A/HRC/33/37 C. Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment 53. The use of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment against those opposed to a third term for the President and against opposition members or their relatives, either to extract information or as punishment, has been common during the crisis. The independent experts conducted 65 interviews with witnesses and victims of torture or ill-treatment. Elements of the National Intelligence Service, the National Police, the Imbonerakure and, to a lesser extent, the National Defence Force, are consistently identified as the perpetrators, and some individuals, including senior figures of the security apparatus, have been repeatedly cited. 54. From various testimonies, the independent experts were able to establish a nonexhaustive list of forms of torture and other ill-treatment to which the victims were subjected at the hands of the security forces: (a) Attaching weights to testicles; (b) Crushing fingers and toes with pliers; (c) Detaining a person in a closed container; (d) Forcing families to stay next to the dead body of a relative; (e) Forcing the victim to sit in acid or on broken glass or nails; (f) Gang raping a woman in the presence of her children; (g) Injecting a yellow liquid in the testicles and other parts of the body, leading to paralysis; (h) Inflicting knife and machete stabs; (i) Inflicting lashes using preheated electric cables or iron bars; (j) Progressively burning with a blowtorch or gas cylinder; (k) Progressively electrocuting; (l) Pulling a cord attached to the testicles; (m) Sprinkling the victim with a mixture of water and sand and rubbing the mixture with a broom so that it fills the pores of the skin (known as “ubutoteza” in Kirundi); (n) Tightly tying a person’s arms behind the back for several days; (o) Using insults and humiliating speech, including with an ethnic dimension; (p) Poking fingers in the eyes of the victim; (q) Kirundi). Tying the victim up by the feet upside down (known as “amagurizege” in 55. No national preventive mechanism has been set up by the Government as required under Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. D. Sexual and gender-based violence 56. The crisis has exacerbated the already prevalent issue of sexual and gender-based violence, which is one of the patterns of violations that has emerged from the independent 10