MANILA,\u00a0Philippines\u2014Philippine\u00a0police officers played a \u201cwheel of torture\u201d game to have fun and punish criminal suspects during interrogations, including bouts of punching named after boxing star Manny Pacquiao, human rights officials and activists said Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Under the game, detainees\u2014mostly suspected drug traffickers\u2014were punched if the \u201ctorture wheel\u201d stopped at \u201c20 seconds Manny Pacman,\u201d Pacquiao\u2019s nickname, or hung upside down if it stopped at a punishment called \u201c30-second bat,\u201d Amnesty International said. The London-based rights group called the practice despicable.<\/p>\n
A picture of the multi-colored wheel provided by the Commission on Human Rights showed several other tortures, including \u201c3 minutes zombies\u201d and \u201c30-second duck walk\/ferris wheel\u201d but it was not immediately clear how those punishments were carried out.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s horrible,\u201d commission Chairwoman Loretta Ann Rosales said. \u201cThey do it for fun, it\u2019s like a game for entertainment. We\u2019re trying to correct this mindset based on a human rights approach to policing but obviously it may take a lot of time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Allegations of torture have particular resonance in the\u00a0Philippines, which emerged from a brutal era of dictatorship nearly three decades ago. Thousands of victims during dictator Ferdinand Marcos\u2019s rule won a class action suit against his estate for torture and other rights violations in 1992 in Hawaii. A peaceful, army-backed \u201cpeople power\u201d revolt ousted Marcos in 1986.<\/p>\n
President Benigno Aquino III, son of revered pro-democracy leaders who fought Marcos, has pledged to prosecute violators of human rights. Rights groups, however, say violations have continued with impunity.<\/p>\n
The violations allegedly took place at a police intelligence office in Binan town in Laguna province south of Manila which has not been accredited as a detention centre and was holding crime suspects illegally, Rosales said.<\/p>\n
She said her commission investigated after receiving a tip early this month on alleged abuses of more than 40 detainees. The maltreatment allegedly occurred last year and this month.<\/p>\n
Rosales said she has urged top police officials to pursue criminal complaints against about 10 officers who were implicated in the abuses.<\/p>\n
National police spokesman Senior Superintendent Reuben Theodore Sindac said several officers have been taken into custody and an investigation is under way.<\/p>\n
A report by the rights commission cited detainees as saying they were beaten up, electrocuted or hit by steel bars, baseball bats, a chair or helmet. One detainee said a police officer pointed an assault rifle at him, and another accused the police of threatening his relatives.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor police officers to use torture \u2018for fun\u2019 is despicable,\u201d Amnesty International\u2019s Hazel Galang-Folli said in a statement. \u201cThese are abhorrent acts. Suspending officers is not enough. Errant police personnel and their commanding officers should be held accountable in a court of law.\u201d<\/p>\n
The group urged Aquino\u2019s administration \u201cto act immediately to put an end to routine torture.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lawmakers enacted an anti-torture act in 2009 and the\u00a0Philippines\u00a0has ratified an international convention against torture.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite these, the road ahead remains littered with the vestiges of this despicable practice,\u201d Rosales said. The police abuse \u201coffers a stark contrast between policy and practice. In many places, it seems torture is still considered SOP (standard operating procedure) by some law enforcement personnel,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In 2010, all 11 officers in a Manila city police station were relieved of their duties after a television station aired a video purportedly showing police hitting a naked robbery suspect. The video showed the suspect screaming on the floor as a man pulled a string bound around his genitals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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