News release: “Torture “is flourishing” around the world, said Amnesty International (13 May), as it published a new briefing showing that already this year at least 79 countries have carried out torture. Meanwhile, during the last five years, Amnesty has recorded torture and other forms of ill-treatment in at least 141 countries from every region of the world – virtually every country on which it has worked – while the secretive nature of torture means the true number is likely to be even higher. Amnesty’s new 50-page briefing, Torture in 2014: 30 Years of Broken Promises, details a shocking variety of torture techniques – with at least 27 different kinds of torture and other cruel treatment recorded during 2013-14. These include beatings with fists, rifle butts, wooden clubs and other objects; needles being forced underneath a victim’s fingernails; prisoner having their joints drilled; boiling water being poured onto the body; the administering of electric shocks; the stubbing out of cigarettes on the body; water torture/partial suffocation; and the use of stress positions and sustained sleep deprivation. Torture has been used against criminal and security suspects, dissidents, political rivals and even schoolchildren. In some countries torture is routine and systematic, said Amnesty, while in others cases of abuse are isolated and exceptional, though even one case of torture or ill-treatment is totally unacceptable and prohibited by international law. Since 1984, 155 countries have ratified the United Nations’ Convention Against Torture – a milestone convention that Amnesty campaigned hard for in the 1970s and 1980s – yet Amnesty is now accusing governments around the world of betraying their commitments to stamp out torture.”