Showing papers on "Torture published in 1985"

The body in pain

Abstract: Part philosophical meditation, part cultural critique, this profoundly original work explores the nature of physical suffering. Elaine Scarry bases her study on a wide range of sources: literature and art, medical case histories, documents on torture compiled by Amnesty International, legal transcripts of personal injury trials, and military and strategic writings by such figures as Clausewitz, Churchill, Liddell Hart, and Henry Kissinger. Scarry begins with the fact of pain's inexpressibility. Not only is physical pain difficult to describe in words, it also actively destroys language, reducing sufferers in the most extreme cases to an inarticulate state of cries and moans. Scarry goes on to analyse the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of warfare and torture, and she demonstrates how political regimes use the power of physical pain to attack and break down the sufferer's sense of self. Finally she turns to examples of artistic and cultural activity; actions achieved in the face of pain and difficulty.

The Ritual Experience: Pain and the Transformation of Consciousness in Ordeals of Initiation

Abstract: deals of adolescent initiation. In the writings of early travellers, missionaries, and pioneering anthropologists, through studies by contemporary scholars, time and again we encounter accounts of apparently barbaric, sadistic, bloodthirsty torture being perpetrated by adults on the youth of their societies. The widespread occurrence and seeming irrationality of these ordeals has given anthropologists, psychologists and others much food for theorizing. One would have hoped that after Durkheim, van Gennep, Firth, Turner, Freud, Bettelheim, and so many others have had their say, the subject would

The Unanswered Challenge of Relativism and the Consequences for Human Rights

Abstract: in recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the concept of human rights. While some discuss what the appropriate length of the human rights list should be, others charge that the concept is a Western one. Fundamentally these debates reflect the underlying conflict between international human rights and cultural and ethical relativism. Since relativism forbids value judgments, the relativist cannot disapprove of specific cultural practices. This is because the practices regarded as reprehensible are judged according to an ethnocentric standard. Many fear the consequences of relativism: (1) that a relativist position condones or even approves of customs such as head hunting, polygyny, female genital operations, subordination of women and minority groups, arbitrary killings, torture and so forth, and (2) that recognizing the legitimacy of relativism will undermine the entire human rights movement. If the validity of human rights is no longer taken to be self evident, the justification for them will have to come from somewhere. This article explores the tension between cultural relativism and international human rights and tries to come to grips with some means to resolve this challenging problem. In the context of this essay it will not be possible to offer an exhaustive review of the literature relevant to the subject.' The basic

The breaking of bodies and minds: Torture, psychiatric abuse, and the health professions.

Abstract: We are inclined to regard torture and deliberate psychiatric abuse as matters that fall in the other fellow's backyard and of little concern to the practicing physician. The extent, however, of torture practices throughout the world as well as the known atrocities by German physicians during the Holocaust have produced ripples that engulf us all. This volume, resulting from the efforts of the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is an impressive collection of detailed and well-

Torture in Iraq.

Abstract: mained. There was no growth on MacConkey agar in CO,. The isolate was catalasepositive, oxidase-negative, reduced nitrate and showed no X or V factor dependency. Acid was produced from glucose and maltose but not from lactose or mannitol. Identification as A. actino was confirmed by the Microbiological Diagnostic Unit at the University of Melbourne. The biochemical characteristics clearly differentiate the organism from Haemophi/us aphrophi/us, with which it may be confused morphologically. Minimal inhibitory concentrations (MIC) and minimal bactericidal concentrations (MBC)were determined for pencillin G, ampicillin and gentamicin in TSB supplemented with 10% horse serum. Serum-supplemented Mueller-Hinton broth and brain-heart infusion broth did not support adequate growth. Incubation was at 37°C in 10% CO,. MICs were read at 48 hours and subcultures performed at 48 hours. MICs and MBCs were: gentamicin 0.6 and 1.2 mg/L, penicillin 0.6 and 1.2 mg/L, ampicillin I and I mgIL, respectively. A serum bactericidal titre determined using a blood sample drawn just prior to a dose of gentamicin and penicillin was I in 8. TSB supplemented with 10% horse serum was used as the culture medium. In view of the low MIC and MBC to ampicillin and evidence of further renal impairment following two weeks of gentamicin, therapy was changed to 12 g intravenous ampicillin daily. Following a further two weeks the patient was asymptomatic and was discharged on Ig oral amoxycillin four times a day for three weeks. A blood culture drawn one week after commencement of antibiotic therapy remained sterile after 2I days of incubation, as did further sets taken over the following four months. Six months after discharge the patient remained well. It is important that clinicians be aware that patients with hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy are at risk of bacterial endocarditis and require prophylaxis at the time of dental or genital manipulations, similar to patients with valve disease. The bacteriologist must ensure that blood culture methods are capable of detecting organisms which are slow-growing (up to 3 weeks may be required), CO,-dependent, and which may produce no obvious changes in broth culture medium. The agar slope of our biphasic blood culture aided early recognition of growth in this case. Routine blind subculture to chocolated blood agar incubated for one week in an enriched CO, atmosphere should enable detection of A. actino and other slowgrowing Gram-negative bacilli of what has been termed the HACEK group (H aphrophi/us, A. actino, Cardiobacterium hominis, Eikenella corrodens, and Kingella kingae).' The optimal antibiotic therapy for A. actino endocarditis is unknown. The majority of cases reported in the literature have been treated with penicillin or ampicillin, usually in conjunction with an aminoglycoside. In a review by Reider of 18 cases, 80% of patients treated with this combination survived.' Geraci has proposed the use of high-dose ampicillin alone, provided that the isolate is susceptible in vitro.\" Resistance to ampicillin and penicillin does occur, therefore susceptibility testing of all isolates is indicated. Care should be taken when interpreting the results of gentamicin susceptibility tests for A. actino, as the drop in media pH associated with incubation in a CO,-enriched atmosphere may result in a significant loss of gentamicin activity. Inclusion of a suitable control organism is mandatory. KeithStockman,BSe Graeme McKinnon, FRCPA Simon Bower,MB BS AlistairDavidson, BScApp Departments of Microbiology and Cardiology Prince Henry Hospital, VIC 3004 1. Weaver RE, Hollis DG. Gram-negative fermentative bacteria and Franciscellatularensis. In: Lennette EH, et al., eds. Manual of clinical microbiology, 3rd edn. Washington: American Society For Microbiology. 1980: 242. 2. Scheid WM, Sande MA. Endocarditis and intravascular infections. In: Mandell GL, et al., eds. Principles and practice of infectious diseases. New York: John Wiley, 1979: 655. 3. Ah Fat LNC, Patel BR, Pickens S. Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans endocarditis in hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy. J Infection 1983; 6: 81-84. 4. Geraci JE, Wilson WR. Endocarditis due to Gramnegative bacteria. Mayo Clin Proc 1982; 57: 145·148. 5. Reider J, Wheat J. Endocarditis caused by Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans. South Med J 1979; 72: 1219-1220. 6. Geraci JE, Wilson WR, Washington JA. Infective endocarditis caused by Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans. Mayo Clin Proc 1980; 55: 415-419. 7. Hoffler U, Niederau A, Pulverer G. Susceptibility of Bacterium actinomycetemcomitans to 45 antibiotics. Antimicrob Agents Chemother 1980; 17: 943-946.

Psychological and physical long-term effects of torture. A follow-up examination of 22 Greek persons exposed to torture 1967-1974.

Abstract: After an observation period of about 10 years a follow-up examination was made of 22 Greeks earlier exposed to torture. All had physical symptoms and about 90% of the examinees had chronic psychological symptoms which had appeared after the torture experience, the most notable of which were emotional instability, depression, passivity, fatigue and disturbed sleep. Eight of the victims had a chronic organic psychosyndrome as defined by us. The clinical picture of the torture victims is very similar to other stress-conditioned syndromes, which underlines the significance of the psychological trauma for the pathogenesis. Certain physical symptoms can be related to specific forms of torture; in this series particularly, symptoms of the feet and lower extremities can be related to 'falanga' (repeated blows to the soles of the feet). The most noticeable objective finding was unilateral atrophy of testis in 2 of the examinees caused in all probability by genital torture. Treatment of the sequelae to torture should be initiated as early as possible in the course of the illness, and studies on the effect of this treatment should be carried out.

The United Nations and Human Rights, 1945-1985

Abstract: Between 1945 and 1985 there has been a marked change in the treatment of human rights at the United Nations. On the foundation of a few vague references to human rights in the UN Charter there has evolved an International Bill of Rights indicating numerous obligations of increasing salience. This core of global rules has been supplemented by a series of particular human rights instruments, some with special control mechanisms. Once the subject of human rights seemed idealistic and abstract, but by the 1980s there was growing attention through an increasing array of UN organs to specific countries and patterns of behavior such as torture and people who have disappeared. The subject of humans rights has not faded away like that of military coordination under the Security Council nor has it remained on the back burner like the Trusteeship Council. Rather it has emerged more and more as one of the subjects to which member states give great attention, if not always for the same reasons. Considerable debate exists at the United Nations over the significance of this change in the treatment of human rights. Clearly, the institutional and procedural changes in the field of human rights have been striking. It also seems clear that there is some legal significance to these changes. At least it now can be said that states have accepted a number of new legal obligations and that numerous "cases" exist which can be used as "precedent" should actors choose to do so in pursuit of human rights values. Ambivalence begins to set in when one tackles the subject of the practical significance of these changes for the condition of human rights beyond UN meeting rooms. There is considerable disagreement

The medical profession and the prevention of torture.

Abstract: Torture remains one of the most abhorrent concomitants of political repression today. In the past four years alone, governments in one third of the world's countries have systematically practiced or tacitly condoned torture or ill treatment.1 Security agents, specially trained interrogators, and sometimes medical personnel use such techniques as prolonged beatings, electric shock, and mind-altering drugs, mostly in secret, to interrogate, punish, and intimidate political dissenters and social nonconformists.2 It is alarming that state-sanctioned brutality exists at all, but it is doubly alarming that medical personnel participate in this brutality. Medical professionals are trained to heal, but some, for various . . .

State (political) torture: some general, psychological, and particular aspects.

Abstract: This article reviews some general and particular aspects of state political torture as it is practiced in several Latin American countries in an attempt to secure domination and prevent change. The purposes, methods and effects of such torture are discussed. The article also elaborates on some of the elements that participate in the making of the torturer, the contradictions that he faces, and the psychological mechanisms that assist him in his attempt to resolve such contradictions. Emphasis is given to the question of who is the real torturer.

The Health and Adaptation of Victims of Political Violence in Latin America (Psychiatric Effects of Torture and Disappearance)

Abstract: There are reportedly close to 15 million refugees in the world today. Among them there are individuals who have suffered imprisonment and torture and children whose families were disrupted by violent political persecution, separation, death or the disappearance of one of their members. Canada since World War II has attracted over 300,000 refugees from all parts of the world. From 1974–1981 over 20,000 people have arrived from Latin America alone seeking political asylum, a proportion of them allegedly having been subjected to violent persecution, including torture, in their country of origin.

United Nations Conventions on Human Rights: The Practice of the Human Rights Committee and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Dealing with Reporting Obligations of States Parties

Abstract: 1. These human rights instruments are: the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, opened for signature 19 December 1966, entered into force 3 January 1976; G.A. Res. 2200 A (XXI), 21 U.N. GAOR Supp. No. 16 at 49, U.N. Doc. A/6316 (1966); the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, opened for signature 19 December 1966, entered into force 23 March 1976; G.A. Res. 2200 A (XXI), 21 U.N. GAOR Supp. No. 16 at 52, U.N. Doc. A/6316 (1966); the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, opened for signature 21 December 1965, entered into force 4 January 1969; 660 U.N.T.S. 195 (1969); G.A. Res. 2106 A (XX), 20 U.N. GAOR Supp. No. 4 U.N. Doc. A/6014 (1965); the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, opened for signature 30 November 1973, entered into force 18 July 1976; 1015 U.N.T.S. 244 (1976); G.A. Res. 3068 (XXVIII), 28 U.N. GAOR Supp. No. 30 U.N. Doc. A/9030 (1973); the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, opened for signature 18 December 1979, entered into force 3 September 1981; G.A. Res. 34/180, 34 U.N. GAOR Supp. No. 46 at 193, U.N. Doc. A/Res./34/180 (1979); and the Convention Against Torture and Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, opened for signature 10 December 1984; G.A. Res. 39/46, 39 U.N. GAOR Supp. No. 51 (1984) [hereinafter cited as Convention Against Torture]. All these conventions have entered into force with the exception of the Convention Against Torture which was adopted on 10 December 1984.

Torturofre—om psykoterapi af flygtninge, der har været udsat for tortur

Abstract: Agger, I et al: Torture victims—on the psychotherapy of refugees who have been submitted to torture Nordisk Psykologi, 1985, 37 (3), 177–192 The article describes the physical, psychological and social sequels to the trauma of torture, and gives a proposal for psychological treatment The following areas are considered; the symptoms which compel the torture victim to seek treatment; the reaction of the environment to these symptoms; the psychological core of the trauma of torture; treatment of the sequels to this trauma in psychotherapy, and strategies for change in the psychological and social environment of the torture victim

Life-threatening Torture without Visible Marks

Abstract: In 1980 and 1984 Amnesty International published reports on torture in Spain (1, 2). In April-May this year [I9841 we have examined 11 persons from Spain who reported that they had been subjected to torture within the last 12 months. The examinations were part of a controlled study on sequelae of torture which is being conducted outside Amnesty International. The examinations lasted an average of 3 hours per person and were carried out by two Danish doctors and an interpreter following a method used in about 200 previous examinations of torlure victims carried out by a Danish medical group. Data collection for this study are ongoing, but we have found the testimonies so alarming that we find it appropriate to communicate a couple of them as casuistries.

Popular Religion and the English Revolution

Abstract: In seventeenth century England there were revolutions in politics, economics and science. Almost as important a turning point was the emergence of new ideas of sin and hell, of man’s fate in the after life and consequently of the way in which he should behave in life. At the beginning of the century the conviction prevailed among the articulate classes that a minority was predestined to eternal life, the vast majority to an eternity of torture. By the end of the century we were on the verge of the age of enlightenment, of deism, or rationalism. Human effort and morality, based on the demands of the individual conscience, now appeared more important than the arbitrary decisions of an omnipotent God. How did this transition come about?

Editorial: Prevention of Nuclear War and Disaster Preparedness

Abstract: The above contributions by Professors Chazov and Lown, the comments by Dr. Rebentisch, and the Resolutions by the WAEDM, the Red Cross and the WHO indicate that disaster medicine planning for a response to and civil defense protection in case of nuclear war is senseless, wasteful of resources (which are needed for current vital social programs worldwide), and also dangerous, by giving national leaders the impression that some individuals' medical protection in a nuclear war is possible. Most people, including some national leaders and military experts, believe that limited use of nuclear weapons would escalate to a global nuclear holocaust, and that any medical planning for nuclear war might encourage the irrational belief that nuclear was is winnable. Even if it were “winnable” the resulting death and torture of millions of innocent people and the damage of our planet's ecologic balance, make any consideration of the military use of nuclear explosions morally and medically unacceptable.

Leo Strauss's Churchillian Speech and the Question of the Decline of the West

Abstract: The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly alone, and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors Here, without contemplating consequences, before High Heaven, and in the face of the world, I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause … Let none falter, who thinks he is right, and we may succeed But, if after all, we shall fail, be it so We still shall have the proud consolation of saying to our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country's freedom, that the cause approved of our judgment, and adored of our hearts, in disaster, in chains, in torture, in death, we never faltered in defending

No Remedies against Police Torture

Abstract: No Remedies against Police Torture? A G Noorani HOW long will the Indian legal system remain without any worthwhile remedies against the practice of torture by the custodians of law and order against the hapless citizen? The existing remedies are worse than useless

Violence and Injustice in Society: Recent Catholic Teaching

Abstract: VIOLENCE CAN OCCUR on different scales and in different contexts, from the terrifying forced intimacy of rape to the stunning desolation of nuclear bombardment. It has been one of the great constants in our literature and our history—from Cain and Achilles on. It enters into our understanding of such virtues as courage and patience. It is seen as both the instrument of justice and the enactment of malice. It is linked with the time of founding of the nation and of political order, and it brings about the destruction of empires. It enters into our conception of God Himself and into our account of His judgements on the peoples of the earth. Accordingly, it is and must remain a central topic for theological inquiry and reflection. But constant though violence is in human history, theological reflection on it always takes place within a cultural, social, and political context which is itself both complex and variable. This context is particularly diverse and rich in the case of Roman Catholicism, which is a transnational church with a long, checkered history and which has strong elements of the political both in its internal structure and in its stance to the larger world. In ministering to the various parts of its vast flock, Catholicism has had in the recent past to deal with the problems created by such different forms of violence as urban terrorism (Northern Ireland, Italy, Spain, and Argentina), civil war (Lebanon and El Salvador), tribal warfare (Africa), conventional naval warfare (the Falklands), the threat of violence implicit in mass political movements (Poland), military coups both actual and threatened (Latin America and Spain), rural terrorism carried on by both revolutionary groups and governments (Central America), the deployment of nuclear armaments (United States, United Kingdom, France), rioting by minority groups (United States, United Kingdom), arbitrary arrests, torture, executions, and disappearances carried on by governments directly or through paramilitary groups (Uganda, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil). There are also continuing forms of violence which are linked with long-standing social conditions, such as rising levels of violent crime in urban societies, or with cultural developments, such as the effects of the representation of violence in the various media. This listing is not intended to be exhaustive, but it does indicate the scale and the complexity of the problem of violence in

A Tale of Two Brothers

Abstract: Those who ‘endanger national security’ by criticising the King are liable to imprisonment, torture and death — according to the experience of the Elansari brothers

Victims of Torture and Their Rehabilitation

Abstract: International declarations prescribing torture, while necessary and useful, have had little effect on the practice of torture in 50 or more countries around the world. It would seem that the equalising balance of nuclear power, and corresponding increase in subversion or insurgency have resulted in increasing levels of counter-insurgency operations by security forces. Man has always been willing to invest immense treasure, ingenuity and creativity in the waging of war. Of course insurgency is not exclusively a modern phenomenon and some techniques of interrogation of prisoners are as old as mankind. Techniques often have both a psychological and physical basis, and Amnesty International (I) and others have widely published the details of physical tortures, some new, some old, but all equally abhorrent. Often sexual assault and humiliations, rigid control, threats and promises are combined with physical pain through beating and painful postures. Deprivation of sensation, food, water and sleep combined with other techniques have been known for centuries as methods of coercion. Their systematic use seems to have reached a higher level of intensity than previously known.