Children in Northern Ireland are brutalized by those on all sides of the ongoing conflict, a report by Helsinki Watch said Wednesday.
Many children have lost their lives in the 20 years of conflict, and children under 18 are harassed and beaten by police officers and soldiers, the U.S.-based human rights group, a division of Human Rights Watch, said in its report, its second on Northern Ireland in the last two years.Young people were insulted, threatened, tricked and sometimes physically assaulted by police during interrogation in detention centers, the report said. Children accused of crimes were locked up in adult detention centers and remand centers in "shameful con-di-tions."
"Children in the province are caught between two powerful groups - security forces and paramilitaries," the report said. "On the other side, paramilitary groups - the IRA (Irish Republican Army) and the UDA (Ulster Defense Association) - act as alternative police forces, punishing children they believe to be "anti-social" by punishment shootings (kneecappings) and severe beatings, and sometimes banishing children altogether from Northern Ireland."
Researchers for the group spent six days in Northern Ireland in April 1992, taking statements from teenagers, most of whom remained unnamed in the report.
The report described the experience of 17-year-old Damien Austin, a Catholic living in West Belfast, who was arrested several times by the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the Northern Ireland police force.
On Austin's first arrest, he was held for three days at a police interrogation center. He told Helsinki Watch that the police punched and kicked him every day.
"One of them spat in my face. On the second day they pulled my trousers and underpants down and held a lighted cigarette under my testicles - it left a very sore spot. They kept telling me they would kill me."
Austin was allowed to see his lawyer after 48 hours, but his family was not allowed in to see him.
"On the second day they also strangled me and punched me in my stomach," Austin told the group. "They made me stand in the middle of the room and walked behind me and slapped me real hard in the back of my head."