BOUYID v. BELGIUM JUDGMENT 17 force inherently infringed human dignity, any such act was presumed to be serious and incompatible with Article 3, although the alleged perpetrator could rebut that presumption by arguing that the use of force had been strictly necessary in the light of the victim’s behaviour. The applicants submitted that the Court could only examine the severity of the act “on a subsidiary basis” in determining whether it should be classified as “torture” or “inhuman or degrading treatment��. 58. The applicants stressed that medical certificates drawn up shortly after the material time showed that they had displayed traces of blows on leaving the police station. They inferred from this that the presumption of causality applied and noted that the Government, like the police services at the domestic level, had provided no explanations capable of rebutting that presumption, confining themselves to denying that there had ever been any slaps. Furthermore, the use of force against them had been neither necessary nor proportionate. The applicants pointed out that no traces of blows had been found on the police officers who had slapped them, that they themselves had not put up any active physical resistance, that the police and the Belgian State – having always denied slapping the applicants – were unable to establish that the slaps had been necessary, and that consideration should be given to the context of police violence in Belgium. Moreover, the atmosphere of nervousness and disrespect and the conflict between the neighbourhood police and the Bouyid family were insufficient to establish the need for using force. The first applicant added that the identity check for which he had been stopped by the police had been unjustified, that the reasons for the check were obscure, that his jacket had been ripped during the incident, that he had been much more slightly built than the police officer who had slapped him, that he had been a minor at the material time, that the slap had left him in a state of shock, that his feelings of fear and stress had been increased by the fact that he had already had an eardrum perforated four years previously as a result of a blow inflicted by a police officer, and that he had been faced with the silence and corporatist spirit of the police. The second applicant added that he had been seated, posing no direct threat, when he had been slapped. 59. The applicants submitted that police violence was a topical issue in Belgium: the press had reported many such cases, and in its 2012 annual report the Standing Committee for the oversight of police services (“Committee P”) had noted an increase in the number of complaints of police violence (468 in 2010 and 576 in 2012). Furthermore, in its report on its visit to Belgium from 18 to 27 April 2005, the CPT had pointed out that “the risk of a person being ill-treated by law-enforcement officers while in detention cannot be dismissed” (cited above, § 11). Moreover, in its final comments on the third periodic report of Belgium, the UN Committee against Torture and Inhuman and Degrading Treatment had noted with concern the persistent allegations of unlawful use of violence by law-