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arious NGOs incorporated in the Asia Alliance Against Torture (A3T) revealed on Tuesday that even though governments have declared a legal commitment to avoid using torture, the practice was still widespread throughout the region.

In the alliance is Indonesia’s Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) and Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH Jakarta), as well as other NGOs from 11 Asian countries including Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Cambodia, India, Pakistan and Nepal.

Since 2015, the alliance has held two rounds of discussions in Bali in 2015 and 2016, as well as another in Kathmandu, Nepal, last year, to examine why torture happens and how it is dealt with, mainly from the legal standpoint.

Kontras coordinator Yati Andriyani said that of the 11 countries involved in the round table series, only Malaysia has not yet signed and ratified the United Nations Convention Against Torture (UNCAT), while India had signed, but not ratified it. She said some countries had made more legislative progress than others, such as Cambodia, which has a criminal code that defines torture as a crime against humanity and a war crime that could be punished with seven to 15 years in prison. Other countries such as Bangladesh and the Philippines had passed specific laws to prohibit torture.

“In general, the governments of these countries recognized and have made legal commitments to avoid and eliminate the practice of torture, but in application it is much different,” she said.

She said that during the last discussion in Nepal the NGOs reported 28 issues, including the existence of a culture of violence in the police and military and their overwhelming authority in society, as well as weak laws to protect victims of torture.

“Many Asian countries had been under or are still under authoritarianism, which creates a culture of violence and makes torture acceptable and tolerable,” she said. “There are laws and human rights institutions, but they are not effective in preventing torture.”

LBH Jakarta executive director Alghifari Aqsa said his organization had conducted a number of studies that revealed many cases of violence by the police against suspects in a number of places.

LBH Jakarta’s study last year showed that 64 percent of its clients reported that they experienced beatings by the police during arrest and interrogation. The remainder reported having been shot, strangled, electrocuted, stripped naked, threatened, urinated on, or having had lit cigarettes doused on their skin or having had their genitals assaulted.

“The police are still practicing torture in order to get testimony from the suspects,” he said. “It is even more brutal in conflict-prone areas such as Papua.”

National Police spokesperson Brig. Gen. Muhammad Iqbal, however, said police concentrated on doing “scientific investigation” to gather not only the testimonies of suspects but hard proof: “We have been trained how to prove it without using torture to get testimony.”

He admitted that sometimes police had to shoot suspects, but he claimed it happened only in urgent situations when the lives of officers were in danger. He said even though suspects might be killed, the law has given police the authority to carry firearms.

He said the police force had changed greatly since the reform era started in 1998. “Take the example of the first high officer who got legal sanction from the police,” he said. “That is proof that the police force has become more transparent and whoever violates the law will be punished.”