Torture

One calls torture the activity consisting in producing an intense or long, psychological or physical suffering, while avoiding or at least while delaying . It can produce after-effects and mutilations, but it is a side effect, or possibly a means of making suffer, and not an aim in itself.

The of torture one holds its victim with its mercy, it cannot echapper. The objectives and the motivations of of torture can be varied:

  • information, consents;
  • punishment of a real or imaginary fault;
  • pleasure ;
  • "psychological preparation", aiming at convincing the victim of its weakness in order to obtain its complete tender;
  • ordinary tagging along of of torture which does not make (according to him) only follow the orders or the procedures;

Torture is prohibited by Convention against torture and other sorrows or treatments cruel, inhuman or degrading (adopted by it and come into effect it ) and the third Convention of Geneva. It constitutes a serious violation of . However, torture is still practised all over the world, often under cover is of a vague definition in , or of fuzzy local legislations.

Torture is used by the States generally in the context or , where one often holds it like necessary, therefore legitimate.

More cunningly, of the authorities which officially condemn torture can simply close the eyes on "deprived" tortures, whose executants discovered will be even condemned without the state recognizing the least responsibility.

Synopsis

Private tortures

Shadies, including and it , usually uses torture, either between them, or against victims of which they wish to obtain information (mask of the saving or modern code of blue chart). The "drivers", burning the feet of their victims to obtain the nest egg from it, were famous.

The use of torture by the governmental authorities

Supplice du satyre Marsyas, œuvre romaine de l'époque impériale
Torment of the satyr ?uvre Roman of the imperial time

Torture was always used.

With and until XVIIIE century in Europe, one regarded it as a legitimate means to obtain consents or information on behalf of the suspects, information used during the lawsuit.

is famous to have largely made use of torture; this public authority even one handbook of the inquisitor officializing these practices. However, it is clear that the enquiry did not invent anything, and that by codifying the procedures of torture it also contributed to limit them.

The use of torture within a legal framework was a long time the rule, it was not abolished in that at the beginning of , in .

Torture remains a method of common repression in the dictatorships and . Even in the Western democratic companies, of the police officers resort sometimes to torture, while profiting sometimes from the protection of higher authorities.

In with , a news item of torture in the police station of Eigelstein revealed itself at the great day only because the victim died about it and that the examination postmortem of the body revealed the facts. The investigation also revealed that the senior police officers had made use of torture since a good moment and that none the victims had carried felt sorry for.

During the war of (-), soldiers used various forms of torture against the freedom fighters, of which rapes with repetition on the women (cf « Algerian ", a book of Louizette Ighilahriz and Anne Nivat) and . The General Paul Aussaresses, which was a commander during this war, an autobiographical work entitled published " Special services, Algeria 1955-1957 "in which this last practice and others are asserted, after having pled in favour of torture in a maintenance granted to the French national daily newspaper . It also answered during a maintenance in 60 minutes, a magazine of the American chain CBS, with the question "you Would torture the suspects ofAl-Qaeda? » : "That seems obvious to me". The film The Battle of Algiers left in which denounced the use of torture was interdict in France, but A at the same time was useful of educational support to diffuse its practices in the world.

Agents of confirmed, under cover of anonymity, with Washington Post , that the CIA regularly practises interrogations according to the method " stress and duress ", method that the defenders of the Humans right regard as an act of torture, in the war anti-terrorist. These sources report that the personnel of the CIA and the soldiers beat the reticent suspects, confine them in too small cells, attach them on " stretchers ", and use various ustensils to make them be held in a position testing and/or humiliating for long periods of time. The expression light torture (torture light) was brought back to the media, and was perceived like meaning: Acts not being able to be officially defined like torture, but where the intention is the same one.

The United Kingdom was criticized to have made use of torture towards supects of (WILL GO) in . Although primarily centered on the psychological aspect, the methods employed could include a physical aspect (like sitting the prisoner on a block of ). In , European court of the Humans right qualified the actions of the British forces of safety the "inhuman ones" and "degrading", but clearly did not define this as torture.

practised torture at least since , but in only, Supreme court of Israel a special subcommittee constituted (with the head of which was the reprocessed judge Moshe Pram), to study the question of torture. His report/ratio cautionait the use of "moderate physical pressure". The group of defense of B' Tselem estimate that 85% of the Palestinian prisoners undergo tortures. The methods used include/understand the electric shocks, the prolonged deprivation of sleep, the direction of the sight using stringcourses or tightened hoods, the maintenance of the body in increasingly painful positions, threats and insults. Almost always combined with enfermement in a space of the size of a wall cupboard, the exposure to extreme temperatures (particularly cold part for example), the deprivation of medical and showers prolonged, and treatments degrading, like forcing the prisoners to eat while going to the toilets. The beating ups are also frequent. In the prison iraëlienne and south-Lebanese of Khiam, [...] torture, including the electric shocks applied to the genitals, formed part of the routine. It was proven after the end of the occupation in , when the Lebanese one which released the prisoners found apparatuses of torture.

Organizations of defense of the humans right, such asAmnesty International imply themselves actively to eliminate torture from the surface of the Earth.

Following its War counters terrorism and in order to protect itself from the contemporary pressures against torture and its prohibition on its territory and by its agents, the United States via The CIA, use of the process called extraordinary returning. It is a question of removing a person which one wants to extirpate information and of unloading it in a country where he could be tortured "discreetly" by the agents of the country where he is. The last example in date is that of one removed twice in and taken back in , where it was tortured. If it is not a phone call of distress, there is no more no news of him. A warrant for arrest was deposited against 13 people, suspected of belonging to the CIA and of having taken part in these removals.

Effectiveness and effects of torture

When torture is used to obtain consents, it is effective to weaken the victim, and often, it is already quite sufficient for the of torture ones. With consents, failing to have the truth, they will have an official version that the victim recognized itself, and even if it reconsiders its declarations it will nothing but do be contradicted and thus be discredited.

Thus, even if the victim acknowledges anything, and even invents facts, to put an end to torture, the result is satisfactory for the of torture one.

And then, it can even happen that the victim gives information which will be verifiable (for example: position of a hidden object, treasure or bends), which a posteriori legitimates the process.

On the other hand, torture is criticable not only on the human level, but also taking into account its social aspects. The institutions which make the use of it are corrupted: instead of seeking the truth and to occupy itself of the real problems, they have the means of sticking only to the appearance of the things. Instead of returning in a logic of right remuneration (the culprit must be found and punished), they return in a logic of terror, Community violence (it does not matter that the culprit is held, one holds one of his/her "brothers", and it is similar) and of climbing of reprisals, leading to a generalized conflict.

Methods and apparatuses of torture

Torture using chemicals

The victims can be forced to introduce products, chemical or not besides (crushed glass...) to inflict the pain and of the internal damage.

Irritating products can be introduced into rectum or it , or applied to the genitals. One saw in of the women punished foradultery to undergo an intromission of red in the vagina. Similar methods were used many times in .

Torture using electricity

A modern method of torture consists in applying electric shocks to the body. To increase the effect, the of torture one can apply the shocks to the genitals, or introduce them in stop, it rectum, or it .

During , the French Army made use of sadly celebrates . There are many testimonys of electric torture with , perpetrated by the Chinese, more particularly on chocolate éclairs Buddhists, with in particular, the insertion of electrodes in the rectum, or the vagina.

Torture using animals

In Turkey, one of the tortures used by the army was the introduction of rat into the rectum. It is made mention of this torture in the work of The Man with the rats.

See too

Internal bonds

External bonds

 

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