Showing papers on "Torture published in 2012"

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

Abstract: THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE: WHY VIOLENCE HAS DECLINED. Steven Pinker, Penguin, New York, NY 2011. ISBN 978-0-670-02295-3.There's been a shooting in a Sikh Temple this morning. A lone gunman entered a Colorado theater and opened fire. Syrians are now engaged in civil war. Faced with daily news stories of death and destruction, it is easy to believe that things are getting worse. Not so, explains Harvard psychologist, Steven Pinker in his new work, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined.Pinker combines in-depth historical research with rigorous psychological research to argue the case for a decline in global violence. As Pinker aptly points out, many people look at our age as one of unprecedented violence and terror to be viewed with pessimism. Drawing on historical analysis, psychological research and findings from related sciences such as anthropology, sociology, and economics Pinker argues that the data paint a very different picture. In the first chapter, Pinker takes the reader on a quick journey through the history of the world pointing out that the ancient and medieval worlds were very different than the world we live in today. Numerous prehistoric skeletons bear evidence of very violent deaths. Ancient people destroyed entire tribes. Romans carried out violent executions. Medieval Knights led lies of violence and other Europeans meted out horrendous punishments for acts which might not even be judged worthy of condemnation in today's democracies. Finally, the early 20th century saw two World Wars before the long peace ensued. In light of that history, Pinker argues that perhaps we should reconsider our assumptions about our own world.In the first section of the book, Pinker identifies six historical trends which could have led to declines in violence. The first trend he calls the Pacification Process by which people gave up nomadic hunting and gathering lives for lives of agriculture in cities. Competition and anarchy in the prehistoric world made violence necessary for survival. The development of agriculture called for greater cooperation between individuals and the formation of governments to impose order created a world where violence was not always in one's best interest. Statistical analysis supports the idea that the emergence of states lead to a decline in violence. The second trend, the Civilizing Process, is an idea he developed from the work of Norbert Elias. In the late medieval and early modern periods, etiquette and social norms began to be important in social interactions, economics and technology began to advance, and governments began to become more centralized. This trend was also accompanied by a decline in violence. The third trend is the Humanitarian Revolution during which people began to increasingly find practices, such as torture, capital punishment, war and slavery, morally questionable. Empathy, compassion, and peace became important characteristics. The fourth trend is the Long Peace, which stems from the realization that since World War II no two major world powers have gone to war and, in spite of predictions to the contrary, nuclear weapons have never been used. …

Life in Debt: Times of Care and Violence in Neoliberal Chile

Abstract: Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Symptoms of Another Life 2. Social Debt, Silent Gift 3. Torture, Love, and the Everyday 4. Neoliberal Depression 5. Community Experiments 6. Life and Death, Care and Neglect Conclusion: Relations and Time Notes References Index

European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT)

Abstract: 62. At the outset, it must be underlined that, in the overwhelming majority of Council of Europe member states, most persons met by CPT visiting delegations who were, or had recently been, in police custody have not alleged to have suffered any kind of police abuse. Indeed, they considered that they had been treated correctly by the police officers who had apprehended them, escorted them to police establishments, kept them in custody, or interviewed them. Further, it is noteworthy that, in a few countries, police ill-treatment has not been a concern since the CPT started carrying out visits in the early 1990s. In some other states, police reforms have led to significant improvements.

Evidence-based psychological interventions for adult survivors of torture and trauma: A 30-year review:

Abstract: In this paper we review research evidence on psychosocial interventions for adult survivors of torture and trauma. We identified 40 studies from 1980 to 2010 that investigated interventions for adult survivors of torture and trauma. Population subtypes include resettled refugees, asylum seekers, displaced persons, and persons resident in their country of origin. Settings include specialized services for torture and trauma, specialized tertiary referral clinics, community settings, university settings, as well as psychiatric and multidisciplinary mental health services. Interventions were delivered as individual or group treatments and lasted from a single session to 19 years duration. The studies employed randomized controlled trials, nonrandomized comparison studies and single cohort follow-up studies. In all, 36 of the 40 studies (90%) demonstrated significant improvements on at least one outcome indicator after an intervention. Most studies (60%) included participants who had high levels of posttraumatic stress symptomatology. Improvements in symptoms of posttraumatic stress, depression, anxiety, and somatic symptoms were found following a range of interventions. Little evidence was available with regard to the effect on treatment outcomes of the amount, type, or length of treatment, the influence of patient characteristics, maintenance of treatment effects, and treatment outcomes other than psychiatric symptomatology. The review highlights the need for more carefully designed research that addresses the shortcomings of current studies and that integrates the experience of expert practitioners.

Group Therapy for Refugees and Torture Survivors: Treatment Model Innovations

Abstract: The paper discusses varieties of group therapies with refugees and torture survivors and the logic behind enhancing traditional group therapies to fit the unique experiences of refugees and torture survivors. It discusses some lessons learned from practice and from empirical research and some recommended adaptations. Finally, it discusses the Center for Torture and Trauma Survivors' therapy group model for torture survivors and describes two of its variants: The Bashal group for African and Somali women and the Bhutanese multi-family therapy group. Group therapies, in this model, extend to community healing. One of the essential and innovative features of the model is that it focuses not only on treating individual psychopathology but also extends to community healing by promoting the development of social clubs and organizations that promote the values and culture of the graduates of the therapy group and the continuation of social support. New graduates from the group join the club and become part of the social advocacy process and of group and community support and healing. This model adds an ecological dimension to the traditional group therapy.

The Human Right to Health

Abstract: Few topics in human rights have inspired as much debate as the right to health. Proponents would enshrine it as a fundamental right on a par with freedom of speech and freedom from torture. Detractors suggest that the movement constitutes an impractical over-reach. Jonathan Wolff cuts through the ideological stalemate to explore both views. In an accessible, persuasive voice, he explores the philosophical underpinnings of the idea of a human right, assesses whether health meets those criteria, and identifies the political and cultural realities we face in attempts to improve the health of citizens in wildly different regions. Wolff ultimately finds that there is a path forward for proponents of the right to health, but to succeed they must embrace certain intellectual and practical changes. The Human Right to Health is a powerful and important contribution to the discourse on global health.

Opposing torture: Moral conviction and resistance to majority influence

Abstract: Even though nearly every society and moral system condemns the use of torture, and despite recent outrage about abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, over half of Americans support the use of torture when interrogating suspected terrorists. Moreover, public support for the use of torture is increasing (Sidoti, 2009). The present study tested the role of people's moral convictions against the use of torture in resisting conforming to a majority of peers who supported the use torture when interrogating suspected terrorists. Results from an Asch-inspired conformity paradigm indicated that after controlling for other indices of attitude strength, strength of moral conviction uniquely predicted the extent that people expressed opposition to torture both publicly and privately. Implications are discussed. The first and second author contributed equally to the research and to this paper; order of authorship was randomly determined. We would like to thank Amir Jacob and Jared Majerle for their assistance in co...

Sexual violence against men in countries affected by armed conflict

Abstract: Sexual violence against men in armed conflict has been documented for thousands of years under the various guises of war, torture and mutilation yet it is often neglected mainly because of overwhel...

Speak of the Devil: Tales of Satanic Abuse in Contemporary England

Abstract: Allegations of satanic child abuse became widespread in North America in the 1980s. Shortly afterwards, there were similar reports in Britain of sexual abuse, torture and murder, associated with worship of the Devil. Professor Jean La Fontaine, a senior British anthropologist, conducted a two year research project into these allegations, which found that they were without foundation. Her detailed analysis of a number of specific cases, and an extensive review of the literature, revealed no evidence of devil-worship. She concludes that the child witnesses come to believe that they are describing what actually happened to them, but that adults are manipulating the accusations. She draws parallels with classic instances of witchcraft accusations and witch-hunts in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Europe, and shows that beneath the hysteria there is a social movement, which is fostered by a climate of social and economic insecurity. Persuasively argued, this is an authoritative and scholarly account of an emotive issue.

A mental disorder of a kind or degree warranting confinement: examining justifications for psychiatric detention

Abstract: It has long been the case in jurisprudence under the European Convention on Human Rights that mental disorder must be of a certain severity in order to justify detention, but there has been little meaningful debate as to what that means. The question is relevant not merely to the European Court of Human Rights, but also to the Committee for the Prevention of Torture, as the potential of inhuman or degrading treatment that arises from the coercive elements in institutions is particularly clear if persons are wrongfully detained in an institution and ought in fact to be somewhere else. Considerable improvement in the substantive clarity of domestic law is therefore required. The specifics of the domestic standards are a matter for individual governments but, within the Council of Europe, they will need to meet the requirements of both the European Convention on Human Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The article considers the traditional justifications for civil detention in psychiatry – dangerousness, need for treatment and capacity – in the light of these two conventions.

Unnecessary evil: An examination of Abu Ghraib torture photographs as postcolonial resistance rhetoric

Abstract: of a Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Disability equality, reasonable accommodation and the avoidance of ill-treatment in places of detention: the role of supranational monitoring and inspection bodies

Abstract: This article focuses on the way in which disabled people who are deprived of their liberty are treated in places of detention. It argues that human rights law demands that disabled people should not be discriminated against while in detention and that the non-discrimination obligation includes a reasonable accommodation obligation. The nature of this obligation is explained, together with the heightened profile given to it in the context of places of detention by Article 14 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. A number of cases decided by supranational bodies are used to demonstrate how failures to provide reasonable accommodations to disabled detainees may result in inhuman or degrading treatment, as well as in discrimination. The extent to which principles of disability equality and reasonable accommodation are incorporated into the guidance issued by three supranational systems for monitoring places of detention is also examined. It is suggested that, in all thre...

The Twilight of Responsibility: Torture and the Higher Deniability

Abstract: Professor Danner's Commentary on Professor Philip Zelikow's Address on _Codes of Conduct for a Twilight War_.

Of camps, gulags and extraordinary renditions: Infrastructural violence in Romania:

Abstract: From fascist prisons to Communist-era gulags, Romania does not simply have a history of torture, but also an existing infrastructure conducive to its practice. Romania, human rights organizations h...

Advocacy Organizations and Collective Action

Abstract: Aseem Prakash & Mary Kay Gugerty, eds. Advocacy Organizations and Collective Action Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011Reviewed by Howard A. DoughtyThere has never been a shortage of people who think badly of idealists, understood as people who believe that members of our species should and could behave better than we do, and who are prepared to take steps to encourage the improvement of others. Such sceptics have a great deal of evidence in support of their opinions. In just the last century, we have dropped nuclear bombs on cities of negligible military importance, greatly "improved" biological and chemical warfare, constructed ballistic missiles and airplanes which don't even require pilots in order to rain down destruction and death upon civilians below. We have invented "enhanced interrogation techniques" as a euphemism for torture. In parts of the world slavery is no stain on our historical past, but a living reality today. Meanwhile, the most powerful country on Earth cannot seem to curtail gang warfare on its streets and family violence in its homes. The "war on drugs" is being lost on all fronts, and innumerable Mexicans are paying the price. On every continent racism and misogyny are only two of the ideological pretexts for brutal behaviour. Religion, recently thought to be succumbing to secularism and science, has returned as a major excuse for hatred among and within different systems of theistic belief and ritual worship. We have experimented widely with genocide. We have, in short, a fairly poor track record when it comes to living in obedience to the "Golden Rule."What's more, people dedicated to ambitious political movements intended to remove inequity, injustice and tyranny in the name of what we call "humane" attitudes and actions have frequently failed in their quest, often with disastrous results. It is my opinion that Karl Marx is no more culpable for the Moscow "show trials," the Chinese "cultural revolution" and Pol Pot's massacres in Cambodia than Jesus Christ is to blame for the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch-burnings and imperialist slaughters conducted in the name of Christianity around the world. Nonetheless, no one can deny that people who claimed to be acting in support of Marx's goal of a free and egalitarian "communist" society were guilty of as many and probably more acts of torture and death than any other group of supposed humanists and idealists. Even (or especially) good intentions can lead to worldly hells.Accordingly, many social theorists who have long doubted the claims of those who, by evolution or revolution, would set citizens free from dictatorial regimes, promote economic and social equity, loosen constraints in matters of education or sexual repression, and emancipate subjects from the authority of the state, the church or the private corporation are seeking a method to explain human actions in a more "rational" manner.Now, many social scientists are embracing a model of behavioral analysis that purports to show that even the kindest and gentlest among us are governed by selfish impulses and that organized groups of idealists in major advocacy groups on behalf of the victims of war, poverty, prejudice and plain bad luck are no more praiseworthy than unscrupulous sales representatives and drug dealers-in fact, to them concepts of good and evil have no place in the discussion.Such sceptics are not (always) been (entirely) misanthropes. They do not necessarily enjoy pricking the balloons of quixotic enthusiasts for social change. Very few of them actually relish cruelty and suffering. In fact, most of them share the belief that people should be kinder and gentler than they are. Instead of thinking that we behave badly because our natural goodness is corrupted by social constraints and perverted by fixable social arrangements, the sceptics realistically acknowledge that we have the capacity and even the propensity to behave horribly, and sometimes to repeat horrid behaviour with gusto (it's called "revenge"). …

Testimony ceremonies in Asia: integrating spirituality in testimonial therapy for torture survivors in India, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and the Philippines

Abstract: This study explores the therapeutic implications of including culturally adapted spiritual ceremonies in the process of testimonial therapy for torture survivors in India, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, and the Philippines. Data were collected through an action research process with Asian mental health and human rights organizations, during which the testimonial method was reconceptualized and modified to include four sessions. In the first two sessions, community workers assist survivors in the writing of their testimony, which is their narrative about the human rights violations they have suffered. In the third session, survivors participate in an honour ceremony in which they are presented with their testimony documents. In the fourth session, the community workers meet with the survivors for a reevaluation of their well-being. The honour ceremonies developed during the action research process came to employ different kinds of symbolic language at each site: human rights (India), religious/Catholic (Sri Lanka), religious/Buddhist (Cambodia), and religious/Moslem (Philippines). They all used embodied spirituality in various forms, incorporating singing, dancing, and religious purification rituals in a collective gathering. We suggest that these types of ceremonies may facilitate an individual’s capacity to contain and integrate traumatic memories, promote restorative self-awareness, and engage community support. Additional research is needed to determine the method’s applicability in other sociopolitical contexts governed by more Western-oriented medical traditions.

Screening for War Trauma, Torture, and Mental Health Symptoms Among Newly Arrived Refugees: A National Survey of U.S. Refugee Health Coordinators

Abstract: A total of 44 state refugee health coordinators returned a survey assessing mental health screening practices and barriers to screening. Results show that less than half the states ask refugees about a history of war trauma or torture. Of the 25 states that provide mental health screening, 17 (70.8%) utilize informal conversation rather than standardized measures. Screening practices are highly associated with the number of refugees and community discretionary grants and with the presence of a Services for Survivors of Torture Program. Refugee health coordinators identified the need for short, culturally appropriate mental health screening tools to identify refugees who need assessment and treatment services.

CRPD Advocacy by the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry: The Emergence of an User/Survivor Perspective in Human Rights

Abstract: Human rights law evolves through processes of social eruption, in which social movements agitate for the recognition of injustices as legal wrongs, and in which sectors of the population that have been oppressed rise up to assert themselves as protagonists who change the landscape of law along with the social, economic and cultural relationships in which law is grounded. The involvement of users and survivors of psychiatry in the CRPD drafting and negotiations, as an integral part of the community of people with disabilities, set the stage for a dramatic (r)evolution in human rights law. This paper explores the genesis of key provisions in the CRPD on legal capacity, liberty, and freedom from forced interventions, and their early interpretation and application.

Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Responsibility: The New Language of Global Bioethics and Biolaw

Abstract: "Human dignity" has been enshrined in international agreements and national constitutions as a fundamental human right. The World Medical Association calls on physicians to respect human dignity and to discharge their duties with dignity. And yet human dignity is a term--like love, hope, and justice--that is intuitively grasped but never clearly defined. Some ethicists and bioethicists dismiss it; other thinkers point to its use in the service of particular ideologies. In this book, Michael Barilan offers an urgently needed, nonideological, and thorough conceptual clarification of human dignity and human rights, relating these ideas to current issues in ethics, law, and bioethics. Combining social history, history of ideas, moral theology, applied ethics, and political theory, Barilan tells the story of human dignity as a background moral ethos to human rights. After setting the problem in its scholarly context, he offers a hermeneutics of the formative texts on Imago Dei; provides a philosophical explication of the value of human dignity and of vulnerability; presents a comprehensive theory of human rights from a natural, humanist perspective; explores issues of moral status; and examines the value of responsibility as a link between virtue ethics and human dignity and rights. Barilan accompanies his theoretical claim with numerous practical illustrations, linking his theory to such issues in bioethics as end-of-life care, cloning, abortion, torture, treatment of the mentally incapacitated, the right to health care, the human organ market, disability and notions of difference, and privacy, highlighting many relevant legal aspects in constitutional and humanitarian law.

Complementary and alternative medicine in the treatment of refugees and survivors of torture: a review and proposal for action.

Abstract: Survivors of torture and refugee trauma often have increased needs for mental and physical healthcare. This is due in part to the complex sequelae of trauma, including chronic pain, major depressive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and somatization. This article reviews the scientific medical literature for the efficacy and feasibility of some complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) modalities including meditation, Ayurveda, pranayama/yogic breathing, massage/body-work, dance/movement, spirituality, yoga, music, Traditional Chinese Medicine and acupuncture, qigong, t'ai chi, chiropractic, homeopathy, aromatherapy and Reiki specifically with respect to survivors of torture and refugee trauma. We report that preliminary research suggests that the certain CAM modalities may prove effective as part of an integrated treatment plan for survivors of torture and refugee trauma. Further research is warranted.

A Congolese–US participatory action research partnership to rebuild the lives of rape survivors and their families in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

Abstract: The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) remains an all-too-potent reminder of how war, human rights violations and their related health and economic impacts can devastate a society. The last decade has seen the use of rape as a weapon of war in the DRC, where rebels and soldiers subject women and girls to brutalising attacks, rape, torture and mutilation. Survivors of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) are often further traumatised by infections, disease, poverty, stigma and social isolation. Substantial evidence exists showing an association between social determinants (e.g., poverty, stress and trauma, stigma, lack of access to health care) and health; however, limited research has been conducted to elucidate these relationships or to develop and test interventions to change social determinants of health, especially in conflict and post-conflict settings such as the DRC. The purpose of this article is to present a Congolese–US community-academic research partnership to obtain evidence to de...

Sympathy and suspicion: torture, asylum, and humanity

Abstract: This article examines the assessment of claims about torture in the British asylum process. It is compassion in the face of suffering that underlies much of the ethical objection to torture. Yet, at the same time, torture survivors, as with asylum seekers more broadly, are subjected to widespread suspicions about the genuineness of their claims. This article argues that the very process of imagined identification found in compassion can lie behind suspicion. Anthropology has largely treated otherness as a cause of fear and suspicion. However, the denial of another's suffering is not always about a failure to recognize mutual humanity. It can also be a product of a sense of fundamental similarity, based on assumptions about the mutual capacity to dissimulate. Ultimately, though, scepticism is on just as shaky ground as belief, as it is filtered through the lens of imagined identification. Denial is just as vicarious as acknowledgement.

Tracing collective memory: Chilean truth commissions and memorial sites:

Abstract: This article takes a closer look at the master narratives of the Chilean truth commissions and how these are contested and negotiated by social actors demanding truth and justice. Over time these actors have created new spaces for their narratives about the military dictatorship (1973–1990), broadening the perspectives on the past in the public space. The process of contestation and negotiation can be traced on the local level in the creation of a memorial site on the grounds of a former detention and torture centre, Villa Grimaldi, which led to fierce debates on what should be remembered, and how. Through the ongoing process of negotiation and contestation and social action the collective memory of the dictatorship in Chilean society has become ‘thicker’.

Returning to the Site of Horror On the Reclaiming of Clandestine Concentration Camps in Argentina

Abstract: Further to the recent handover of the Naval School of Mechanics (ESMA), Argentina’s most notorious centre for the clandestine torture and assassination of leftist militants under the dictatorship of 1976–83, to the city of Buenos Aires, in order to create on the premises a ‘Space for Memory’, debates on the proper commemoration of the recent past have gained momentum. In the course of these, it has become clear that there is currently no consensus among the human rights organizations, let alone Argentine society at large, on how the former sites of state terrorism can be adequately ‘recovered’, or what the purpose and function of such a recovery might be. Rather than as a shortcoming, however, this impossibility of closure, and of the monumentalization of a social consensus about the past in museal forms, might be taken as an opportunity to problematize some of the politics and material poetics underpinning the contemporary ‘memorial museum’. The article therefore analyses the principal arguments and posi...

A long shadow: Nazi doctors, moral vulnerability and contemporary medical culture

Abstract: More than 7% of all German physicians became members of the Nazi SS during World War II, compared with less than 1% of the general population. In so doing, these doctors willingly participated in genocide, something that should have been antithetical to the values of their chosen profession. The participation of physicians in torture and murder both before and after World War II is a disturbing legacy seldom discussed in medical school, and underrecognised in contemporary medicine. Is there something inherent in being a physician that promotes a transition from healer to murderer? With this historical background in mind, the author, a medical student, defines and reflects upon moral vulnerabilities still endemic to contemporary medical culture.