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Aspects of torture
Incrimination of innocent people One well documented effect of torture is that with rare exceptions people will say or do anything to escape the situation, including untrue "confessions" and implication of others without genuine knowledge, who may well then be tortured in turn. There are rare exceptions, such as F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas, G.C., who refused to provide information under torture.
Secrecy / publicity Depending on the culture, torture has at times been carried on in silence (official denial), semi-silence (known but not spoken about) or openly acknowledged in public (in order to instill fear and obedience).
Since torture is in general not accepted in modern times, professional torturers in some countries tend to use techniques such as electrical shock, asphyxiation, heat, cold, noise, and sleep deprivation which leave little evidence, although in other contexts torture frequently results in horrific mutilation or death. Evidence of torture also comes from testimony of witnesses and from breaches of discipline as for example, the untrained and indiscreet amateur photographers of Abu Ghraib prison.
Motivation to torture It was long thought that "good" people would not torture and only "bad" ones would, under normal circumstances. Research over the past 50 years suggests a disquieting alternative view, that under the right circumstances and with the appropriate encouragement and setting, most people can be encouraged to actively torture others. Stages of torture mentality include: - Reluctant or peripheral participation
- Official encouragement: As the Stanford prison experiment shows, many people will follow the direction of an official person (such as a superior officer) in an official setting (especially if presented as a compulsory obligation), even if they have personal uncertainty. The main motivations for this appear to be fear of loss of status or respect, and the desire to be seen as a "good citizen" or "good subordinate".
- Peer encouragement: to accept torture as necessary, acceptable or deserved, or to comply from a wish to not reject peer group beliefs. At worst this leads to competition between torturers to produce more pain or harsher results.
- Dehumanisation: seeing victims as objects of curiosity and experimentation, where pain becomes just another item to see what is possible.
- Uninhibition: the freedom to act in ways not normally permitted.
Organisationally, like many other procedures, once torture becomes established as part of internally acceptable norms under certain circumstances, its use often becomes institutionalised and self-perpetuating over time, as what was once used exceptionally for perceived necessity finds more reasons claimed to justify wider use.
Medical torture Main article: Medical torture
At times, medicine and medical practitioners have been drawn into the ranks of torturers, either to judge what victims can endure, to apply treatments which will enhance torture, or as torturers in their own right. A famous example of the latter is Dr. Josef Mengele the so-called "Angel of Death".
Effects of torture Organizations like the Medical Foundation for Care of Victims of Torture try to help survivors of torture obtain medical treatment and to gain forensic medical evidence to obtain political asylum in a safe country and/or to prosecute the perpetrators.
Torture is often difficult to prove, particularly when some time has passed between the event and a medical examination. Many torturers around the world use methods designed to have a maximum psychological impact while leaving only minimal physical traces. Medical and Human Rights Organizations worldwide have collaborated to produce the Istanbul Protocol, a document designed to outline common torture methods, consequences of torture and medico-legal examination techniques.
Torture often leads to lasting mental and physical health problems.
Physical problems can be wide-ranging, e.g. sexually transmitted diseases, musculo-skeletal problems, brain injury, post-traumatic epilepsy and dementia or chronic pain syndromes.
Mental health problems are equally wide-ranging; common are post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety disorder.
Treatment of torture-related medical problems might require a wide range of expertise and often specialized experience. Common treatments are psychotropic medication, e.g. SSRI antidepressants, counseling, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, family systems therapy and physiotherapy.
Use of torture Recent times in the context of this article is from December 10, 1948 when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.
Torture in the past Torture was used by many governments and countries in the past; in the Middle Ages especially and up into the 18th century, torture was considered a legitimate way to obtain testimonies and confessions from suspects for use in judicial inquiries and trials.
In the Roman Republic, for example, a slave's testimony was admissible only if it was extracted by torture, on the assumption that they could not be trusted to reveal the truth voluntarily.
In much of Europe, medieval and early modern courts of "justice" freely inflicted torture, depending on the accused's crime and the social status of the suspect. Torture in the Medieval Inquisition was used starting in 1252. The torture methods used by inquisitors were mild compared to secular courts, as they were forbidden to use methods that resulted in bloodshed, mutilation or death. One of the most common forms of medieval inquisition torture was known as strappado. The hands were bound behind the back with a rope, and the accused was suspended this way, dislocating the joints painfully in both arms. Weights could be added to the legs dislocating those joints as well. Other torture methods could included the rack (stretching the victim’s joints to breaking point), the thumbscrew, the boot (crushing the foot and leg), water (massive quantities of water forcibly ingested), and the medieval red-hot pincers, although it was technically against church policy to mutilate a persons body. If stronger methods were needed, or death, the person was handed over to the secular authorities who were not bound by any restrictions.
Torture was abolished in England about 1640, in Scotland in 1708, in Prussia in 1740, in France in 1789 (one early measure of the French revolution), in Russia in 1801. [1] (http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/hcc4/htm/i.vi.viii.htm) [2] (http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/hutchinson/m0013250.html)
Torture in recent times - Main article: Uses of torture in recent times
Torture remains a frequent method of repression in totalitarian regimes, terrorist organizations and organized crime. Even in Western democratic societies, the police sometimes resort to torture and are frequently backed-up by sympathizing politicians.
In undemocratic regimes, torture is often used to extract confessions from political dissenters, so that they admit to being spies or conspirators, probably manipulated by some foreign country. Most notably, such a dynamic of forced confessions marked the justice system of the Soviet Union (thoroughly described in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago).
However, the use of torture is by no means restricted to totalitarian and dictatorial regimes. Established democracies can also use torture, albeit illegally, for instance when it is estimated that national security is more important than the rights of suspects.
In 2003 and 2004 there was a lot of controversy over the "stress and duress" methods that were used in the U.S.'s war on terrorism, that had been sanctioned by the U.S. Executive branch of government at Cabinet level [3] (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56753-2004Jun20.html?referrer=email). Similar methods in 1978 were ruled by ECHR to be inhuman and degrading treatment, but not torture, when used by the UK in the early 1970s in Northern Ireland.
Frequency of occurrence Many countries find it expedient from time to time to use techniques of a kind used in torture; at the same time few wish to be described as doing so, either to their own citizens or international bodies. So a variety of devices are used to bridge this gap, including state denial, "secret police", "need to know", denial that given treatments are torturous in nature, appeal to various laws (national or international), use of jurisdictional argument, claim of "overriding need", and so on. Realistically, torture has been a tool of many states throughout history and for many states it remains so (unofficially and when expedient and desired) today.
Despite worldwide condemnation and the existence of treaty provisions that forbid it, torture is still practiced at times, in two thirds of the world's nations.[4] (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/opinion/23HOCH.html?ex=1086315207&ei=1&en=dd8a4b003ac8f504).
Torture devices and methods It is plainly evident that, since the earliest times, tremendous ingenuity has been devoted to the devisal of ever more effective and mechanically simpler instruments and techniques of torture. That those capable of applying such genius to the science of pain could in future employ their capabilities in other directions was not lost on the authorities: for example, after Perillos of Athens demonstrated his newly invented brazen bull to Phalaris, Tyrant of Agrigentum, Perillos himself was immediately put to death therein.
It is a myth that torture requires complex equipment. Several methods need little or no equipment and can be improvised from innocuous household or kitchen equipment. Methods such as consummation by wild animals (antiquity), impalement (Middle Ages) or confinement in iron boxes in the tropical sun (World War II Asia), are examples of other methods which require little more than readily available items.
Torture using chemicals Torture victims may be forced to ingest chemicals or other products (such as broken glass, heated water, or soaps) that cause pain and internal damage.
Irritating chemicals or products may be inserted into the rectum or vagina, or applied on the external genitalia. Cases of women being punished for adultery by having hot peppers inserted into their vagina were reported in India. Similar means were used in many instances in African strife.
Electrical torture A modern method of torture is to apply electrical shocks to the body. For added effects, torturers may apply the shocks to the genitalia or insert the electrode into the mouth, rectum or vagina.
During the Algerian War of Independence, sections of the French Army were notorious for the use of the gégène (electrical generator) on suspects. There are many reported instances of electrical torture by the government of the People's Republic of China in Tibet, especially against Buddhist nuns, with, in particular, the insertion of electrodes into the rectum or vagina.
Torture devices
Psychological torture
Stress and duress tactics used by police Some methods employed by law enforcement and states are seen by some as being tantamount to torture.
Methods of execution to carry out capital punishment Any method of execution which involves, or has the potential to involve, a great deal of pain or mutilation is considered to be torture and unacceptable to many who support capital punishment.
Quotes Philip Limborch, a preacher and able annotator, quotes in his History of the Inquisition, a writer of the name of Julius Clarus, whom it would appear formed a very forcible idea of the powers of imagination, since he allows them four parts in five of the torments decreed by that satanic tribunal. Limborch represents Clarus as saying, "Know that there are five degrees of torture, videlicit, first, the torture of being threatened to be tortured; secondly, the torture of being conveyed to the place of torture; thirdly, the torture of being, and bound for torture; fourthly, the torture of being hoisted on the torturing rack; and fifthly, and lastly, the torture of squassation."
Other meanings of the word Sometimes in countries which are spared routine exposure to real torture, the word "torture" is used slackly (and to some people, inappropriately) for ordinary discomforts, e.g.:- - The common colloquialism "it was absolute torture" for stage fright and publicity nerves.
- Used at this link (http://needswork.blogspot.com/2004/07/torture.html) to mean a difficult time at ordinary office work.
See also
External links - UN Convention Against Torture (http://www.hrweb.org/legal/cat.html)
- Medical Foundation for Care of Victims of Torture (http://www.torturecare.org.uk)
- Rotten.com article about the Inquisition (http://www.rotten.com/library/history/inquisition/)
- Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 8 June 1977 (http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/party_gc)
- Everyone Is a Potential torturer (http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996727), New Scientist, 25 November 2004, reporting on
- Fiske et al., SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY: Why Ordinary People Torture Enemy Prisoners, Science 2004 306: 1482-1483
- infernal device - list of the torture devices with pictures (http://www.occasionalhell.com/infdevice/)
- We Are All Torturers Now (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/06/opinion/06danner.html?oref=login&oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=) New York Times op-ed, 6 January 2005
- "When Doctors Go to War" (http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/01/when-doctors-go-to-war.html)
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