Torture: An Expert's Confrontation with an Everyday Evil / Edition 2

by Edward Peters

Overview

"Torture has ceased to exist," Victor Hugo claimed, with some justification, in 1874. Yet more than a century later, torture is used routinely in one out of every three countries. This book is about torture in Western society from earliest times to the present.

A landmark study since its original publication a decade ago, Torture is now available in an expanded and updated paperback edition. Included for the first time is a broad and disturbing selection of documents charting the historical practice of torture from the ancient Romans to the Khmer Rouge.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812215991
Publisher:	University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Publication date:	10/29/1996
Series:	Anniversary Collection
Edition description:	Expanded Edition
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	961,633
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 8.50(d)
Lexile:	1560L (what's this?)

About the Author

Edward Peters is Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. His publications include The Magician, the Witch, and the Law, Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, The First Crusade, and, with Alan C. Kors, Witchcraft in Europe, 400-1700: A Documentary History, all available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1
The Incomprehensibility of Torture

We all have a fairly good idea of what torture is. In Europe, many think back to the darkest Middle Ages: beds of nails, thumbscrews, the Catholic Church's Inquisition, witch hunts and burnings, or the Procedure for the Judgement of Capital Crimes (Carolina) of Emperor Charles V. In Latin America, some associate torture with the Spanish conquerors and often with the brutal methods used by military dictatorships against political dissidents in the 1970s. Thoughts about torture often evoke the gruesome images from Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and other Bush-era places of detention where torture was used: a pile of naked men, stacked by U.S. soldiers, or broken and humiliated individuals in orange prison uniforms whose senses and perceptions have been intentionally disoriented by scientifically backed mental torture methods.

Although we can describe or define torture, we cannot fully grasp its essence if we have never experienced it. Try as we might to comprehend the suffering of a torture victim, our powers of imagination simply fail us. Forty-two years ago in Vienna, my first-ever interview with a torture victim for the publication Lateinamerika Anders resulted in my becoming physically ill. As Erik Zott, who later became a friend, began to describe his experience under the Chilean junta, I suddenly felt the urge to vomit and had to interrupt the interview and leave the room. It was impossible for me, physically and psychically, to enter his world of suffering and torment.

Little did I know at the time that in the course of my life and work I would interview countless torture victims and survivors all over the world. I can listen to and document their testimony and experience, but it is beyond my spiritual and mental abilities to grasp the physical pain and mental suffering of these tormented human beings.

Assault on the Core of Human Dignity

As in the case of slavery, torture represents a direct attack on the essence of human dignity and integrity. Whereas slaves were legally denied their humanity and were consequently demoted to the status of an object that could become the property of others, torture is the de facto dehumanization of humans. Slavery and servitude are the de jure authority of man over man. Torture is the de facto authority. Victims are humiliated and disgraced, often stripped of their clothing, hands and feet bound, frequently suspended off the ground and forced to remain in a defenseless and painful position. They are made to feel helpless and dehumanized, the better to extract confessions or other information from them.

Torture is so repulsive that, following the ghastly methods used by the Nazi henchmen in the Gestapo and SS, it has been resolutely proscribed and condemned the world over as no other human rights abuse has, even in wartime and states of emergency. In order to eradicate it, the international community—no doubt influenced by the abuses inflicted in Chile, Argentina, and other military dictatorships in Latin America—agreed in 1984 to declare that torturers are hardened criminals and enemies of humankind, and thus they should be denied safe haven anywhere in the world. More than 160 states, which are bound by the UN Convention against Torture, accepted the legal obligation to arrest every individual found on their territory who is suspected of torture anywhere in the world. Unless these individuals are extradited to the state where the act was committed or to their country of origin, they must be prosecuted before the courts of the country that arrested them and, if found guilty, punished with lengthy prison sentences.

Human rights defenders like myself had hoped that this method, which relies on the principle of universal criminal jurisdiction, would be a deterrent and that torture, along with slavery and genocide, would disappear by the end of the twentieth century, and that our children would read about this unfathomable practice in history books and not in the daily papers.

Sadly, we were very much off target. Because we are unable to fully grasp what it means to be tortured, we cannot help but banish the idea of it to the remote Middle Ages, or to the equally unimaginable practices of National Socialism, or even to a far corner of our planet. However, my research indicates that torture is still routinely used by the police in the majority of states in the twenty-first century. There is ample evidence that it cannot be relegated only to the tool kit of some sinister rogue state's secret police, because it is standard police procedure in democracies as well.

The Purpose of this Book

This book is based to a great extent on my own experience as United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture from 2004 to 2010. In this capacity I, along with several different teams, was able to visit a significant number of states and their prisons and police stations. I interviewed perpetrators, witnesses, and victims of torture (in particular those in detention) on the subject of torture and conditions of detention, and then documented my findings and reported them to the United Nations.

It is not my intention to criticize or pillory the governments of these states which, although they were under no obligation to do so, invited me to visit them as UN Special Rapporteur. On the contrary, I am grateful to these governments for enabling us to carry out our research on the ground objectively and to report on it publicly.

This book does not attempt to point a finger or condemn, but it does try to make the unfathomable more comprehensible and to clarify the causes and dynamics of the routine nature of torture. It could be described as a wake-up call, an attempt to stir up empathy for the "forgotten detainees" and to point to ways of preventing torture and perhaps even eliminate it altogether one day. We already know how torture can be prevented, or at least reduced to a minimum of isolated occurrences. Putting this theoretical knowledge into practice, however, will only work if enough people become outraged at the issue of torture. The resulting moral and political pressure should force responsible authorities to take the necessary measures to put an end to the practice.

The global society of the twenty-first century needs more "rebels" made of the same stuff as the late French diplomat Stephane Hessel who, at the age of 94, called out to us to "react with outrage." Alas, the dream of a new human rights-based world order, born in the Nazi concentration camps and torture chambers and gaining momentum at the end of the Cold War, has now faded amid the War on Terror, among other disturbing developments worldwide. We urgently need a new civil society movement, similar to those that emerged during the military dictatorships in Latin America, or during the Communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1970s and 1980s. We need a new global consensus to effectively eradicate torture.

Table of Contents

PART I. THE PHENOMENON OF TORTURE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Chapter 1. The Incomprehensibility of Torture
Chapter 2. The Role of a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture
Chapter 3. Independent Investigation of Torture: Methods
Chapter 4. States' Methods to Impede Objective Investigations
Chapter 5. Are Fact-Finding Missions Dangerous?
Chapter 6. Understanding Torture and Ill Treatment
Chapter 7. Inhuman Detention Conditions: Worse than Torture?
Chapter 8. Is Corporal Punishment Torture?
Chapter 9. Is Capital Punishment Torture?
Chapter 10. Are Domestic Violence or Female Genital Mutilation Torture?
Chapter 11. Torture in the Twenty-First Century
Chapter 12. Why Torture?
Chapter 13. Is There Ever a Justification for Torture?
Chapter 14. George Bush's War on Terror
Chapter 15. Torture and Enforced Disappearance

PART II. TORTURE IN INDIVIDUAL STATES
Chapter 16. Georgia: Plea Bargaining as a Substitute for Torture?
Chapter 17. Mongolia: Death Penalty as a State Secret
Chapter 18. Nepal: "A Little Bit of Torture Helps"
Chapter 19. China: Rehabilitation, Reeducation, or Brainwashing?
Chapter 20. Jordan: General Intelligence as a Cradle of Torture
Chapter 21. Austria: The Case of Bakary Jassey
Chapter 22. Paraguay: Excellent Follow-Up
Chapter 23. Nigeria: Notorious Torture Chamber in Lagos
Chapter 24. Togo: Successfully Releasing Detainees
Chapter 25. Sri Lanka: Perfect PR Strategy
Chapter 26. Indonesia: Three "Smoking Guns"
Chapter 27. Denmark and Greenland: The Principle of Normalization
Chapter 28. Moldova: Torture in the Form of Trafficking in Women
Chapter 29. Equatorial Guinea: Systematic Torture as Government Policy
Chapter 30. Uruguay: Full Cooperation Despite Appalling Detention Conditions
Chapter 31. Kazakhstan: Potemkin Villages
Chapter 32. Jamaica: Structural Violence Instead of Torture
Chapter 33. Papua New Guinea: Traditional Structures Coexist with Globalization
Chapter 34. Greece: The Joint Asylum and Migration Policy of the European Union, Put to the Test

Conclusions

Index
Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

"A masterful analytical history of torture's emergence in Roman law, its insertion into the medieval law of proof, its gradual abolition after 1750, and its dreadful recrudescence in modern times. The book is an exemplary application of historical scholarship to an issue where emotions tend to run ahead of reason."

Times Literary Supplement

"Torture goes beyond the solemn declaration of evil's banality. It offers an explanation of how institutional characteristics-even more strongly than personal ones like sadism or psychosis-produce that evil. It contributes to our understanding-if we dare call it that-of how creatures who begin by crying for their mothers can graduate to bashing in heads."

Philadelphia Inquirer

"In the restrained prose of Torture lies a passionate message about the intentional violation of the bodies of human beings, in our time and in the past."

New York Times

"In the restrained prose of Torture lies a passionate message about the intentional violation of the bodies of human beings, in our time and in the past."—New York Times

"Torture goes beyond the solemn declaration of evil's banality. It offers an explanation of how institutional characteristics—even more strongly than personal ones like sadism or psychosis—produce that evil. It contributes to our understanding—if we dare call it that—of how creatures who begin by crying for their mothers can graduate to bashing in heads."—Philadelphia Inquirer

"A masterful analytical history of torture's emergence in Roman law, its insertion into the medieval law of proof, its gradual abolition after 1750, and its dreadful recrudescence in modern times. The book is an exemplary application of historical scholarship to an issue where emotions tend to run ahead of reason."—Times Literary Supplement

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