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The Campaign This Affects You responds to the dissemination of the prisoners’ torture video

August 19, 2016
 
The Campaign This Affects You responds to the dissemination of the prisoners’ torture video by one of the media sources without covering the faces, so that anybody could identify a person in the video. The clip was also uploaded on YouTube and was widely spread. Unfortunately, the relevant agencies have not reacted yet and the video is still available.

We have several times made our negative statements about the dissemination of similar videos, especially, without covering. It is sad that once the video is in Internet space, it is available for immense number of people, including minors, who can download, save and use the clip for different purposes afterwards. The dissemination of the footage in similar method is inadmissible. It violates the right of privacy, re-traumatizes concrete people, their family members and entirely the whole society. 

We, the NGOs of the Campaign This Affects You, declared many times that torture is inadmissible! Also, impunity or inadequately easy punishments for these crimes is astonishing.

Unfortunately, adequate legal evaluation of the crimes has not done yet; neither the scope nor other circumstances of the problem have been assessed yet. The perpetrators were not punished. That’s why it becomes a subject for frequent manipulation. There is an effort to create an opinion in the society that systemic and widely spread torture, in fact, did not exist at all and The Prison Footage are falsified/not authentic. Naturally, if there is a doubt regarding the authenticity of the footage, the society has legal right to ask questions and receive persuasive answers; but to deny the existence of the crime, when it is proved not only by the video-footage, but by researches and concrete cases, supports concealment of the problem, leaves the people who participated in systematic torture without a punishment and insults the victims of the torture, as their tragedy is neglected. 

It is important, that the government realized its responsibility to effectively fight against torture, prevent dissemination of the videos and if it happens anyway – promptly block them. Besides, the political forces and media organizations shall also be aware of their responsibility in the fight against this problem.

We call on the government, to remove the videos from Internet and to investigate how they were obtained and spread and estimate whether they contain the information which may reveal a new crime. 

We call on te media to respect the privacy of people and to contribute to the defense of human rights with their activities. 

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