E/CN.4/1997/7 page 6 8. The Special Rapporteur does not share this interpretation. In his view, the “lawful sanctions” exclusion must necessarily refer to those sanctions that constitute practices widely accepted as legitimate by the international community, such as deprivation of liberty through imprisonment, which is common to almost all penal systems. Deprivation of liberty, however unpleasant, as long as it comports with basic internationally accepted standards, such as those set forth in the United Nations Standard Minimum 1 Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, is no doubt a lawful sanction. By contrast, the Special Rapporteur cannot accept the notion that the administration of such punishments as stoning to death, flogging and amputation - acts which would be unquestionably unlawful in, say, the context of custodial interrogation - can be deemed lawful simply because the punishment has been authorized in a procedurally legitimate manner, i.e. through the sanction of legislation, administrative rules or judicial order. To accept this view would be to accept that any physical punishment, no matter how torturous and cruel, can be considered lawful, as long as the punishment had been duly promulgated under the domestic law of a State. Punishment is, after all, one of the prohibited purposes of torture. Moreover, regardless of which “lawful sanctions” might be excluded from the definition of torture, the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment remains. The Special Rapporteur would be unable to identify what that prohibition refers to if not the forms of corporal punishment referred to here. Indeed, cruel, inhuman or degrading punishments are, then, by definition unlawful; so they can hardly qualify as “lawful sanctions” within the meaning of article 1 of the Convention against Torture. 9. As regards corporal punishment used for offences against prison discipline, the Special Rapporteur considers that the peremptory language of rule 31 of the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners reflects the international prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment: “Corporal punishment, punishment by placing in a dark cell, and all cruel, inhuman or degrading punishments shall be completely prohibited as punishments for disciplinary offences.” 10. The Special Rapporteur cannot ignore the objections advanced by some commentators that certain religious law and custom, such as that arising from Shari'a, as interpreted by some Governments, requires the application of corporal punishment in practice and that this exigency overrides any interpretation of the norm against torture which would effectively outlaw corporal punishment. While the Special Rapporteur cannot claim any competence to deal with questions of religious law, he does take note of the fact that there exists a great divergence of views among Islamic scholars and clerics concerning the obligations of States to implement corporal punishment. In this respect, he notes that the overwhelming majority of member States of the Organization of the Islamic Conference do not have corporal punishment in their domestic laws. He stresses that all States have accepted the principle that human rights are universal, most notably in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action. In part II, paragraph 56 of the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, the World Conference on Human Rights authoritatively “... reaffirms that under human rights law and international humanitarian law, freedom from torture is a right which must be protected under all circumstances ...”. As there is no exception envisaged in international human rights or humanitarian law for torturous acts that may be part of a scheme of