E/CN.4/1991/17 page 84 detention, the right of the detainee to immediate access to his lawyer and his relatives, the strict rules with regard to the admissibility of evidence obtained under duress, all seem to make torture virtually impossible. Nevertheless, since torture is easily practised in situations of civil strife, it is all the more imperative to have institutions which scrutinize compliance with the rules and prevent those who violate the rules from doing so with impunity. The Philippine Commission on Human Rights is established explicitly to accomplish this task. 268. Important though it is that the Commission has investigative powers, the mere fact that the decision whether a charge will be brought against an official (military or civilian) is to be taken by the Office of the Prosecutor, inevitably causes delay. The enactment into law of the 1987 Senate Bill which provides the Commission with prosecutory powers therefore seems long overdue. A matter for greater concern, however, is the Commission's inability to deal in a sufficiently speedy way with the cases which are brought to it. According to its own records only slightly more than 14 per cent of the cases filed until 1989 had been resolved by the end of that year. The risk of an ever-increasing backlog is by no means imaginary, and is bound to cause frustration among the complainants who will be less inclined to go to the Commission for redress. An even more serious consequence may be that the preventive effect of an institution like the Commission may gradually wither away. Indeed it has already done so to a certain extent. As long as it is generally known that violators of human rights will not go unpunished, the chances that such violations will take place are slim, but they may again increase if the system to bring such violators to justice does not work effectively. 269. Another element which deserves mentioning is that, in spite of the possibility of presidential waiver of the exclusive jurisdiction of military tribunals over the military, roughly 50 per cent of the cases resolved by the Commission, had been filed by the Prosecutor's office with military courts. In none of these cases was the person found guilty sentenced although in a number of cases disciplinary measures were taken. There seems to be no reason whatever why persons belonging to the military should be tried by military courts for offences committed against civilians during their performance of the essentially civilian task of maintaining law and order. Having such persons tried by military tribunals may easily lead to the suspicion of a cover-up. Presidential Decree 1850, providing the military courts with jurisdiction over all offences committed by members of the armed forces, including the police, should therefore be repealed and replaced by a law which returns to the civil courts the jurisdiction over all offences committed by the military which are not strictly service-connected. Implementation of article XVI, Section 6 of the Constitution, providing that a national police force will be established which is civilian in character and accountable to civilian authorities, would also contribute to a better understanding of the separate tasks of the armed forces and the police. 270. With regard to torture complaints, there is the additional difficulty that the perpetrators generally cannot be identified since the victims are nearly always blindfolded or hooded during interrogation and witnesses are absent. This does not necessarily mean, however, that the case has to be dismissed. First, article 14 of the United Nations Convention against Torture obliges the State Party to ensure in its legal system that the victim of an