Chelsea Manning is being subjected to cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, constituting torture by the US government over her refusal to testify against whistleblower website WikiLeaks, a top United Nations official has said. UN special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer accused the government of torturing Manning in a November letter, which was just released on Tuesday. In the letter, Melzer wrote that Manning is suffering “an open-ended, progressively severe measure of coercion” which fulfils “all the constitutive elements of torture.”