E/CN.4/1996/35/Add.2 page 20 or punishment by officials of the State. Most non-governmental organizations and individuals the Special Rapporteur met accepted that the official stance of the Government was genuine. 72. However, many of them expressed doubts as to the priority the Government attached to the matter. They pointed out the virtually total impunity enjoyed by the military, including the uniformed police (Carabineros), for human rights crimes committed during the period of the military dictatorship; the fact that torture as such had not even been the subject of inquiry by the National Commission of Truth and Reconciliation; popular concern about common crime and a corresponding demand for the restoration of law and public order; and the tendency of the political authorities routinely to come to the defence of the police when the latter were accused of abuses. 73. In the Special Rapporteur’s view, many of the allegations of such abuse are credible. It does not appear that abuses are systematic or routine, but nor are they isolated aberrations. During the period of the military dictatorship, the harshest and most intense torture was applied to political opponents suspected of involvement in armed violence. That violence continued after the reinstatement of civilian government and, for some years, so did the torture of suspects. The violence has now significantly diminished and the most recent of the few arrests and detention of those suspected of involvement in violent acts have not been accompanied by protracted torture. Indeed, while some of the treatment meted out to these persons would, in the Special Rapporteur’s view, amount to torture or cruel or inhuman treatment, those affected avoid the use of the word torture. This seems to be because they associate torture with the infliction of electric shocks and that has rarely happened in the past two years or so. 74. On the other hand, there seems to be an extensive problem of brutal treatment, sometimes amounting to torture, carried out on suspected common criminals or witnesses. While he was unable to gather sufficient information to make a firm attribution of responsibility, the Special Rapporteur found plausible the general view that the uniformed police were more apt to engage in such practices than the plain-clothes detective force (Investigaciones). This could be explained simply by the fact that the uniformed police are more numerous. On the other hand, more likely explanations are that the uniformed police are protected by their being usually subject to military jurisdiction rather than the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts and that the leadership of the Investigaciones has evidenced a serious commitment to inculcating a disciplined culture of respect for the law they are charged with enforcing. 75. In the Chilean system, in which one judge investigates, prosecutes and pronounces verdict and sentence, the judiciary could do much to alleviate the problem. In fact, too many judges seem willing to ignore complaints of torture or ill-treatment and, in some ways, to contribute directly to the problem by ordering long periods of incommunicado detention and solitary confinement that in themselves, in the Special Rapporteur’s view, can constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.