E/CN.4/1998/38 page 9 Moreover, under Brazilian law only a medical examination authorized by a police authority was valid in court. This meant that victims of possible acts of torture or ill-treatment would be reluctant to seek such authorization for fear of reprisals, thus making it difficult to obtain evidence. 30. The Brazilian Forensic Medicine Society and the Brazilian Society of Forensic Criminology Experts had apparently been seeking financial and administrative autonomy from the police since 1989 and had proposed legislative initiatives to this effect. The Government, however, was said not to have attached priority to this matter. To date, only in the State of Amapá had forensic services ceased to be subordinate to the police authorities and they now reported directly to a secretariat linked to the Governor's Office. 31. It was also reported that doctors had been asked to indicate the physical cause of death in autopsy forms but had not been instructed to include comments on the means which had provoked the death, nor had they been instructed about submitting the kind of information that might be relevant to a legal investigation. Therefore, important data were often lost. 32. The Special Rapporteur also received information that the police, both civil and military, and also the federal police, frequently resorted to torture in much of the country. Contributory factors were the lack of training and the impunity usually enjoyed by those responsible. Moreover, the legislature still had not adopted measures to criminalize torture. Although the lower house had approved the appropriate bill on 2 July 1996 it was still pending in the Senate. 33. The Special Rapporteur also transmitted to the Government information on three individual cases and one urgent appeal together with the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. Bulgaria 34. By letter of 11 July, the Special Rapporteur advised the Government that he had received information on what was alleged to be a substantial incidence of torture or other ill-treatment inflicted by members of the police against street children, especially those of Roma ethnicity. The ill-treatment, which was said to take place both at the time of arrest and during detention at police stations, was allegedly carried out to intimidate or to extract a “confession”. The children so detained were reportedly sometimes picked up on suspicion of such crimes as theft, but might also be arrested as part of generalized “street sweeps”. The abuse reported included beatings with fists, boots, electric shock batons, clubs, chains, rubber hosing, boxing gloves or a metal rod with a ball attached to its end (beech) and beatings on the soles of the feet, sometimes with electric batons (falaka). Detained children who were held at police stations were said frequently to be held without beds, blankets and sometimes without food or use of toilets. The parents of such detainees were reportedly rarely informed of their detention. Children were also reported to be sometimes held together in lock-ups with adult detainees. 35. The Special Rapporteur also informed the Government of newly received allegations concerning seven persons, two of them minors. In connection with a number of cases transmitted in 1996 on which replies had been received, the