SIGNIFICANCE OF HELP TO THOSE WHO SURVIVED TORTURES IN WAR

Abstract

Torture is defined as intentional pain afflicted upon one person by another person or a group of people backed up by some political or military authority. Torture is used as a means of attaining some political or military goal and results in the most serious form of psycho-trauma and changes in the personality of the affected which further affects the family members of the survivors, thus transmitting the trauma upon future generations. Torture has been used in Bosnia and Herzegovina in massive scale during the period of aggression (1992-1995), with a purpose of ethnic cleansing, territorial occupation and genocide. A precondition to prevent and stop the chain of transmittion of post-torture traumas is to finally start talking about it openly. Those who survived the torture need to have rehabilitation treatment, this means not only satisfying the legal rights that they have, but also offering them full medical, social and psychological rehabilitation as well as securing for them rights for monetary, moral, legal and social compensation. Another essential element for the rehabilitation of the victims of such traumas is satisfaction of justice, i.e. that those who committed the crimes are punished and that the victims are assured that such crimes will not happen again. Reparation and prohibition of the use of torture as a weapon for achieving military or political aims is an obligation for all the countries signatories of the international convention for the prohibition of the use of torture.