of the international system to bring pressure to bear on these nations have given a green light to authoritarian states
to sanction torture as official regime policies to cap dissent and hang unto power. Torture is more widespread today than before the Convention came into force. Cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment has blurred the practice of torture
and given prosecutors a nightmare in bringing perpetrators to book. The essence of this link is the exposure of acts of torture and the failure of the international system thus far to bring the perpetrators to book in the issue between
the Southern Cameroons and La Republique du Cameroun.
La Republique du Cameroun which ratified the Convention on 19th December 1986 has been one of the most prolific violators. Though its impunity has been brought regularly to public scrutiny,
the weakness of the UN system to bring violators of instruments to book has been greatly hampered by its policy of constructive engagement and appeasement. Not only has the annual US State Department report on the Cameroons accuse the state
of systematic acts of cruelty, inhuman and degrading treatment and torture, the expert report of Sir Nigel Rodley in 1999 was the clearest indictment thus far that torture in the country is a State sanctioned
policy. Amnesty international wrote in 1998:
Cameroon ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR] in 1984 and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
[Convention against Torture] in 1986. By allowing torture and ill-treatment to take place in the country’s prisons, the authorities are violating both these treaties [Article 7 of the ICCPR states No one shall be subjected to torture or to
cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment]. In 1994, the UN Human Rights Committee deplored the many cases of illegal detention, torture, death sentences and extrajudicial executions in Cameroon. Cameroon is expected to submit its
third periodic report to the Committee in March 1999.
The case of late Albert Womah Mukong versus Cameroon (Views of the Human Rights Committee, Communication No. 458/1991, UN Doc. CCPR/C/51/D/458/1991 of 10 August 1994)
that played out in favor of Mr. Mukong in Geneva is also a case that proves widespread acts of torture. Mukong, author of Prisoner Without a Crime was a long time critic of the one party system in the Cameroons. He
was kidnapped, thrown in jail and tortured between 1970 and 1976. In 1988 he was arrested for criticizing the president in an interview he granted the BBC. Article 19 then brought a claim on behalf of Mukong against the Yaoundé regime for cruel
inhuman and degrading treatment. The Human Rights Committee found the Yaoundé regime guilty and ordered the payment of compensation to Mukong to the tune of 50.000 US dollars The failure of the international system and the State parties that
have a huge role to play in the internal political dynamics of the Cameroons to arrest these acts of cruelty shows in a clear way the failure of the policy of preventive and ethical diplomacy. This is not only a link on torture; it is one which
tries to explain the reasons why an unelected autocracy backed from London, Berlin, Beijing and Paris has hung unto power for this long by the use of torture and barbarism. It is a story that has a political dimension that goes beyond the
Cameroons. It draws in the United Kingdom as former UN Trustee, France as the successor colonialist and the puppeteer that now backs and sponsors the regime in power, the Germans and Chinese as the modern rapists of the Peoples’ natural resources
and instigators of corrupt practices that solely benefits their people, and the UN that has failed to respond to numerous petitions to the unjustly afflicted.
