Torture

This article written by Dave Knight

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Ask most people to define torture and I am sure most would take a shot at it. But the mental picture conjured up in your audience’s mind will probably differ from person to person. The medieval rack and thumbscrew will come to the minds of many of course.

Others would remember the Nazi holocaust or the Pinochet regime of Chile. Still others would refer to the terrible slave trade from Africa to the Americas. Torture, in other words, can be different things to different people.

Is torture practiced now?

Honest people, however, know what torture is and make no excuses for the individuals or regimes that perpetrate it. For instance water-boarding is a medieval torture that persists into modern times. It is practiced by the United States Secret Service, an unpalatable fact that US citizens have had to face in recent times.

Many other countries practice torture as well. Evidence is coming to light that Great Britain has been involved directly and indirectly in torture. And we all thought it was only those ‘barbarians in other countries’. We were wrong, we are barbarians too.

So citizens of the USA or Europe don’t be too quick with a smug “not where I live”. The “war on terror” announced by the Bush administration saw International law ignored and many medieval-style tortures employed on mostly completely innocent people. Not that it is OK to torture the guilty of course. Human rights took a turn for the worse with the emergence of the phony “war on terror” and continues to do so despite changes in governments and leaders.

Even if European countries didn’t actually engage in torture they stood by and did nothing to stop it. Europe was also used for the extraordinary rendition flights that saw hundreds if not thousands of prisoners taken to secret torture prisons via European airports.

The British are certainly guilty of torture and other human rights abuses in Iraq and the British government and the British Secret Service were present at US torture facilities when British citizens were being tortured.

Middle East and North African countries practice torture. China, Burma and Russia still torture their citizens and there are many more.

What is the definition of torture?

In short, torture is inflicting pain on a living being for one’s own pleasure or to force them to bow to your will. The long answer is of course far more complex than that.

The dictionary defines torture as anguish, extreme mental distress, unbearable physical pain, agony, intense feelings of suffering and acute mental or physical pain. Another definition is torment emotionally or mentally, the deliberate, systematic, or wanton infliction of physical or mental suffering by one or more persons in an attempt to force another person to yield information or to make a confession.

Is torture illegal in International law

The United Nations Convention Against Torture is absolutely clear that the use of torture by governments and government agents is illegal. It requires that Member States include the Convention into their National justice system. But it goes further, the Convention makes torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment illegal in countries that have not signed the Convention as well.

Lets not ring-fence the definition of torture in our minds. Let’s widen it so that at citizens of our world will become protected from home-grown and foreign authoritarian excesses. Speak up for human rights. Only public outrage, protest and media exposure will make the authorities change.