CCPR/C/127/D/2912/2016 acknowledgement or establishment of individual facts by the Government of the Soviet Union or its Russian successors. The committee has previously found a violation of article 7 due to the anguish and psychological pressure suffered by relatives of an individual who had been killed and who did not know the circumstances of the death of that relative. 3 In the present case, to this day the authors do not know the circumstances of their relatives’ death; when pressed on individual cases, the State party has responded through its officials with various excuses, such as insufficient evidence as to their death (para. 2.15 above), insufficient evidence to conclude that these deaths resulted from the abuse of power by NKVD officials (para. 4.6 above), missing files, classified files, or even that the Polish prisoners may have been duly sentenced to death for crimes committed (para. 2.13 above). These denials and other evasions dilute the generalized acknowledgment of responsibility and by casting doubt on established historical events inevitably compound – not lessen – the authors’ suffering. In our view, this callous treatment of the authors in their quest for answers constitutes pain and suffering of a degree amounting to inhuman and degrading treatment in violation of article 7. 7. We are also doubtful about the other basis for the majority finding, namely that the State party was not “manifestly disrespectful” of the authors and that they did not “aim” to cause them pain and suffering. In our view, the resort to a lack of intent is problematic, as neither the text of nor the jurisprudence under the Covenant make any distinction based on intent.4 8. In our view, the treatment in question by the authorities of the State party failed to take into account the authors’ strong emotional attachment to the dignified memory of their relatives, to the injustice they had experienced and their prolonged anxiety due to the inability to ascertain the full truth about the individual fates of their relatives, and thus they displayed callousness and a lack of compassion towards the authors. By casting doubt on the events, by refusing to acknowledge their relatives as victims of the Katyn massacre and thus refusing to rehabilitate them, by refusing even to properly investigate the facts or locate the burial sites of the authors’ relatives, the stance taken by the Russian authorities could certainly have caused the authors severe distress and constitute degrading treatment, regardless of intent, reaching the minimum threshold of a violation of article 7 as interpreted in the Committee’s previous jurisprudence.5 9. All but one of the authors of this communication are the children of Polish prisoners of war. Even if they were too young or had not been born at the time their fathers were summarily executed, the close proximity of that relationship would have ensured that the pain of that loss was directly and keenly experienced. The authors would have grown up fatherless, with the memory of that tragedy likely felt at every event in their lives, whether special or mundane. Their close emotional attachment to their relatives is evident from all that they have done to honour their memory; equally, the savagery of the events in question, the trauma of the loss they experienced and the uncertainty as to the circumstances of their relatives’ death has never abated. On the contrary, that suffering has been exacerbated by the treatment they received from the Russian authorities. It is for these reasons we would find a violation of article 7. 3 4 5 GE.20-00166 See Sankara v. Burkina Faso, para 12.2; and Schedko v. Belarus, para 10.2. See the Committee’s general comment No. 20, paras. 4 and 5. See Sankara v. Burkina Faso, para 12.2. 11