How Bolivia's drug laws enable sexual torture

Written by human rights lawyer Gloria Achá, Besieged Women: Bringing to Light The Practice of Sexual Torture Under Drug Policy and By Police Authority argues that this kind of violence is manufactured by Bolivia's drug laws and the violent, patriarchal police force that enforces them.

Bolivia’s Article 49 of Law 1008, in force since 1988, makes drug consumption itself a crime. Between 2009 and 2015, an average of 30% of all arrests under the law were for use alone.

In Bolivia, as the report puts it, “the concept of harm reduction is completely unknown.” Officially, the sanction for drug use is remand to a private rehabilitation centre, paid for by the person committed as the state runs no public facilities. But after arresting someone under Article 49, Bolivian police may hold someone for up to eight hours before notifying prosecutors. They also run their own courts for minor offences against ‘good morals’ or ‘public decency’, punishable by detention in police cells. The report points out that “there is no oversight of police actions in these cases, nor is there any institution that regularly inspects the police holding cells where such detentions are served.” Many arrests take place without any recourse to legal formality at all, meaning that anyone, at any time, might be put into arbitrary detention with no oversight. It is here that profound sexual violence occurs.

The report documents women taken briefly to holding cells, patrol cars, or places with no connection to police work at all. The report states they’re there “solely for the purpose of sexual subjugation,” with the officers often using Bolivia’s drug-related violations as a pretext.

The system criminalises drug use, giving officers a permanent pretext even as custody rules provide an unwatched room. Women who use – or just suspected to use – drugs face harassment, extortion, and sexual violence amounting to torture, according to the report.