Tag: International Day in Support of Victims of Torture

Oracle, Optimist, Ostrich, or Obfuscator? Part 3.

Posted on by kathiemm
Dragging Guantanamo captive. Image by Shane T. McCoy and is in the public domain.
Dragging Guantanamo captive.
Image by Shane T. McCoy and is in the public domain.

Among the types of violence that Steven Pinker designates as “rare to non-existent in the west” is that chilling form  of inhumanity, torture. Yet the  western nation in which he lives and writes, the United States, seems up to its eyeballs in the perpetration of the dirty deeds.

Anyone remember what members of the U.S. military did in Abu Ghraib?

And how about Guantanamo Bay? Have you seen the Senate Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program that chillingly confirmed horrendous acts of torture at Guantanamo and various “black sites”?

Torture, including prolonged solitary confinement, is also flourishing in  penal institutions across the fifty states.

Immigrant children are physically and sexually abused while being held in detention until their fates can be resolved.

Both men’s and women’s prisons are hotbeds for rape and other forms of torture.

Sexual abuse is on the rise in juvenile correctional facilities;  according to one report, the majority of the abusers are women.

And who will deny that police torture people in the streets, in paddy wagons, and in their stations?

According to Pinker,  “The 18th century saw the widespread abolition of judicial torture, including the famous prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment” in the eighth amendment of the U.S. Constitution (emphasis added).” He praises our enlightened society for recognizing that torture is wrong. But really, should we smugly pat ourselves on our backs if today’s judicial system no longer makes explicit recommendations of torture as a punishment for people they decide are guilty of something (e.g., being the “wrong” color), when its decisions often spawn it?

Pinker’s reassurances do not leave me hopeful for the imminent demise of torture in our institutions.  The genuine optimists,  like Nancy Arvold, Maria Rotella, Stephen Soldz, Prison Hunger Strike Solidarity, and Psychologists for Social Responsibility, work tirelessly to end torture, but resistance to reforms persist.  

Underplaying the problem as Pinker does seems itself to be cruel but not unusual, although we should celebrate the genuine good news when it comes.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

 

Can this be your day too?

Posted on by kathiemm
Waterboarding From The Inquisition To Guantanamo, Constitution Ave., NW (Washington, DC).
Image by Jim Kuhn and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

June 26 is the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture—an important if mostly neglected reminder that torture continues to victimize people around the world today–often at the behest of powerful forces within the US government. Torture  destroys the well-being of millions of direct victims as well as their loved ones. The theme for 2015 is the Right to Rehabilitation (R2R); we should never forget that victims of torture may suffer for a life time.

The Miriam Webster Dictionary defines torture “as the act of causing severe physical pain as a form of punishment or as a way to force someone to do or say something, something that causes mental or physical suffering, a very painful or unpleasant experience.” This is a broad definition but useful.

How many of you still feel anguish when you remember traumatic experiences of physical or psychological punishment or coercion—e.g., beatings, humiliation, terrorizing–at the hands of family members or bullies? How many of you needed either professional or other support to deal with the effects of those experiences? Can you imagine how much worse it would be to be the victim of the more commonly-acknowledged forms of torture, such as waterboarding, prolonged solitary confinement, rectal feeding, and other atrocities outlined in the recent US Senate report on torture by the CIA?

Torture is a moral issue, one that all people of conscience can address—not only on a community, national, and international level but in their own lives. See the following links for some ideas of what you might do in honor of International Day in Support of Victims of Torture… and every day.

NRCAT DVD Discussion Guides

R2R

NRCAT film, Breaking Down the Box

Today is a good day to at least think about those things.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Terminating torture and treating its victims

Posted on by kathiemm
Painting of torture by Paolo Veronese
Paolo Veronese, in public domain.

“Torture is a crime under international law….[It] is absolutely prohibited and cannot be justified under any circumstances. This prohibition forms part of customary international law, which means that it is binding on every member of the international community, regardless of whether a State has ratified international treaties in which torture is expressly prohibited. The systematic or widespread practice of torture constitutes a crime against humanity” (United Nations).

Despite this absolute prohibition of torture, the United States has perpetrated torture at Guantanamo Bay, in its own prisons, and through extraordinary rendition, thereby earning widespread condemnation from the international community.

The government officials who have promoted the use of torture and the citizens who condone it are enabled by their own moral disengagement and by the passivity of all the Americans who avoid thinking about the agonies of torture and the complicity of their government in this violation of international law.

Time for a change.

Just two months ago, on April 16, 2013, a bipartisan task force assembled by The Constitution Project, a public interest organization, released a 560-page study providing “indisputable” evidence of U.S. torture of detainees since September 11, 2001. The U.S. government is urged to provide redress to its victims.

The report is timely, because June 26 is the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. The International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims provides valuable information on the victims of torture and the efforts made to help them recover.

Meet some of the survivors of torture from around the world and hear them relate their heart-wrenching stories. And then be part of the solution.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Torture Awareness Month: Remember the victims, honor the resisters

Posted on by kathiemm
Torments of the Slaves
Image in public domain

The United Nations General Assembly has designated June 26 of each year as International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.

Today, June 27, 2011,  and in subsequent posts, we want to honor several military leaders in the United States and elsewhere who have spoken out against torture, labeling it appropriately morally offensive, a violation of human rights, and a defiance of international law.

For his work in exposing the myths regarding torture and urging reform of U.S. interrogation practices, we honor Matthew Alexander, a former Special Operations pilot who saw combat in Bosnia and Kosovo, volunteered to go to Iraq as a senior interrogator, and refused to participate in the use of torture that was rampant there (See 2008 Washington Post article).

Alexander’s book, How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq, will be reviewed in an upcoming post.

For his book “The Fight for the High Ground: The U.S. Army and Interrogation During Operation Iraqi Freedom, May 2003 – April 2004,” we honor Major Douglas A. Pryer, who criticizes the policies and training that led to the abuse of detainees in Iraq during the first year of the post 9/11 Iraq War. We will review his book in an upcoming post.

We also want to honor the ordinary enlisted men and women who have spoken out against torture. In particular, see the article about Ray Bennett (a pseudonym) and the video by David DeBatto.

 

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology