115
State has the duty to provide the detainees with […] adequate [medical] care and
treatment whenever necessary.”158
302. The State should have complied with this duty, with greater reason, regarding
the people who were injured in a criminal center and through the action of the police
officers. It is evident that all those injured as a consequence of the so-called
“Operative Transfer 1” and of the acts that followed that operation required urgent
medical attention, especially it you take into consideration the magnitude of the
attack, the type of wounds caused, and the characteristics of the weapons used
during that “operative”. The lack of adequate medical attention caused additional
psychological and physical suffering, and determined that the injuries caused were
not adequately attended to and resulted in chronic suffering.
303. With regard to the treatment that must be offered to women who are
detained or arrested, the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the United Nations
has stated that “they must not be the object of discrimination, and they must be
protected from all forms of violence or exploitation.” Similarly, it has stated that
female detainees must be supervised and checked by female officer and pregnant
and nursing women must be offered special conditions during their detention.159 The
Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has stated that said
discrimination includes violence based on gender, “that is, the violence directed
towards a women because she is a women or that affects her in an disproportionate
manner,” and that “acts that inflict damages or suffering of a physical, mental, or
sexual nature, threats of committing those acts, coercion, and other forms of
deprivation of freedom.”160
304. It was proven that at the Police Hospital the injured inmates, who were in
deplorable conditions, were also stripped of their clothes and forced to remain
without clothes during almost the entire time they were at the hospital, which in
some cases lasted several days and in others weeks, and they were watched over by
armed agents (supra para. 197(49)).
305. The Court considers that all inmates that were submitted to the mentioned
nudity during said prolonged period of time were victims of a treatment that violated
their personal dignity.
306. In relation to the aforementioned, it is necessary to make emphasis on the
fact that said forced nudity had especially serious characteristics for the six female
inmates who, as proven, were submitted to this treatment. Likewise, during the
entire time the were in this place, the female inmates were not allowed to clean
themselves up and, in some cases, in order to use the restroom they had to do so in
the company of an armed guard who did not let them close the door and who aimed
158
Cfr. Case of Montero Aranguren et al. (Detention Center of Catia), supra note 128, paras. 102
and 103; Case of De la Cruz Flores, supra note 157, para. 132; and Case of Tibi, supra note 150, para.
157.
159
Cfr. U.N., Minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners, Adopted by the First United Nations
Congress on the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Offenders, held at Geneva in 1955, and approved
by the Economic and Social Council by its resolutions 663C (XXIV) of July 31, 1957 and 2076 (LXII) of
May 13, 1977, paras. 23 and 53.
160
Cfr. U.N., Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, 11º meeting. General
recommendation 19 “Violence against women”. Doc. HRI/GEN/1/Rev. 1at84 (1994), para. 6.