FAR from bringing a new tolerance and respect for human rights to the West Bank and Gaza after decades of Israeli occupation, Mr Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority has created a climate of "fear and intimidation", where torture is widespread and people who complain are threatened with reprisals, Amnesty International charged yesterday.
"Journalists who report abuses are arrested, their newspapers closed down and prominent human rights activists harassed" a 37 page Amnesty report stated. "Victims of brutal torture and other abuses are now afraid to speak out and give their names in the face of threats."
Amnesty found that at least nine people had died while in the custody of the various Palestinian security forces in the past two years, "in circumstances where torture appears to have caused or contributed to their deaths".
The group's researchers reported that the 10 or so Palestinian security organisations operate in an atmosphere of impunity and appear to have adopted "the same torture methods" used on Palestinians by their Israeli predecessors, "even down to the use of loud music blaring out 24 hours a day as a form of sensory abuse."
Other torture methods cited in the report include prolonged sleep deprivation, beatings while suspended, burnings and pouring molten plastic on the body.
The report also noted that hundreds of Mr Arafat's political opponents had been arbitrarily arrested, held without charge, or tried in "a travesty of justice" before a "State Security Court" - where "defendants are prosecuted, judged and even defended by officers in the security forces".
Many of these arrests took place last March, after four suicide bombings carried out inside Israel by West Bank and Gaza based Islamic militants had prompted intense Israeli pressure on Mr Arafat to crack down on the Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups.
One of Mr Arafat's officials, Mr Ahmed Abdel Rahman, promised yesterday to correct some mistakes here and here". But Mr Bassam Eid, himself taken into custody earlier this year by the Palestinian security forces, said the abuses were not an aberration, but were carried out deliberately to quell dissent.