A/HRC/13/39/Add.5 114. The Human Rights Desks in Nigeria are only one example of numerous complaints mechanisms which are utterly ineffective and remind one of Potemkin villages. Whenever I received information from officials that torture is not an issue in the country because no complaint has ever been filed, in practice it has been a clear signal that the opposite is the case; that torture is routine practice and that detainees are actually too afraid to complain. This was also confirmed during my visit to the CID Lagos where I received, in the course of one afternoon, more highly credible complaints than the National Human Rights Commission had received during an entire year. 115. The effectiveness of complaints bodies is severely undermined by the de facto inaccessibility and the lack of prompt, independent and effective examinations of the allegations. I have ample grounds to believe that the vast majority of violations are never brought forward by detainees. One explanation is that detainees are simply not aware of their right to complain and that a complaints mechanism tasked with receiving allegations might exist. In a context of detention characterized by violence and other abuse, it seems beyond imagination for many detainees that they may have a right to complain and that somebody can seriously be tasked to listen to their allegations. In Indonesia, when I asked a death row detainee who reported that he was tortured during his interrogation, and whose confession was admissible during trial, if he had lodged a complained answered “complain, to whom shall I complain, to the animals?”. 116. If detainees know about their right to complain and the existence of a complaints mechanism, the fear of reprisals and lack of confidence in the overall function of the system silences them. There is no independent complaints body which would be sufficiently detached from the authority that is holding the detainee. Most often detainees only have the option to complain to the colleagues or superiors of those who ill-treated them. Without any possibility to submit a confidential, let alone anonymous complaint, they have every reason to believe that those responsible for the abuse will hear about their complaint and may turn against them. 117. I was able to observe during the numerous visits to places of detention how strong the level of fear can be. In China, many detainees were simply too scared to engage in any conversation with me, even if it was of a rather general nature and did not refer to any compromising issues. The mere fact that they could possibly be perceived to have complained to the UN Special Rapporteur was a risk which many legitimately did not want to take on them. Other, more daring detainees agreed to talk to me only after I assured them confidentiality and not to include their accounts in the appendix on individual cases in my report. The possibility of reprisals against those who I interviewed strongly influenced the conduct of my fact-finding. Irrespective of a Government’s invitation and its acceptance of the terms of reference, which include private interviews with detainees, I could never entirely rule out that those officials who were incriminated would turn against my interlocutors once I would have left the place of detention. My work was therefore shaped both by the need to obtain a first hand account of detainees in order to assess the situation, and the paramount “do no harm” principle. 118. The fear of reprisals and the feeling of vulnerability sometimes go so far that detainees presented stories which were in sharp contrast with their physical or mental state, and which were intended to avoid to be perceived as having denounced their tormentors. During my mission to Paraguay, I encountered a man who had severe bruises all over his body in the punishment cell of a military barrack, which according to the officer in charge was not used. When inquiring into the origins of his injuries, he claimed that he just recently had an accident with his motorbike. The forensic medical examination could not 32