Europe

Credit: Giorgi Arjevanidze/AFP via Getty Images / Protesters confronting police in Tbilisi, Georgia, 2024

In 2024, torture returned to Georgia. In April, mass peaceful protests against the reintroduction of the Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence – branded the ‘Russian Law’ for its similarities to the many Kremlin-backed laws that have been used to decimate Russian civil society – were met by a brutal police crackdown. Over several weeks, at least 300 protesters were arrested, with dozens severely beaten by masked police during arrest and detention, while others were left seriously injured from other excessive uses of force, including stun grenades and rubber bullets from multiple projectile cartridges. “This is the most violent crackdown by police since the 2007 protests,” said Lela Tsiskarishvili, former IRCT President and Executive Director of the Georgian Centre for Psychosocial and Medical Rehabilitation of Torture Victims (GCRT).

Responding rapidly to the need for strong evidence gathering, IRCT’s Independent Forensic Expert Group (IFEG) was able to conduct a two-week joint mission in support of IRCT member GCRT and its national partners Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA) and the Human Rights Center.

Read more about the protests and IRCT’s work with member centre GCRT by visiting the Georgia Country Page.

“I was one of the protesters arrested,” said Lazare Maghlakelidze. “They have these vans that have been emptied out on the inside and darkened that are purely there to torture the protesters on the inside.”

Watch: Survivors speak out: Lazare Maghlakelidze, Georgia

IRCT’s forensic evidence expertise have been called on to substantiate war crimes and other investigations in Ukraine.

Viktor Maruniak was a community leader in Stara Zburiivka, a village in Kherson, when Russian occupying forces detained and tortured him for three weeks in March 2022. IRCT’s Independent Forensic Expert Group (IFEG) was requested to conduct a full medico-legal evaluation of Maruniak and anticipate that, as the case proceeds through international courts and other justice mechanisms, it will be the first to follow a comprehensive strategy that includes medico-legal evidence of torture by Russian forces in Ukraine.

Read more about IRCT’s work with membercentre International Medical Rehabilitation Centre for the Victims of Wars and Totalitarian Regimes (IRC) in Ukraine here.

Visit the Ukraine Country Page.

Viktor Maruniak former community leader in Stara Zburiivka, a village in Kherson, Ukraine

Public advocacy against torture is always essential. In countries like Russia, where national courts are an extension of the regime’s oppression, diplomats are immune to criticism, and State censorship is absolute, exposing torture practices to the wider court of public opinion can often be the only way for survivors to have their experiences acknowledged.

In 2023, IRCT worked with its member in Russia, Crew Against Torture (CAT), to translate and condense some of their incredible film making exposing the everyday nature of torture in Russia, to bring it to English-language audiences online.

Over 21 years of work, the CAT has received more than 3178 reports of human rights violations in Russia, has achieved compensation payments of more than 297 million rubles to victims, has won 78 cases in the European Court of Human Rights and has convicted 159 law enforcement officers guilty of torture and ill-treatment.

Visit the Russia Country Page.

IRCT’s Member centre Crew Against Torture in Russia

Regime of Abuse: Police Torture In Putin’s Russia

Watch the 1st part of a shocking case of the “everyday” police torture of four men from the Black Sea resort city of Anapa, in Russia’s far south.

Criminal Justice: Torturing with Impunity in Russia

Watch the 2nd part of a shocking case of the “everyday” police torture where we explore the impunity offered police and prison guards in Russia.

After Life: Recovering From Torture in Russia

Watch the 3rd part of a shocking case of the “everyday” police torture where Crew Against Torture has provided the four men and their families with rehabilitation.

A team of medical experts from IRCT’s Independent Forensic Expert Group (IFEG) collaborated with local civil society actor, the International Committee for the Investigation of Torture in Belarus (ICITB), and found “highly patterned evidence of injuries”. IRCT’s ‘Belarus: A Coordinated Policy of Torture’ was the first such published report by forensic experts and found “compelling evidence” of “a coordinated policy and practice of systematic torture and ill-treatment against Belarusian citizens” detained for protesting 2020’s rigged presidential elections in Europe’s last dictatorship.

Released in November 2021 following nine months of work, the IRCT’s ‘Belarus: A Coordinated Policy of Torture’ was the first such published report by forensic experts and found “compelling evidence” of “a coordinated policy and practice of systematic torture and ill-treatment against Belarusian citizens” detained for protesting 2020’s rigged presidential elections in Europe’s last dictatorship.

Visit the Belarus Country Page.

Credit: Shutterstock / Woman is arrested in Belarus.

Belarus report in English

Belarus report in Russian

Watch: Justice Starts With Truth: Torture in Belarus’

A team of medical experts from IRCT’s Independent Forensic Expert Group (IFEG) collaborated with local civil society actor, the International Committee for the Investigation of Torture in Belarus (ICITB), to examine 50 cases of detainees selected at random from a database of some 1,500 and found “highly patterned evidence of injuries” inflicted at 15 different police stations across Belarus.