Showing papers on "Torture published in 2011"

Spectacular Rhetorics: Human Rights Visions, Recognitions, Feminisms

Abstract: Spectacular Rhetorics is a rigorous analysis of the rhetorical frameworks and narratives that underlie human rights law, shape the process of cultural and legal recognition, and delimit public responses to violence and injustice. Integrating visual and textual criticism, Wendy S. Hesford scrutinizes “spectacular rhetoric,” the use of visual images and rhetoric to construct certain bodies, populations, and nations as victims and incorporate them into human rights discourses geared toward Westerners, chiefly Americans. Hesford presents a series of case studies critiquing the visual representations of human suffering in documentary films, photography, and theater. In each study, she analyzes works addressing a prominent contemporary human rights cause, such as torture and unlawful detention, ethnic genocide and rape as a means of warfare, migration and the trafficking of women and children, the global sex trade, and child labor. Through these studies, she demonstrates how spectacular rhetoric activates certain cultural and national narratives and social and political relations, consolidates identities through the politics of recognition, and configures material relations of power and difference to produce and, ultimately, to govern human rights subjects.

Dehumanized Perception: A Psychological Means to Facilitate Atrocities, Torture, and Genocide?

Abstract: Dehumanized perception, a failure to spontaneously consider the mind of another person, may be a psychological mechanism facilitating inhumane acts like torture. Social cognition - considering someone's mind - recognizes the other as a human being subject to moral treatment. Social neuroscience has reliably shown that participants normally activate a social-cognition neural network to pictures and thoughts of other people; our previous work shows that parts of this network uniquely fail to engage for traditionally dehumanized targets (homeless persons or drug addicts; see Harris & Fiske, 2009, for review). This suggests participants may not consider these dehumanized groups' minds. Study 1 demonstrates that participants do fail to spontaneously think about the contents of these targets' minds when imagining a day in their life, and rate them differently on a number of human-perception dimensions. Study 2 shows that these human-perception dimension ratings correlate with activation in brain regions beyond the social-cognition network, including areas implicated in disgust, attention, and cognitive control. These results suggest that disengaging social cognition affects a number of other brain processes and hints at some of the complex psychological mechanisms potentially involved in atrocities against humanity.

Why do Authoritarian Regimes Sign the Convention Against Torture? Signaling, Domestic Politics and Non-Compliance

Abstract: Traditional international relations theory holds that states will join only those international institutions with which they generally intend to comply. Here we show when this claim might not hold. We construct a model of an authoritarian government’s decision to sign the UN Convention Against Torture (CAT). Authoritarian governments use the signing of this treaty – followed by the willful violation of its provisions – as a costly signal to domestic opposition groups of their willingness to employ repressive tactics to remain in power. In equilibrium, authoritarian governments that torture heavily are more likely to sign the treaty than those that torture less. We further predict that signatory regimes survive longer in office than non-signatories, and enjoy less domestic opposition – and we provide empirical support for these predictions.

The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain

Abstract: Selected as the Sunday Times History Book of the Year for 2012, this is a meticulous work of scholarship from the foremost historian of 20th-century Spain. The culmination of more than a decade of research, 'The Spanish Holocaust' seeks to reflect the intense horrors visited upon Spain during its ferocious civil war, the consequences of which still reverberate bitterly today. The brutal, murderous persecution of Spaniards between 1936 and 1945 is a truth that should have been told long ago. Paul Preston here offers the first comprehensive picture of what he terms "the Spanish Holocaust": mass extra-judicial murder of some 200,000 victims, cursory military trials, torture, the systematic abuse of women and children, sweeping imprisonment, the horrors of exile. Those culpable for crimes committed on both sides of the Civil War are named; their victims identified. 'The Spanish Holocaust' illuminates one of the darkest, least-known eras of modern European history.

Mental health among torture survivors: cultural background, refugee status and gender

Abstract: Background: The experience of torture places the survivors at a heightened risk for somatic and mental health problems. Aims: This study examined the role of culture, refugee status and gender in the mental and somatic health among help-seekers in a centre for torture survivors in Finland. Method: The 78 participants (29 women and 49 men) were interviewed and assessed with the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) and the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25 (HSCL-25) scales and their somatic complaints were registered. Groups with Middle Eastern, Central African, Southern Asian and South Eastern European cultural backgrounds were compared. Results: Group differences were found in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depressive symptoms and somatic complaints. As hypothesized, Southern European torture survivors showed a higher level of PTSD than cultural groups from more traditional collective societies in Middle East, Asia and Africa, and more depressive symptoms than survivors from a Southern Asian backgr...

Mau Mau in the High Court and the 'Lost' British Empire Archives: Colonial Conspiracy or Bureaucratic Bungle?

Abstract: In April 2011, a landmark hearing before the High Court in London found that the British government had a case to answer concerning abuse and torture allegedly carried out by British officials in Kenya during the Mau Mau counter-insurgency. Prior to the hearing, it was revealed that the British government had removed some 1,500 ‘sensitive’ government files from Kenya at independence, many of these relating to alleged abuses carried our during the Emergency of the 1950s. This discovery then led directly to the revelation of a further tranche of 8,800 historical files relating to the decolonisation of 36 other former British colonies. This article explains the nature of the claims of torture and abuse made in the Kenya case in the High Court, and then describes the new evidence in the recently disclosed documents. The concluding section then discusses the Kenya case and the implications of the larger discovery of the ‘lost’ British Empire archive.

Why Do Authoritarian Regimes Sign the Convention Against Torture? Signaling, Domestic Politics and Non-Compliance ∗

Abstract: Why Do Authoritarian Regimes Sign the Convention Against Torture? Signaling, Domestic Politics and Non-Compliance

The Invasion of Panama Was a Lawful Response to Tyranny

Abstract: The Grenada and Panama interventions contributed to the momentum of popular sovereignty. Not only did the United States remove tyrannical leaders from those two countries, but more importantly it set an example that has undoubtedly shaken other ruling elites that enjoy tyrannical control in their own countries. For even if some of those entrenched elites regard themselves as secure against popular uprising in their own countries (usually by the application of torture and brutality against political dissidents), they cannot now feel totally insulated against foreign humanitarian intervention. Thus, Grenada and Panama may very well act as catalysts in the current global revolution of popular sovereignty. In this respect, as well as on their own merits, the two interventions underscore the unraveling of statist conceptions of international law. The arguments of Professors Farer and Nanda, struggling to conform to the tautological jargon of statism, already seem anachronistic.

Algeria: France's Undeclared War

Abstract: Invaded in 1830, populated by one million settlers who co-existed uneasily with nine million Arabs and Berbers , Algeria was different from other French colonies because it was administered as an integral part of France, in theory no different from Normandy or Brittany. The depth and scale of the colonization process explains why the Algerian War of 1954 to 1962 was one of the longest and most violent of the decolonization struggles. An undeclared war in the sense that there was no formal beginning of hostilities, the war produced huge tensions that brought down four governments, ended the Fourth Republic in 1958, and mired the French army in accusations of torture and mass human rights abuses. In carefully re-examining the origins and consequences of the conflict, Martin Evans argues that it was the Socialist led Republican Front, in power from January 1956 until May 1957, which was the defining moment in the war. Predicated on the belief in the universal civilizing mission of the Fourth Republic, coupled with the conviction that Algerian nationalism was feudal and religiously fanatical in character, the Republican Front dramatically intensified the war in the spring of 1956. Drawing upon previously classified archival sources as well as new oral testimonies, this book underlines the conflict of values between the Republican Front and Algerian nationalism, explaining how this clash produced patterns of thought and action, such as the institutionalization of torture and the raising of pro-French Muslim militias, which tragically polarized choices and framed all subsequent stages of the conflict.

Are human rights for migrants? Critical reflections on the status of the illegal migrant in Europe and the United States

Abstract: Introduction, Marie-Benedicte Dembour and Tobias Kelly Part I: Taking it as a given: The affirmation of the optimist 1. The Recognition of the Rights of Migrants within the UN Human Rights System: the First SixtyYears, Stefanie Grant 2. Irregular Migration and Frontier Deaths: Acknowledging a Right to Identity, Stefanie Grant Part II: Deliberating: The efforts of those who work the system 3. The Constitutional Status of Irregular Migrants: Testing the Boundaries of Human Rights Protection in Spain and the United States, Cristina Rodriguez and Ruth Rubio Marin 4. The Human Rights of Migrants as Legal tools and Discursive Principles for Re-Framing Individual Justice in Modern Constitutionalism, Galina Cornelisse Part III: Protesting: The outrage of the witness 5. 'Not our problem': Why the conditions of irregular migrants in detention are not considered a human rights issue in Malta, Daniela De Bono 6. The Calaisis area: transit zone or dead-end?, Marie Martin Part IV: Keeping one's distance: The puzzlement of the sceptic 7. Human Rights and Immigration Detention in the UK, Mary Bosworth 8. The Legalisation of Human Rights and the Protection of Torture Survivors: Asylum, Evidence and Disbelief, Tobias Kelly 9. The Rights of the Person: a Constitutional Agenda Drawn from the US Experience, Linda Bosniak 10. Afterword, Upendra Baxi

Ten years on : Obama's war on terrorism in rhetoric and practice

Abstract: Ten years after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC on September 11, 2001, the United States remains embroiled in a long-term struggle with what George W. Bush termed the existential threat of international terrorism. On the campaign trail, his successor as US President, Barack Obama, promised to reboot the ‘war on terror’. He claimed that his new administration would step back from the rhetoric and much of the Bush administration policy, conducting a counterterrorism campaign that would be more morally acceptable, more focused and more effective—smarter, better, nimbler, stronger. This article demonstrates, however, that those expecting wholesale changes to US counterterrorism policy misread Obama's intentions. It argues that Obama always intended to deepen Bush's commitment to counterterrorism while at the same time ending the ‘distraction’ of the Iraq War. Rather than being trapped by Bush's institutionalized construction of a global war on terror, the continuities in counterterrorism can be explained by Obama's shared conception of the imperative of reducing the terrorist threat to the US. The article assesses whether Obama has pursued a more effective counterterrorism policy than his predecessor and explores how his rhetoric has been reconstituted as the actions of his policy have unfolded. By addressing his policies toward Afghanistan and Pakistan, Guantanamo Bay and torture, the uses of unmanned drone attacks and domestic wire-tapping, this article argues that Obama's ‘war’ against terrorism is not only in keeping with the assumptions and priorities of the last ten years but also that it is just as problematic as that of his predecessor.

A Mental Healthcare Model for Mass Trauma Survivors: Control-Focused Behavioral Treatment of Earthquake, War and Torture Trauma

Abstract: Mass trauma events, such as natural disasters, war and torture, affect millions of people every year. Currently, there is no mental health care model with the potential to address the psychological needs of survivors in a cost-effective way. This book presents such a model, along with guidance on its implementation, making it invaluable for both policy-makers and mental health professionals. Building on more than twenty years of extensive research with mass trauma survivors, the authors present a model of traumatic stress to aid understanding of mass trauma and how its psychological impact can be overcome with control-focused behavioral treatment. This text offers a critical review of various controversial issues in the field of psychological trauma in light of recent research findings. Including two structured manuals on earthquake trauma, covering treatment delivery and self-help, the book will be of use to survivors themselves as well as care providers.

Thinking in an Emergency

Abstract: For sixty years, modern democratic governments have undermined democracy and increased executive power by invoking the idea of emergency. They have bypassed constitutional provisions concerning presidential succession, the declaration of war, the use of torture, civilian surveillance, and the arrangements for nuclear weapons. In the desire for swift national action, we citizens devalue thinking and ignore ways to check government power, plunging our countries into a precarious state between monarchy and democracy. Drawing on the work of philosophers, neuroscientists, and artists, Elaine Scarry proves decisively that thinking and rapid action are compatible. Practices that we dismiss as mere habit and protocol instead represent rigorous, effective modes of thought that we must champion in times of crisis. Scarry's bold claim on behalf of fundamental democratic principles will enliven and enrich the ongoing debate about leadership.

Images of torture: Culture, politics and power

Abstract: The digital recording of torture at Abu Ghraib has left pictures which are likely to be the defining images of the war in Iraq. This paper is an attempt to understand the images and why so many critics sought to locate the origins of the cruelty in US popular culture. Internet pornography, reality television and campus humiliation rituals are among the sources said to have inspired the brutality. While such explanations are more than plausible, they ignore the much longer history of violent representation that figures in the European classical art tradition, which all too frequently has justified imperial ambition, colonial conquest, and belief in racial superiority, while eroticizing bodies in pain. In the rush to situate the images well within the terms of a lowly popular culture a fuller understanding of their visual power is lost, as is their place in the cultural politics of torture more generally. The paper begins by outlining influential understandings of photography and atrocity images, before considering the differing explanations of the abuse. In taking a cue from recent scholarship in 'trauma studies', the argument is that human suffering should not be reduced to a set of aesthetic concerns, but is fundamentally bound up with the politics of testimony and memory -- issues that have been pursued in some of the images produced after Abu Ghraib and which are discussed in the final section of the paper.

The Philosophical Foundations of Extraterritorial Punishment

Abstract: Why should a Spanish court take jurisdiction over an American lawyer accused of facilitating torture on Guantanamo Bay? What empowers a London magistrate to sign an arrest warrant for a former Chilean President? Can it be legitimate or morally defensible for an Israeli court to try a former Nazi whose crimes occurred outside Israel and indeed prior to the establishment of Israel? This book provides the first full account, explanation, and critique of extraterritorial punishment in international law. Extraterritoriality is deeply entrenched in the practice of legal punishment in domestic legal systems and, in certain circumstances, an established principle of public international law. Often, States claim the right to punish certain offences provided for under their own domestic laws even when they are committed outside their territorial boundaries. Furthermore, extraterritoriality is one of the most remarkable features of international criminal law. Many individuals have been prosecuted in different parts of the world for crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide, etc. before tribunals which are often located outside the territorial boundaries of the state in which the offences were perpetrated. Finally, the issue of extraterritorial punishment is of pressing importance because of the emergence of new forms of globalized crime, such as transnational terrorism, drug-trafficking, trafficking of human beings, and so on. This book provides a convincing normative account of extraterritorial punishment. In doing so, it will steer current debates on international criminal justice and the philosophy of punishment in new directions, and link these debates to globalization, the emergence of transnational crime, terrorism, war, and the problem of impunity and mass atrocity.

Evaluating the services of torture rehabilitation programmes: history and recommendations.

Abstract: Table of contents Introduction Background and history The complexity of rehabilitation: Some of the variables The challenges Designing outcome studies: study validity Programme definitions and examples Outcomes and indicators Research strategies Literature review Examples of instruments available Recommendations for the future Acronyms Website resources References Introduction The authors of this document intend to review the history of evaluation of torture treatment programmes, discuss the challenges, and identify the research conducted to evaluate services. We outline research designs to measure outcome, including symptoms, level of function, and satisfaction. Research design, not data analysis, is the focus of this desk study. The outcomes research literature is summarized and categorized. Finally, we discuss the advantages and limitations of the most commonly used assessment instruments, some of them culturally-appropriate, and recommend the best approaches to measure outcomes of treatment for torture survivors. This document intends not only to provide the context in which outcome research has been conducted in the past, but how centres can move forward today despite limitations and obstacles.

Human Rights in Times of Conflict and Terrorism

Abstract: PART I: OVERARCHING ELEMENTS 1. Application of human right law 2. Ensuring rights 3. The regime of limitations and derogations 4. The role of international humanitarian law in human rights law 5. International measures to prevent terrorism and human rights PART II - ABSOLUTE PROHIBITIONS 6. Prohibition of arbitrary deprivation of life 7. Prohibition of torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment 8. Prohibition of enforced disappearances PART III - FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENTS OF DUE PROCESS 9. Prohibition of arbitrary detention 10. Pre-trial detention 11. Crimes and the principle of legality 12. Right to be heard by a competent independent and impartial tribunal 13. Elements of fair trial PART IV LIMITATIONS TO FREEDOMS 14. Right to home, property, freedom of movement and residence 15. Participation in public life: freedom of expression, association and conscience 16. Protection of personal sphere: right to private and family life PART V - PROTECTION OF VULNERABLE AND DISADVANTAGED POPULATIONS 17. Economic, social and cultural rights 18. Human Rights law on the protection of vulnerable groups during armed conflict

The Conflicting Influences of Religiosity on Attitude Toward Torture

Abstract: This research examines the thesis that religiosity has conflicting influences on Americans' attitudes about the use of torture on terrorism suspects: an organic influence favoring opposition to torture and a discursively driven influence favoring support of torture. In each of two national samples, religiosity had both a direct effect toward opposition to torture and an indirect effect-via conservative political alignment-toward support of torture. Multiple-group analyses revealed that the direct effect toward opposition to torture did not vary across Americans with differing levels of exposure to political discourse, whereas the indirect effect toward support of torture via conservative political alignment was much stronger among Americans highly exposed to political discourse. Among such individuals, the indirect effect was so strong that it completely counteracted the competing direct effect. Discussion focuses on the competing influences that a single nonpolitical psychological characteristic may have on a political preference.

The Ethics of War and Peace: An Introduction

Abstract: Introduction 1. Self-Defence 2. War and Self-Defence 3. The Conditions of Jus ad Bellum 4. Just Wars? 5. The Conditions of Jus in Bello 6. The Moral Status of Combatants 7. The Principle of Non-Combatant Immunity 8. The Nature of Terrorism 9. Terrorists, Torture and Just War Theory 10. Jus Post Bellum. Index

The Unmaking of the World: Trauma and Testimony in Two Stories by Joe Sacco

Abstract: When looking at images, our experience is often profoundly marked by memories of previous visual encounters that affect us in unexpected ways. Sometimes events from intervening years have a transformative effect--shifting our perspective so that upon returning to an image, we feel something new. Confronted with one panel from comic journalist Joe Sacco's fourth issue of Palestine, drawn and published in 1993, many readers will be reminded of a specific group of images that hold such a capacity to transform our ways of seeing. (1) In spite of the fact that the captive is not wearing a poncho, the panel is nevertheless reminiscent of the notorious photographs from Abu Ghraib. To claim that the hooded prisoner has become the emblematic figure of the "war on terror"--to the degree that it haunts images from both the near and distant past--does not seem unreasonable. (2) Moderate Pressure: Part Two (1993) describes how Ghassan, a Palestinian man, was captured, interrogated, and tortured by Israel's General Security Service (GSS) in the winter of 1991-92. (3) Alongside Sacco's 2006 reportage comic, Trauma on Loan, it represents an acute exploration of the political and perceptual implications of what Elaine Scarry, in The Body in Pain (1985), calls "the inexpressibility of physical pain." (4) In Trauma on Loan, two Iraqis tortured by American forces struggle to deliver testimony to the American news media. Sacco's illustration of the set of challenges they meet in doing so lends this account a perspective absent from those of other journalists. (5) Although these stories are set in two very specific political and historical contexts, both revolve around the crisis of witnessing embedded in the very structure of torture itself--in the severe hardship involved in what Scarry calls "the passage of pain into speech." (6) To paraphrase the title of Susan Sontag's book, the distinctly verbal-visual style of Sacco's approach enables a way of picturing the pain of others--an ethical act of the imagination that involves the triangular constellation of the victim, the artist, and the reader. (7) One of the most immediate and important effects of Moderate Pressure: Part Two is the way in which Sacco exposes the rationalizing gestures of euphemism by showing us how "moderate pressure" is anything but. The ironic reference is to a 1987 Israeli government report that suggested "a moderate amount of physical pressure cannot be avoided" during interrogations conducted by the GSS (8); a secret second part of the report provided "operational guidelines" for permissible "moderate physical pressure." (9) Describing his work on a human rights report about the methods of the GSS, Stanley Cohen writes: "We wanted to undermine the function of political language." (10) In the same article, he also makes a reference to this quotation by George Orwe: "Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them." (11) Sacco's method deliberately insists on rendering precisely those mental pictures--opening a gap between visual realities and the "phraseology" used to describe them. Before Sacco met Ghassan, there was no record of his captivity, photographic or otherwise. This lack of testimonial proof represents only part of the problem, for the elimination of traceable evidence is built into the very act of torture itself. When a victim undergoes torture, hoods are not merely instruments of torture--reeking of urine and threatening asphyxiation--they also instill an immense sense of isolation, blinding and disorienting the victim so as to protect the identities of the torturers. Providing accurate testimony thus becomes difficult, if not impossible. Imagining Ghassan's ordeal and giving it pictorial form offers a way to render the invisible visible. By entering and inviting the reader into the secluded torture room, Sacco addresses pain's fundamental inexpressibility under the severest conditions while enabling it to enter a realm of shared discourse. …

What Constitutes Torture? Psychological Impediments to an Objective Evaluation of Enhanced Interrogation Tactics

Abstract: Torture is prohibited by statutes worldwide, yet the legal definition of torture is almost invariably based on an inherently subjective judgment involving pain severity. In four experiments, we demonstrate that judgments of whether specific interrogation tactics constitute torture are subject to an empathy gap: People who are experiencing even a mild version of the specific pain produced by an interrogation tactic are more likely to classify that tactic as torture or as unethical than are those who are not experiencing pain. This discrepancy could result from an overestimation of the pain of torture by people in pain, an underestimation of the pain of torture by those not in pain, or both. The fourth experiment shows that the discrepancy results from an underestimation of pain by people who are not experiencing it. Given that legal standards guiding torture are typically established by people who are not in pain, this research suggests that practices that do constitute torture are likely to not be classified as such.

Representing Sylvia Plath: Plath and torture: cultural contexts for Plath’s imagery of the Holocaust

Abstract: Sylvia Plath’s torture texts are the eye of the needle though which pass various chronological and tropological threads: World War II and the ‘war on terror’, political trauma and familial abuse. In order to expose the presence of those threads in some of Plath’s most intense poems, I begin this essay in the post-9/11 era and move backwards to World War II, situating Plath’s Cold War texts, especially ‘The Jailer’ and ‘Lady Lazarus’, between the two. My examination suggests that Plath’s poems echo and swerve from the World War II torture texts that inspired them, set guidelines for interpreting the renewed torture discourse of the twenty-first century and crucially connect the representation of torture to that of domesticity. The attacks of 9/11 precipitated in the United States an era of torture. The zeitgeist propelled a new ruthlessness. It was not so much that Christianity was endangered as that our masculinity was on trial – female masculinity as well as male, as we see in the case of Lynndie England and other women soldiers convicted of abuse at Abu Ghraib. We did not want to be ‘pansies’ or sitting ducks. We fought aggression with torture, or perhaps we decided that the shock of 9/11 permitted us to explore for ourselves what Dick Cheney famously called ‘the dark side’.

International Criminal Law: Cases and Commentary

Abstract: I: SOURCES AND PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW II: CRIMES III: FORMS OF RESPONSIBILITY IV: CIRCUMSTANCES EXCLUDING CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY V: JURISDICTIONAL AND PROCEDURAL ISSUES

Turkey Since 1989: Angry Nation

Abstract: * Introduction * The workings of the guardian state - Life-world transformations * Part 1. Empire and Nation: The Late Ottoman State and the Turkish Republic before 1980 * 1. Reform and Imperial Dissolution * Loss of sovereignty - Reform to save the state - Ideological experiment and nationalist endpoint * 2. The Kemalist One Party-State (1920s - 1946) * Imperialist designs and nationalist resistance - Ideology and revolution: The discourse of the new republic - Citizenship, ethnicity, religion: The 'others' of the republic - Faultlines: The contradictions of the republic * 3. The Guardian State's Incomplete Democracy (1946 - 1980) * The emergence of conservative democracy: Cadres and policies - The guardian state in action against the Democrats - Political chaos and military takeover * Part 2: The Ozal Years: Rupture, Promise and Missed Chances (1980 - 1991) * 4. Silence and Torture: 12 September 1980 * Tabula rasa: Minarets and monuments - The roots of the Kurdish War * 5. Motherland Promise: Wealth and Stability * Liberalising the economy, 'cutting the corners' - Ozal's new man and the 'Dallas model' - Pushing the boundaries: The beginnings of civil society * 6. Re-Engagement with the World: The US, Europe and 1989 * International isolation and civilian return - The harbingers of 1989 - Restoring Turkey's neighbourhood * Part 3. The 'Lost Decade': Wars, Crises and Weak Coalitions (1991 - 2002) * 7. State of Emergency in the East: The Kurdish War in the 1990s * The policy of scorched earth - The urbanisation of the Kurdish war - Foreign policy without vision * 8. Fighting Terror: The Guardian State in Western Turkey * The Alevi massacres: S?vas and Gazi - The Manisa trial and the state of human rights - First crash of the guardian state: The Susurluk incident - A brief interlude of Vox populi * 9. Post-modern Coups and Cracks in the System (1997 - 2001) * The 'post-modern' coup of 28 February 1997 - Capturing Ocalan - Killing tremors: The Marmara earthquake (August 1999) * 10. Crises, Hopes and Saviours (2000 - 2002) * A national crisis: The turmoil of 2000 and 2001 - A world crisis: 9/11 and the clash of civilisations * Part 4. Justice and Development: 'Islamic Calvinists' versus the Guardian State (2002 - 2007) * 11. Islamic Calvinists in Office * The sources of AKP power: Islamic Calvinists and the Gulen network - Tayyip Erdo?an, terror and the 'War on terror' - Negotiating the European promise * 12. War and Peace in Kurdistan * The ?emdinli affair - The end of the 'Kurdish spring' - Counter-terrorism and children * 13. Memory and Reality: The Return of the Guardians * Remembering 1915 - The murder of Hrant Dink - The republic marches - The ballot box as remedy * Part 5. Another Nation: Moving Towards the Present (2007-2010) * 14. The Guardian State Exposed * The Ergenekon trials - The Young Civilians are displeased * 15. Home Affairs: Kurdish, Alevi and Human Rights * Local elections and electoral fine-tuning - The 'Kurdish Opening' * 16. Engaging with the World * Soft power and strategic depth - The limits of strategy: Israel, Iran and ArmeniaThe limits of Europe * 17. Turkey's Possible Futures * Sources - Interview Partners - Further Reading on Turkey - Literature - Overview of Important Political Parties in Turkey - Literature - Overview of Important Political Parties in Turkey - Key Moments in Turkey's History - Turkey Before 1980 - Turkey Since 1980

How Biology Travels: A Humanitarian Trip:

Abstract: This article explores how ‘biology’ — in the sense that bodies are increasingly understood in biological terms, from the molecular to the species level — is becoming more central in the recognition of political worth, and I argue that humanitarians are key players in producing this reality. I focus on the role biology plays in the politics of immigration. Combining ethnographic research with undocumented immigrants in Paris and asylum claimants in the US, I examine how biology has become a central tool in the ability to travel. How did pathology (i.e. illness) or violations of anatomy (i.e. torture, sexual violence) become the ‘best’ ways to get papers as an undocumented immigrant — better than selling one’s labor power? I suggest that biological evidence — of illness, of torture, of immunity levels — are used as key measurements of suffering, which justifies humanitarian exceptions, in this case, for papers. My argument is that there is a dual regime of truth at work, where the multiple ontologies of bio...

Neglect of Medical Evidence of Torture in Guantánamo Bay: A Case Series

Abstract: Background In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, the government authorized the use of “enhanced interrogation” techniques that were previously recognized as torture. While the complicity of US health professionals in the design and implementation of US torture practices has been documented, little is known about the role of health providers, assigned to the US Department of Defense (DoD) at the US Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (GTMO), who should have been in a position to observe and document physical and psychological evidence of torture and ill treatment. Methods and Findings We reviewed GTMO medical records and relevant case files (client affidavits, attorney–client notes and summaries, and legal affidavits of medical experts) of nine individuals for evidence of torture and ill treatment and documentation by medical personnel. In each of the nine cases, GTMO detainees alleged abusive interrogation methods that are consistent with torture as defined by the UN Convention Against Torture as well as the more restrictive US definition of torture that was operational at the time. The medical affidavits in each of the nine cases indicate that the specific allegations of torture and ill treatment are highly consistent with physical and psychological evidence documented in the medical records and evaluations by non-governmental medical experts. However, the medical personnel who treated the detainees at GTMO failed to inquire and/or document causes of the physical injuries and psychological symptoms they observed. Psychological symptoms were commonly attributed to “personality disorders” and “routine stressors of confinement.” Temporary psychotic symptoms and hallucinations did not prompt consideration of abusive treatment. Psychological assessments conducted by non-governmental medical experts revealed diagnostic criteria for current major depression and/or PTSD in all nine cases. Conclusion The findings in these nine cases from GTMO indicate that medical doctors and mental health personnel assigned to the DoD neglected and/or concealed medical evidence of intentional harm. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary

Alchemy of Evidence: Mau Mau, the British Empire, and the High Court of Justice

Abstract: Restorative justice in various forms is a phenomenon that has swept across the globe over the last three decades. Most recently, it is unfolding in the High Court of Justice in London where five Kenyans have filed a claim against the British government, alleging that they suffered acts of mistreatment and torture at the hands of British colonial and military personnel. Three revisionist Mau Mau historians have served as advisors and expert witnesses for the claimants. Judicial procedure and the positivist stance of the court have framed their production of evidence and its reading. This article will examine the production of the historians’ witness statements, and the impact that the recent Hanslope Disclosure has had upon their work. The discussion is framed within the broader context of Mau Mau revisionism and the critiques that ensued after the publication of Imperial Reckoning and Histories of the Hanged.

Dirty Hands, Clean Conscience? The CIA Inspector General's Investigation of 'Enhanced Interrogation Techniques' in the 'War on Terror' and the Torture Debate

Abstract: The War on Terror has generated fierce debate on torture as a means of thwarting terrorist threats. The argument is polarized between those who take a utilitarian position and those who seek to uphold the absolute prohibition on torture. Within the utilitarian camp, there are those who argue that torture, while immoral, should be legalized for use in the fight against terrorism, so that it can be better controlled and regulated. This article will provide new insights through its analysis of the CIA Inspector General's 2004 Special Review of Counterterrorism, Detention and Interrogation Activities, declassified in 2009. This offers important evidence that counters the key assumptions of contemporary torture apologists. Specifically, the Inspector General's findings reinforce the argument that torture is not effective, that efforts to legalize its use under controlled conditions are futile, and that, even where torture is permitted by higher authorities, recriminations against the perpetrators are still lik...

On the local relevance of human rights

Abstract: 1. Introduction: reconsidering human rights from below Koen De Feyter and Stephan Parmentier 2. Sites of rights resistance Koen De Feyter 3. Freedom from want revisited from a local perspective: evolution and challenges ahead Felipe Gomez Isa 4. Relevance of human rights in the 'glocal' space of politics: how to enlarge democratic practice beyond state boundaries and build up a peaceful world order? Antonio Papisca 5. The local relevance of human rights: a methodological approach Gaby Ore Aguilar 6. Ensuring compliance with decisions by international and regional human rights bodies: the case of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture Michelle Farrell 7. Building rights-based health movements: lessons from the Peruvian experience Alicia Ely Yamin and J. Jaime Miranda 8. Defining human rights when economic interests are high: the case of the Western Shoshone Julie Cavanaugh-Bill 9. Struggling to localise human rights: the experience of indigenous peoples in Chile Jose Aylwin 10. Enforcing environmental rights under Nigeria's 1999 constitution: the localisation of human rights in the Niger Delta region Rhuks Temitope Ako 11. Conflict resolution through cultural rights and cultural wrongs: the Kosovo example Maria del Mar Bermudez, Manuel Calzada Pla and Lydia Vicente Marquez 12. Epilogue: widening the perspective on the local relevance of human rights George Ulrich.