(Transcript from SBS World News Radio)
It's 30 years since the global community took a stand against torture by drafting a United Nations convention against it.
However, there's evidence physical and mental abuse continues in much of the world, including at the hands of governments that are signatories to the convention.
Human rights authorities and advocates are concerned - and say Australia's actions aren't exempt from scrutiny.
Now there's a renewed international push to expose such practices in an attempt to end them.
This month Amnesty Australia is joining a two-year campaign with a particular focus on the Asia-Pacific region, as Karen Ashford reports.
(Click on the audio tab above to hear the full report)
Three survivors of torture told their stories at an event in Adelaide marking three decades since the creation of the UN Convention forbidding such practices.
They didn't speak of victimhood though; what they spoke of was strength and resilience.
"In a war zone country a person can incur a lot of sadness, but in my life I have met different types and different cultures of people - I have learnt to live by meeting those people.//What I can say about hope is this: I have this feeling that I have to live. I have to live.//My advice to others would be this: I would tell people to be strong in every moment of your life and to be truthful, that's always a key, and I would like them to share what they have been through and how they've struggled through it. It will not only make them stronger, but it will also help them to recognise their own strength."
The event is the initiative of the Survivors of Torture and Trauma Assistance to Rehabilitate Service - an agency that supports migrants and refugees who've experienced brutality.
The event was carefully managed to ensure that the identities of survivors were not revealed, due to the fears they have for their own safety or the safety of family and friends still in their home countries.
Rights groups say such fears aren't unfounded.
New figures from Amnesty International claim that of the 155 nations that signed the UN convention, at least 79 have used torture as a systemic and routine practice during 2014.
Amnesty claims in the past five years there's evidence of torture, or of cruel treatment, occurring in 141 countries - approximately three quarters of the world.
The organisation says much is state-sanctioned, with governments defending its use for reasons of national security.
Critics, however, argue cruelty is used for political purposes, to repress and silence and exploit.
Amnesty's organiser for South Australia and the Northern Territory, Naomi Vaughan, says it's time for a fresh effort to hold torturers to account.
"We don't hear about it any more. We have countries that are signed up to a whole raft of international conventions and treaties and are being so very deceitful in saying they won't torture but practising it and lying about it."
Over the next two years some 80 Amnesty International sections world-wide will campaign to stop torture.
Five countries are facing particular attention: Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Uzbekistan and the Philippines.
Ms Vaughan says teams from Australia will focus on the Asia-Pacific region, saying at least 23 countries in the region are still torturing and ill-treating citizens.
"Key trends across the Asia-Pacific include the prisons in North Korea where hundreds of thousands - including children - experience some of the most appalling torture, are forced to work in dangerous conditions with little food, little rest, they experience beatings and are forced to be motionless for long periods of time. There's a silencing of activists in Vietnam, dozens are beaten, denied food and health care and are held in isolation. The detentions in Sri Lanka, where 86 complaints of torture were registered in the first three months of 2013 and prisoners have died after being beaten in custody.
Amnesty's Naomi Vaughan says also under scrutiny will be areas for which the Australian Government has responsibility.
"Hundreds of asylum-seekers are held in prison-like conditions in Manus Island and earlier this year one man, an Iranian man Reza Berati, died in custody and 62 people were injured."
Linda Matthews, from the survivors' support group, says concern involving Australia isn't confined solely to standards inside detention facilities.
There's a very real risk, Ms Matthew says, that the vitriolic nature of the current debate over immigration policy exposes survivors to the spectre of re-traumatisation.
"It can replay for them, the experiences that they remember, in other words, they feel almost re-victimised as a consequence of it. This makes them feel very fearful and perhaps doubtful that their case will be heard in the way they may have hoped for when they came to Australia. They worry that there's not a lot of support, when essentially there's a lot of negativity around either the way they get here or their claim for asylum.
Medical professionals are particularly concerned about the impact of conditions in detention on children.
Child psychiatrist Doctor Jon Jureidini has long argued that experiences in immigration facilities can cause ongoing, post-detention trauma.
At a recent Human Rights Commission inquiry he described Australia's detention of children as reckless acts of cruelty.
"The very fact of being locked up is obviously the most potent, toxic influence on children and families but there are a whole pile of other things that happen in there that seem to me to be unnecessarily inhumane."
Meanwhile, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has warned non-state actors and unofficial militia who practice torture do not stand outside the law.
Navi Pillay says they can be held accountable for their actions.
Under the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the crime is prohibited under all circumstances, without exception.
So far, says the UN, 155 states have ratified the Convention against Torture and a further 41 states have refused.
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