MANILA, Philippines — Philippine police officers played a “wheel of torture” game to have fun and punish criminal suspects during interrogations, including bouts of punching named after boxing star Manny Pacquiao, human rights officials and activists said Tuesday.

Under the game, detainees were punched if the “torture wheel” stopped at “20 seconds Manny Pacman,” Pacquiao’s nickname, or hung upside down if it stopped at a punishment called “30-second bat,” Amnesty International said.

A picture of the multi-colored wheel provided by the Commission on Human Rights showed several other tortures, including “3 minutes zombies” and “30-second duck walk/ferris wheel” but it was not immediately clear how those punishments were carried out.

“It’s horrible,” commission Chairwoman Loretta Ann Rosales said. “They do it for fun, it’s like a game for entertainment. We’re trying to correct this mindset based on a human rights approach to policing but obviously it may take a lot of time.”

Allegations of torture have particular resonance in the Philippines, which emerged from a brutal era of dictatorship nearly three decades ago. Thousands of victims during dictator Ferdinand Marcos’s rule won a class action suit against his estate for torture and other rights violations in 1992 in Hawaii. A peaceful, army-backed “people power” revolt ousted Marcos in 1986.

President Benigno Aquino III, son of revered pro-democracy leaders who fought Marcos, has pledged to prosecute violators of human rights. Rights groups, however, say violations have continued with impunity.


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