Torture Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The United Nations Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Deg rading Treatment or Punishment defines torture as

any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.

Torture may be physical or psychological and is unique from other forms of punishment in its severity. While torture is almost universally condemned by civilized nations and societies as a barbaric practice, it continues to be used and its effectiveness debated.

Throughout history, torture has been used against prisoners of war, slaves, foreigners, and even citizens. The ancient Egyptians and Greeks tortured prisoners of war, though historical records show that the Greeks rarely did the same to free citizens. The torture of citizens was not generally used during ancient Rome’s early period either, except for the crime of treason, but starting with the reigns of Tiberius and Caligula, the torture of citizens, slaves, and foreigners became more frequent. Despite the early Christian resistance to it under Roman rule, torture was institutionalized by the Catholic Church in medieval times through the infamous Inquisition. Torture became legitimized in many European nations in the twelfth century, but reform movements in the eighteenth century resulting from the work of such notable intellectuals as the French philosopher and writer Voltaire and the Italian criminologist Cesare Beccaria, who wrote On Crimes and Punishments (1764), culminated in the general abolition of torture. The practice, however, continued to endure. In the twentieth century, torture was an official tool of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. More recently, the United States came under criticism for the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Despite its continued use, torture is prohibited by numerous national and international laws and treaties. The primary international treaty against torture is the United Nations Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, to which the United States is a signatory. The United States further prohibits torture as a criminal act under the Torture Act of 2000; yet an August 2002 Department of Justice memo noted that the torture of terrorist suspects abroad “may be justified” in the global war on terror.

Defining Torture

Since the scandals of Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib prison, and extraordinary rendition in the United States, politicians, academics, and the law have failed to adequately define torture. Throughout the 1990s and since the millennium, numerous definitions of torture have been advanced, including memos by advisers to President George W. Bush that provided a limited definition of torture, allowing physical and psychological abuse of persons just short of death. United States law, in the Torture Act of 2000, defines torture as “an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict serve physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or control.”

The problem with this definition and that of the United Nations (UN) convention is that they do not state what specific acts constitute torture. For example, the George W. Bush administration employed waterboarding, which simulates drowning, as a lawful interrogation technique even though most authorities consider it a form of torture. Indeed, at the end of World War II (1939–1945) Japanese military officers were executed for employing waterboarding, and U.S. military personnel, prior to the Bush administration, have been court-martialed for using it.

Some of the more well-known methods of torture include the rack, where a person is strapped to a table and tied to wheels at both ends, whereupon the victim is stretched until the joints dislocate; the strappado, where a person’s arms are tied behind the back and then the victim is tied to a rope through a pulley attached to the ceiling until the shoulders dislocate; the ripping out of finger and toenails; the burning of flesh and blinding with hot irons; the attachment and activation of electric cables to a person’s genitalia; and the deprivation of food, water, and sleep. Some authorities try to justify torture as a gradation of the harms caused. Even the UN convention and U.S. law recognizes that torture involves serious or severe harm and not minor incidental injuries, such as bruising, to lawful punishments.

Debate And Justifications

In the early twenty-first century, the debate concerning the propriety of torture centers upon whether it is justified in the face of modern threats such as terrorism and the use of weapons of mass destruction. Some uphold that torture is justified to prevent possible terrorist attacks. The primary justification for this position is the balancing of the harms done to a few people subject to torture against the potential harm to hundreds or thousands from a conventional weapons attack or a nuclear, chemical, biological, or radiological attack. Most, but not all, authorities and laws hold the position that torture is never justified. Some critics claim that a person subjected to torture may confess to anything to make the torture stop, making the confessions unreliable.

Another major issue is that of extraordinary rendition, in which a nation where torture is prohibited transfers its prisoners for interrogation to other countries that do permit torture. Though the practice is illegal under the UN convention as well as under U.S. law, extraordinary rendition was allowed under the administration of Bill Clinton and increased dramatically under President George W. Bush, when more than one hundred foreign nationals were transferred to countries such as Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, and Afghanistan for interrogation. The practice continued early in the administration of President Barack Obama.

While the United States is often used as an example, it is not unique in its use of torture against suspects. Many nations around the world today, from the Americas to Asia, violate regional and international laws as they engage in torture of both foreigners and citizens. Among them are Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, China, and North Korea.

Bibliography:

Greenberg, Karen, ed. The Torture Debate in America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Jeffer, Jameel, and Amrit Singh. The Administration of Torture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Levinson, Sanford, ed. Torture: A Collection. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
McCoy, Alfred. A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror. New York: Metropolitan Books. 2006.
Roth, Kenneth, Minky Worden, and Amy Bernstein. Torture. New York: New Press, 2005.
Ruthven, Malise. Torture:The Grand Conspiracy. London: Weidenfeld Nicholson, 1978.

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