A/HRC/13/39/Add.5 are ultimately also victims, shall be forced to subordinate or revoke certain beliefs or convictions. (i) “Welcome” treatment in prisons 69. A frequent example is the abuse of new arrivals in detention centres who are exposed to various forms of “welcome treatment” in order to make them complacent and submissive. Detainees who are perceived as “difficult” are at an especially high risk of receiving this kind of welcome treatment in order to intimidate and subordinate them to the authority or the prisoner hierarchy. This abuse is sometimes carried out by officers themselves or by other detainees with the officers’ consent. A particularly serious example of violence against new arrivals was reported in al-Jafr prison in Jordan, where detainees indicated that they were met by a “welcoming committee” of up to 20 officers who forced them to strip to their underwear in the courtyard outside their assigned barracks; and subjected them to heavy beatings with electrical cables and batons for long periods at a time. If they lost consciousness, they were revived with cold water and beaten again. This treatment lasted for days.37 In other countries, abuse is focused upon physical violation and humiliation. In Kazakhstan, I received consistent descriptions of how the prison personnel, with the support of convicts cooperating with the management, beat newcomers and forcibly introduced a rubber tube in their anus, for alleged medical and hygiene purposes. There were also some reports of rapes and other treatments deliberately used to inflict suffering.38 In addition to such direct violence, detention in very poor conditions in “welcome cells” is often aimed at “breaking” the new arrivals; the conditions of these cells are generally worse than elsewhere in the facility and are also used as punishment cells for other detainees. New arrivals may be kept either in complete isolation or in very overcrowded cells, and in some cases they are forced to endure weeks or even months of this “welcome” treatment.39 (ii) Public torturing in detention 70. One frequent example of how torture is used for the purpose of intimidation is the public ill-treatment of a detainee. While the victims themselves may find the exposure of their suffering as additionally degrading, the ill-treatment is intended to induce fear among other detainees. The victims are normally taken out of their cells and subsequently illtreated within ear- and eyeshot of other detainees, be it in front of the holding cells in a police station, in a room from where the cries are well audible to other detainees, or in the middle of a courtyard in a prison. The abuse is therefore not only directed towards the direct victim but to all other detainees. It is a demonstration of power and indicates what others who do not comply or voice any disapproval will face. In some instances, detainees have been selected for ill-treatment without following any particular logic or pattern. The arbitrariness with which one might end up being tortured further increases the feeling of vulnerability and fear. The ultimate demonstration of the captors’ control and the victims’ powerlessness are those cases in which detainees are forced to torture their fellow detainees. 37 38 39 A/HRC/4/33/Add.3, Appendix, para 9. A/HRC/13/39/Add.3., para 20. Similar “welcome treatments” were also encountered during my missions to Indonesia (e.g. A/HRC/7/3/Add.7, Appendix I, para 45.) and Moldova (e.g. A/HRC/10/44/Add.3, Appendix II, para 71). 21