A/HRC/43/49 imposed only in exceptional circumstances, and “prolonged” solitary confinement, in excess of 15 consecutive days, is regarded as a form of torture or ill-treatment.43 The same applies to frequently renewed measures which, in conjunction, amount to prolonged solitary confinement.44 Even more extreme than solitary confinement is “incommunicado detention”, which deprives the inmate of any contact with the outside world, in particular with medical doctors, lawyers and relatives and has repeatedly been recognized as a form of torture.45 58. Other methods of targeting the victim’s need for social rapport include deliberate medical, linguistic, religious or cultural isolation within a group of inmates, as well as the instigation, encouragement or tolerance for oppressive situations of harassment, bullying or mobbing against targeted individuals or groups. For example, the discriminatory or punitive detention of individual homosexual men in collective cells with violent, homophobic inmates will foreseeably create a situation of mobbing involving social isolation, threats, humiliation and sexual harassment and inflict severe levels of constant stress and anxiety likely to amount to torture regardless of the occurrence of physical violence. 59. The severe psychological and physical effects of incommunicado detention, solitary confinement and social exclusion, including mobbing, are well documented and, depending on the circumstances, can range from progressively severe forms of anxiety, stress and depression to cognitive impairment and suicidal tendencies. Particularly if prolonged or indefinite, or combined with the death row syndrome, isolation and social exclusion can also cause serious and irreparable mental and physical harm. 60. Apart from, and generally in combination with, isolation and social exclusion, torturers frequently target victims’ need for emotional rapport through deliberate emotional manipulation. This may include methods such as: • Fostering and then betraying emotional rapport and personal trust • Provoking “misconduct” through “guilty/guilty” choices and then inducing emotions of guilt or shame for betraying the torturer’s trust • Destroying emotional ties by forcing victims to betray or participate in the abuse of other prisoners, relatives and friends, or vice versa • Deceptive, disorienting or otherwise confusing information or role play 6. Communal trust (institutional arbitrariness and persecution) 61. Every human being has the inherent need for communal trust. Confronted with the overwhelming power of the State, individuals must be able to compensate for their own powerlessness by relying on the community’s ability and willingness to exercise selfrestraint, most notably through adherence to the rule of law and the principles of due process. As long as administrative or judicial error, negligence or arbitrariness can be effectively, if at times imperfectly, addressed and corrected through a regular system of institutional complaints and remedies, the resulting inconveniences, injustices and frustrations may have to be tolerated as an inevitable side effect of the constitutional processes that govern democratic societies. 62. As discussed in detail in the Special Rapporteur report on the interrelation between corruption and torture (A/HRC/40/59, paras. 16 and 48–60), these constitutional processes are fatally corrupted when administrative or judicial power is deliberately misused for arbitrary purpose, and when the relevant institutional oversight mechanisms are complacent, complicit, inaccessible or paralysed to the point of effectively removing any prospect of due process and the rule of law. 43 44 45 16 Ibid., rule 43 (1) (b); and A/66/268, para. 26. A/68/295, para. 61. A/HRC/13/42, paras. 28 and 32; Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Velásquez Rodríguez v. Honduras, Judgement, 29 July 1988, para. 187; CCPR/C/51/D/458/1991, annex, para. 9.4; and CCPR/C/61/D/577/1994, para. 8.4.