Video clips (not for squeamish viewers)

Seven video clips of brutal and probably illegal punishments, seemingly administered by out-of-control police, prison or military personnel in various countries.

Some of this material may seem harrowing. If you find such scenes upsetting, you should not view these clips.

CLIP 1 OF 7: Paddling in a police station

Date: 2009
Duration: 2 minutes

This film is said to have been taken in a police station in Apodaca, Mexico. Mexico does not officially use corporal punishment. We do not know whether these police officers are just doing their own thing or if this is a standard (albeit presumably illegal) practice to which the authorities turn a blind eye. Offenders are held in a bending position to receive a fairly severe paddling. The scene is rather chaotic and the picture quality is not good.

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CLIP 2 OF 7: Another police station paddling

Date: 2008
Duration: 25 seconds

In this clip we see another paddling in a Mexican police station. The suspect is made to bend over against the wall and receives one epic whack with an absurdly long plank of wood.

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CLIP 3 OF 7: A youth paddled by soldiers

Date: 2011
Duration: 50 seconds

Here, a youth is visiting a hospital in Mexico for help with his bruised buttocks. He is heard explaining to the doctor that he was paddled by soldiers.

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CLIP 4 OF 7: Falaka (bastinado) in the Iraqi military

Date: 2003
Duration: 1 minute 20 seconds

This disturbing clip dates from the Saddam Hussein era, and it is alleged that the person shown brutally whipping the soldiers here may be one of his sons, the sadistic psychopath and murderer Uday, thankfully now dead.

The whipping is applied to the soles of the feet, a traditional method in the Middle East known as Falaka, after the board used to hold up the recipient's feet. It is a very cruel and injurious form of CP.

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CLIP 5 OF 7: More flogging in Iraq

Date: 2003?? (Found 2007)
Duration: 2 minutes

This harrowing two-minute video clip shows extracts from a news item on Abu Dhabi TV, date unknown. There is a suggestion that this was Iraq under the Saddam Hussein regime (1979-2003) and that the persons being cruelly flogged with heavy whips were themselves policemen. It is impossible to say how "official" or "informal" this was supposed to be. At the end of the clip are scenes of several men showing the after-effects on their bodies of such a beating, which may or may not be from the same occasion. The blows are seen to have landed on various parts of the body, and in my view this is too random and careless an operation to be called proper corporal punishment.

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CLIP 6 OF 7: Police paddling in Brazil

Date: 2011
Duration: 1 minute 20 seconds

This short clip shows an outdoor scene in which two men are paddled on the bare buttocks with a large wooden board, apparently by Brazilian police. The offenders are held bending over a table. It is quite harrowing to watch because they are not taking it at all well.

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CLIP 7 OF 7: Police paddling, possibly in Brazil or Mexico

Date: 2015
Duration: 45 seconds

This clip might also be from Brazil; when it appeared on YouTube, it was dated in Portuguese. Certainly the modus operandi is very similar to that in the previous item; the recipient, with buttocks bared, is held fast in a bending-over position in an outdoor setting. But the film has also appeared on a Mexican website, with a caption in Spanish suggesting that what we are seeing is not the police but drug-trade gangsters punishing a thief. At all events, six forceful swats are delivered with a heavy paddle, which the operator wields with both hands. The fact that these people actually possess a real punishment paddle is intriguing in itself, and might suggest that this kind of quite formal but extrajudicial CP is not uncommon in this particular place, wherever that might be.

HERE IS THE CLIP:

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