GENEVA, Switzerland, June 24 (UPI) -- Despite a ban, people across North Africa and the Middle East are subject to torture for expressing political views, the U.N. human-rights chief said.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in a Friday statement there is no justification for the use of torture.
"Neither a state of emergency nor conflict, neither the fight against terrorism nor the fight against crime excuses the use of torture," Pillay said in a statement.
Allegations of human-rights abuses are increasing across much of North Africa and the Middle East as despotic regimes struggle to maintain their grip on power in the face of sweeping demonstrations.
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and members of his inner circle are accused of abuses, including allegations of using rape as a weapon of war. Bahrain, meanwhile, stands accused of using its hospitals as torture chambers as part of a crackdown on a Shiite uprising.
Pillay said torture is commonplace despite a blanket ban.
"As we have seen very graphically in North Africa and the Middle East over the past few months, men, women and even children are tortured in detention simply for expressing their political views, in order to force confessions, or just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time," she said.
Sunday marks the anniversary of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which came into force in 1987. The U.N. General Assembly in 1997 designated June 26 as the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.
