Cruel Torture Methods

“Nothing can justify torture under any circumstances”

CASE 2… Chaoba (name changed) didn’t return home since he went out with a friend for some tea at the local tea-stall. He reappeared some weeks later and related his ordeal in custody where he was kept blindfolded, tormented and tortured. He continues to live in fear now, avoiding everyone, and refusing help…

CASE 3…Debola (name changed) lives with three small children. Her husband was shot dead inside their bedroom by an unidentified gunman in front of her and her son. After the incident, she says that she has changed a lot. She is now easily frightened, gets startled and edgy most of the time…

These are happenings familiar to us all today in Manipur. The common element in all the three cases is a systematic and deliberate infliction of severe pain or punishment, even unto death, on a person over whom he or she has no physical control. Torture is hence outlined by the cases.

Torture is defined in the UN Convention against 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.” But, social health researchers have offered a wider definition of torture as the systematic and deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person over whom the actor has no physical control, in order to induce a behavioural response from that person.

Torture is prohibited under international law, and the national laws of most countries. It is considered to be a barbaric violation of human rights, and is declared to be unacceptable. Torture is a global problem. The biggest world body, the UN, has repeatedly committed itself to fight torture, but inspite of this torture is still practiced in a large number of member states. Torture is often used as a weapon against democracy. It is no surprise, therefore, that it is the States that covet democratic ideals and principles who lead the present worldwide campaign against torture.

Torture is aimed at intentionally destroying the soul, identity and personality of a human being. Severe torture often leads to death, which can be also be intentional and not a mistake. It is committed with the knowledge and approval, tacit or otherwise, of the government. Mostly, torture is performed in detention settings and also publicly. It is often targeted to political workers, union/student leaders and members of ethnic/national minorities to ensure a state of repression and fear. Even the common man, women and the children are not spared. Torture is also meted out by armed opposition groups, which possess some characteristics of government.

Whitelaw Towers: Regrets, I have a few…

Our Old Uncle Victor recalls, as a young bloke, constructing many plastic ‘Airfix’ aeroplane kits and among his favourites were the heavy bombers. For many years he had a large scale model of a Lancaster bomber suspended by cotton thread hanging above his bed as he lay there reading his war comics and history books. He was utterly convinced with the dead certainty only those who know very little can be, that his various relatives who had fought the Axis Powers in World War Two had proudly represented his people on the righteous side of a struggle with absolute evil. The warm glow one gets from 'knowing' one is on the 'good' team filled him with a smugness and assumed authority to judge those wicked Nazis. At school the kids would regale each other with lurid tales about German brutality and Japanese atrocities which they had 'learned' from Hollywood movies and TelAvision shows and argue about who were the most cruel and inhuman. The Japs usually won the contest narrowly based largely on their reputation for extremely imaginative torture techniques. Of course, OUR boys never did anything like that. No. Never. WE were all heroes. His history books, his school teachers, his comic books, the TelAvision ‘documentaries’ and the Hollywood movies all inculcated him with the comforting feeling that he was definitely a descendant of the ‘Good Guys’ and that ‘our’ cause was just. He was a good little true believer whose ignorance was merely reinforced by the rare naysayer he encountered in his youth who just made him dig his heels in with jingoistic pride. In those romantic pre-Internet times the ‘Chinese whisper’ stories of ‘my dad reckons’ or ‘my granddad always says’ or ‘uncle so and so saw such and such with his own eyes’ etc was all he had to go on for the ‘first hand’ or ‘eyewitness’ testimonies and what kid, at least in those days, was going to challenge the veracity of his elders’ war stories? It’s not that these people even necessarily set out to deceive it is just that, ignorance of the big picture aside, stories get ‘polished’ or ‘enhanced’ to make them more ‘interesting’ and to paint the teller in the best possible light and then get passed along by word of mouth until they have a life of their own.

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Torture, a collection