26 BOUYID v. BELGIUM JUDGMENT 88. Furthermore, in view of the facts of the case, the Court considers it particularly important to point out that, in respect of a person who is deprived of his liberty, or, more generally, is confronted with lawenforcement officers, any recourse to physical force which has not been made strictly necessary by his own conduct diminishes human dignity and is, in principle, an infringement of the right set forth in Article 3 (see, among other authorities, Ribitsch, § 38; Mete and Others, § 106; and El-Masri, § 207, all cited above). 89. The word “dignity” appears in many international and regional texts and instruments (see paragraphs 45-47 above). Although the Convention does not mention that concept – which nevertheless appears in the Preamble to Protocol No. 13 to the Convention, concerning the abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances – the Court has emphasised that respect for human dignity forms part of the very essence of the Convention (see Svinarenko and Slyadnev, cited above, § 118), alongside human freedom (see C.R. v. the United Kingdom, 22 November 1995, § 42, Series A no. 335-C, and S.W. v. the United Kingdom, 22 November 1995, § 44, Series A no. 335-B; see also, among other authorities, Pretty v. the United Kingdom, no. 2346/02, § 65, ECHR 2002-III). 90. Moreover, there is a particularly strong link between the concepts of “degrading” treatment or punishment within the meaning of Article 3 of the Convention and respect for “dignity”. In 1973 the European Commission of Human Rights stressed that in the context of Article 3 of the Convention the expression “degrading treatment” showed that the general purpose of that provision was to prevent particularly serious interferences with human dignity (see East African Asians v. the United Kingdom, nos. 4403/70 and 30 others, Commission’s report of 14 December 1973, Decisions and Reports 78-A, p. 56, § 192). The Court, for its part, made its first explicit reference to this concept in the judgment in Tyrer (cited above), concerning not “degrading treatment” but “degrading punishment”. In finding that the punishment in question was degrading within the meaning of Article 3 of the Convention, the Court had regard to the fact that “although the applicant did not suffer any severe or long-lasting physical effects, his punishment – whereby he was treated as an object in the power of the authorities – constituted an assault on precisely that which it is one of the main purposes of Article 3 to protect, namely a person’s dignity and physical integrity” (ibid., § 33). Many subsequent judgments have highlighted the close link between the concepts of “degrading treatment” and respect for “dignity” (see, for example, Kudła v. Poland [GC], no. 30210/96, § 94, ECHR 2000-XI; Valašinas v. Lithuania, no. 44558/98, § 102, ECHR 2001-VIII; Yankov v. Bulgaria, no. 39084/97, § 114, ECHR 2003-XII; and Svinarenko and Slyadnev, cited above, § 138).