‘I Have an Obligation to Shine a Spotlight on It’.

Nils Melzer is the current United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, an expansive title that fits both the scope and gravity of his work.

As he explained to an engaged audience of students and faculty during a recent visit to the School of Public Health hosted by the Center for Health Law, Ethics & Human Rights on October 16, his role provides a unique autonomy that aids in responding to reports of torture, no matter the location.

“I don’t have to make compromises politically. I don’t have a government giving me orders,” Melzer said. “I have a pledge that will not take any instructions from any state, any organization, or any individual on what I will actually say. I’m an independent expert. So, what I try to do is to pull out topics that have remained under the radar, or that are politically delicate to address for states or organizations for whatever reason, and to put a spotlight on them if I feel it’s necessary to protect people from torture.”

Melzer explained that mass migration between countries is a major concern for his small, three-person office, as vulnerable migrants are often exposed to abuse along their journey. Of the “drama” along the Southern US border, Melzer said, that “is the end of a long journey that’s filled with drama.”

For migrant women passing through Mexico, the probability of rape is about 75 percent, Melzer said, and women frequently take long-acting contraceptive shots before undertaking the dangerous trek to the US. In Libya, the rate of rape is more than 90 percent for migrant women.

Melzer, who is also the human rights chair of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, singled out Libya as a hotbed of another odious type of cruel treatment: the harvesting of human organs for sale. Organized criminal groups, some with well-organized and possibly official support, prey upon migrants passing through the country.

“I have to say I lack words sometimes,” Melzer said. “The research I do and what happens to migrants around the world is just… It left me speechless, what human beings can do to human beings, and especially to human beings that fall in the gap between jurisdictions because there’s no one that wants to protect them.”

Many of those unprotected are also victims of domestic violence, especially in countries where long-standing cultural practices compete with established laws. After being exposed to research on domestic violence by a colleague who reports on it, Melzer was shocked by the sheer numbers. In 2018, there were about 70,000 femicides worldwide, and of these about 50,000 killings were done by family members, Melzer said.

“About the same number of people every year die, are injured or otherwise harmed by domestic violence than all wars taken together. It’s incredible,” Melzer said. “About one billion children in the world, one billion children, have experienced abuse at home. So, this is outrageous in terms of scale. It’s absolutely on par with armed conflict. But, in the UN Charter, it says that a war is the ‘scourge of mankind’—and domestic violence is never, ever even mentioned.”

Melzer worries that the inhumanity of domestic violence and abuse will linger, with pervasive generational effects that may hinder young people from acting humanely when they become adults.

“Torture, in the end, always ends at the mind,” Melzer said. “Even if you break someone’s bones, it’s to make the pain so excruciating that you can affect their decisions and they can cooperate and say whatever you want them to say. Torture is actually always something aiming at the mind of a person. It’s just a question of what tools you use to achieve that.”

No part of Melzer’s work has received more media attention than his meeting with Julian Assange, a case that Melzer said he was reluctant to accept but one that he increasingly grew to believe could be a case of inhumane treatment.

Assange was arrested by British police in April 2019 after seven years as an asylum seeker in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Melzer and two medical experts visited Assange in a London prison in May, and issued a report that “in addition to physical ailments, Mr. Assange showed all symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture, including extreme stress, chronic anxiety, and intense psychological trauma.”

Assange and his lawyers have been fighting extradition to the US, where they believe he will not get a fair trial on espionage charges. Melzer agrees, and said, “You can think of him, as a person, whatever you want. But, a fair trial means that in principle there is a theoretical possibility that he will be acquitted. I don’t see him ever, theoretically even, getting acquitted if he gets extradited. He has no chance to not be sentenced to a very draconian prison sentence.”

What also troubles Melzer about the case is that 17 of the 18 points Assange is accused of in the US relate to investigative journalism, in having received and published secret information. Some of that information related to a video of two US attack helicopters firing on a group of Iraqi civilians that included two reporters.

“When a state provides impunity for official crime, but punishes those that disclose it, what does that mean? What messages does that send?” Melzer said. “It will certainly have the so-called chilling effect on investigative journalism around the world, especially when you prosecute journalists that are, in this case, not even American. They’re not even in the US. They have no duty of allegiance to the US. He just received this information and published it because he thought it was in the public interest, and I’d tend to agree.”

—Michael Saunders