One Uzbek survivor of torture named Sanjar Umarov who resides in Germantown, Tennessee, was interviewed by the New York Times concerning his role in a reform movement in Uzbekistan and subsequent imprisonment and torture from 2005-2009. In the course of the interview, he made a suggestion that I thought was interesting:
"Uzbekistan, he said, should install video cameras in all of its prisons. During his incarceration, Mr. Umarov was held in several different sites. Where there were cameras, he said, his guards never beat him. Sometimes they were even well mannered."Mr. Umarov said in Uzbekistan, it's usually not the state or high officials who are ordering the torturing; it's often the lower-ranking officials and soldiers who instigate torture because they are trying to intimidate prisoners and exert control over them:
“I don’t want to say all the guards were bad,” he said. “There are some good ones and some bad ones, and without transparency, the bad ones take advantage of their positions.
“If there were video cameras in the prisons, they may be afraid to use force. They would be polite.”Because it is mostly the "thugs" working for the state rather than the state itself doing the torturing, video cameras in prisons would be more useful in a place like Uzbekistan. In a country where high state officials are behind torture, though, how much would video cameras do?
You can read the full NYT article here, An Uzbek Survivor of Torture Seeks to Fight It Tacitly
