Derechos


Reno v. ACLU: The CDA on Trial

Indecent Material




I am perfectly aware that minors may have access to this material. While this information may be inappropriate for young children, I believe teenagers can and should know about the things that go on in their world.

...Women were tortured the same way, for that purpose they were complety stripped, they were made to lie on the bed and there the torture session would begin. An [electric telephone] cable would be introduced in their vaginas, and then applied to their breasts, this would provoke a lot of suffering and on occasion many of them would menstruate during torture.


...At some point he feels that they pick him up, they take him through a corridor to another place, where they order him to undress, they throw him on a cot and they say to him: "Look, I am "El Aleman," while the victim was hearing women and men screaming. "El Aleman" tries to introduce a pipe into his anus. Another voice tells them to leave him, and speaking to the victim, he says: "you see, I am "El Gallego," and saved you from him putting the iron bar in you."

They put him naked, with his legs and arms opened, tied with leather. "El Gallego" tells him to speak, wile he applies an electric shock on his ankle, burning his muscles, he still has the marks. He is also interrogated by a woman. "El Gallego" applies the "picana" [electric cattle-prod like instrument] on his armpits, where he also still has the scars. "El Gallego" laughed and tells the woman: "You, you like the piece, you continue."

Then he feels as the woman takes his member and introduces in it some caustic-like liquid, and because of this he still as problems urinating.


...They they proceeded to introduce in my vagina what I knew afterwards to be a baton or a police stick. Then they took me to another building, where they made me eat handcuffed to a table. When I refused to, they took me to another building, where they would make me stand and go back to interrogating me, hitting me on the head and threatening to introduce the stick I mentioned before in my anus."

All these descriptions of torture are recorded in "Nunca Más" (Never Again), the Report of the National Comission about the Disappearance of Persons in Argentina. During the 1970's, 30,000 people were disappeared in Argentina, tortured in ways similar to the ones described above, and ultimately killed. Many of the victims, as many as 4,500, were minors.

Now, under the Communications Decency Act, stories like theirs would remain unheard. They are indecent. At the US Army School of the Americas, in Georgia, we train foreign soldiers to repress their own people. We then want to forbid the descriptions of what their training leads to, because it is indecent. Human suffering may be indecent, but it is the suffering that should be banned, not the description of it.


Global Internet Liberty Campaign

Amicus filed on the Supreme Court on behalf of appelles on the CDA case

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    Derechos - Human Rights in Argentina

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