Torture is a means to exercise the control of power over anyone who
needs to be silenced, anyone who is a terrorist or threat to that power
source, and anyone who has vital information or needs to confess
something.
Most of the countries that torture openly are in Asia, Africa, and the Middle
East. Although, there are many other countries that abuse this power that
violates human rights (and animal rights too).
It is a mistake to think that torture only is prevalent in authoritarian or
quasi-authoritarian states. Many democratic governments have used
torture.
Where torture is very atrocious:
Egypt: type of torture includes electric shock, suspension by the wrists or ankles and threats of violence or rape.
North Korea: Type of torture include severe beatings, electric shock, prolonged periods of exposure???, public nakedness, and confinement to ‘punishment cells’ too small for prisoners to stand upright or lie down.
China: Physical and psychological torture.
Colombia: All of Colombia’s three sides torture (don't know what that is???look it up).
Congo: Again torture is practiced by all its combatants in the countries chaotic civil war.
Uzbekistan: Type of torture used includes suffocation, electric shock, rape and other sexual abuses.
Turkey: Military and law enforcement officials use torture. Women detainees are routinely raped.
India: Torture is used in criminal investigations in areas where political and sectarian violence is common.
Israel and Palestinian Authority: Both sides use torture against each other.
Torturers often end up physically beating their prey. They often employ mind games with their prisoners, threatening their families and their pets.
The propose of torture is to reduce your detainee to an inferior level
wherein you have absolute power and control over them.
Post 9-11 shifted the topic of torture to something that needs to be looked
4 comments:
Where'd the rest of this post go? I read it yesterday and had a few comments I wanted to leave, but now 3/4 of it are gone...
One insignificant part I was going to address is this:
"...countries that abuse this power that violates human rights (and animal rights too)."
-Isn't this redundant? Animal-rights necessarily encompass Homo sapien rights as well, it seems no different than I saying "...that violate canine rights (and animal-rights too)." This sentence structure assumes, or leads one to the false assumption, that there is some difference between one species being an animal and another species not when in fact they are both indisputably animals.
I completely agree that I'm being hyper-analytic here, but it is this type of mentality that allows otherwise "good" people to go on differentiating themselves from their animal brethren when no such distinction is warranted or even justified. Indeed, the distinction and subjugation made concerning and of disparate species is fundamentally no different than the perceived fundamental moral differences between the sexes or the social construction we refer to as the races. Bluntly, if you can satiate yourself with another being's flesh, then you should have no qualms about owning slaves or denying women equal treatment before the law. In fact, your dining on another being's ribs or thighs necessarily precludes you from even making any moral judgments regarding the aformentioned atrocities (of slavery and gender discrimination). Well, it may not preclude you entirely, but it sure would paint you as an inconsistent hypocrite.
Now, understand that this is far from an attack on Tali, as I'm aware of where he stands on the issue (and the mere fact that he would mention "animal-rights" sets him eons ahead of the typical barbarism of meat-eaters in general), conversely, this is most definitely an attack on any position that purports to elevate one species' rights over another without sufficient justification. That's all for now.
I would like to ask you, Tali, a question concerning torture, but I cannot remember what prompted it, so I will wait to see if the rest of your post shows up. Good post.
Michael,
Yes, well said. I agree with what you have to say. Nevertheless, my “sentence structure” was constructed solely for getting a generality across to the masses. I understand that society has constructed a discourse that has manipulated the correlation between “human” and “animal.” With that said, if we add the concept of ‘rights’ we have instantly opened an area of discourse that has sought out to include only “humans” per se. We could trace the history of this discourse (rights) to ancient developments in western civilization. Roman law for instance, included the Latin terms ‘de recto’, and ‘de recto patens’, both of which deal with rights exclusive to matters that affect a person in society. Therefore, historically, within the discourse of rights, the concept of “human” has been used separate from that of “animal”. If you need proof of this, I suggest you look at any Constitution and notice the exclusivity of rights to the individual. With that said, I defend my sentence and the separation of “human-rights” and “animal-rights”. I do agree with you that at this moment in history, we (as a society) have come to include the discourse of rights to the realm of what was once traditionally exclusive. I could have said “animal rights”, but my point would have not triggered a connection to the common person of society. Furthermore, I believe that we need to be more persuasive with our arguments, especcially when the majority is walking around confused about this topic. I guess I took a different route.
On a side note, I was asked to restructure my blog post, “Anyone up for torture?” I had to crop out anything that was considered offensive: “unfortunately, though, i have to be the voice of university censorship here. while the picture you posted is powerful, i have to ask that you simply crop the genitals out of the photo or choose a different
image. even though the blog is hosted on blogger, it's still part of
a university course and i'm bound by the university rules on this one.
i appreciate your help on this and i can't wait to read your post in
its entirety.” I proceeded to allow Caroline to get ride of the picture. She removed the picture as well as most of my (1/4) post. With that said, I don’t know exactly how to get my post back. I would be more than happy to talk to anyone who is interested.
Tali
hey guys - glad this post generated some discussion.
for the record, tali, i did not ask you to change anything about your post except to remove the photo that clearly displayed the genitals of the prisoners. all i did was remove that photo - i'm unsure why the text is now cropped. i'll see if there is anything i can do to recover it.
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