Showing papers on "Torture published in 2015"

The Official Senate Report on CIA Torture: Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency?s Detention and Interrogation Program

Abstract: Now available to the public for the first time, the Senate's landmark torture report delivers a damning indictment on CIA interrogation practices. Finally declassified and released after five years in the making, the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA's torture program, which describes in excruciating detail what Obama has called "harsh methods ...inconsistent with our values as a nation," is now available to the American public--citizens who have a right to know the truth. Considered one of the most important government documents ever to be published, the torture report compiles the Senate committee's findings of the CIA's program to detain and interrogate terrorist threats in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, from 2001 to 2006 during the Bush administration. Among other controversial conclusions, the report has found that the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques" were not effective in acquiring intelligence to avert terrorist threats. The study also shows that the CIA misled the public, Congress, the Department of Justice, and even the White House on the effectiveness and the scope and severity of their interrogation techniques. The exhaustive and disturbing account also provides grisly accounts on horrific practices that occurred in CIA black sites: prisoners experienced sleep deprivation in stressful positions for up to 180 hours; being stripped and shackled, hooded and dragged down a long corridor while being punched; waterboarding; and "rectal feeding." Based on six million CIA documents and requiring $40 million to complete, the entire 6,000-page report still remains classified. Only 525 pages of summary have been published, with 7 percent of its content redacted, and it is now at the disposal of American readers who have the opportunity to learn what occurred during this dark chapter in modern American history. The Senate report delivers a scathing, shocking, and controversial judgment, and gives us much to think about in terms of our longstanding position on freedom, democracy, dignity, and human rights.

The epistemological crisis of counterterrorism

Abstract: This article describes the nature, origins and consequences of the epistemological crisis at the heart of contemporary counterterrorism. The epistemological crisis of counterterrorism is an identifiable epistemic posture towards knowledge about, as well as a way of acting towards, the terrorist threat. It manifests itself discursively in the manner in which officials, scholars, pundits and others speak about the threat of terrorism, and the way counterterrorism and security practitioners then act in pursuit of security against that threat. The article argues that many of the bizarre counterterrorist practices regularly observed in many Western countries, as well as costly and counterproductive counterterrorist practices such as preemptive war, targeted killings, mass surveillance, torture, control orders and de-radicalisation programmes, among others, are neither anomalous nor irrational in the context of the new paradigm. Rather, they flow logically and directly from the particular paranoid logic, which ...

Wrestling with Proteus: Francis Bacon and the "Torture" of Nature

Abstract: Although many writers state that Francis Bacon advocated the torture of nature in order to force her to reveal her secrets, a close study of his works contradicts this claim. His treatment of the myth of Proteus depicts a heroic mutual struggle, not the torture of a slavish victim. By the "vexation" of nature Bacon meant an encounter between the scientist and nature in which both are tested and purified.

Report of the Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Juan E. Méndez :

Abstract: The thematic focus of the report, commissions of inquiry, was selected by the Special Rapporteur to help deepen the international community’s understanding on when such commissions should be created by States in response to patterns or practices of torture and other forms of ill-treatment. Furthermore, the purpose of the report is to generate further discussion of the standards that apply to the establishment and conduct of commissions of inquiry, and the relationship between such commissions and the fulfilment by States of their international legal obligations with regard to torture and other forms of ill-treatment.

The Changing Standard of Accountability and the Positive Relationship between Human Rights Treaty Ratification and Compliance

Abstract: Researchers have puzzled over the finding that countries that ratify UN human rights treaties such as the Convention Against Torture are more likely to abuse human rights than non-ratifiers over time. I present evidence that the changing standard of accountability --- the set of expectations that monitoring agencies use to hold states responsible for repressive actions --- conceals real improvements to the level of respect for human rights in data derived from monitoring reports. Using a novel dataset that corrects for systematic changes to human rights reports over time, I demonstrate that the ratification of human rights treaties is empirically associated with higher levels of respect for human rights over time and across countries. This positive relationship is robust to a variety of measurement strategies and model specifications. Overall, a new picture emerges of improving levels of respect for human rights, which coincides in time with an increasing number of countries ratifying an increasing number of the international human rights treaties.

Torture, War Trauma, and Mental Health Symptoms of Newly Arrived Karen Refugees

Abstract: This article documents frequencies of torture, war trauma, and associations with mental health distress reported by Karen refugees during their initial public health screening in the United States. A total of 179 Karen refugees completed a demographic questionnaire and 25-item mental health screening tool scored on a 4-point Likert scale. Frequencies of primary and secondary torture were 27.4% and 51.4%, respectively. War trauma was reported by 86% of the participants. Torture, older age, and female gender were significantly associated with increased total distress, posttraumatic stress, depression, and somatic complaints. Recommendations are reviewed for discussing mental health symptoms with Karen refugees.

Guilty Secrets: Deceit, Denial, and the Discovery of Kenya’s ‘Migrated Archive’

Abstract: In April 2011, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office revealed that it was illegally holding a large archive of documents that had been removed from the former colonies at the point of independence. This included files taken from thirty-seven countries between the late 1940s and the 1970s. This revelation emerged as a consequence of a case mounted in the High Court to seek compensation for Kenyan victims of alleged abuse and torture during the Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s. This article recounts how these ‘migrated archives’ were first removed from the colonies, and how their existence in Britain then came to light more than forty years later. Destruction and secrecy are the principal themes of this story, which raises wider questions about the censorship, control and ownership of archives.

Law's Ethical, Global and Theoretical Contexts: Essays in Honour of William Twining

Abstract: 1. An intellectual journey with William Twining: an interview Manuel Atienza and Raymundo Gama Part I. Human Rights: 2. Resituating Twining's discovery of Bentham's fragment on 'torture' amidst the twenty-first-century CE 'terror wars' Upendra Baxi 3. Human rights and traditional values Christopher McCrudden 4. Southern voices in transitional justice: a critical reflection on human rights and transition Fionnuala Ni Aolain 5. Human rights and Latin American southern voices Oscar Guardiola-Rivera Part II. Globalizations: 6. Towards a socio-legal theory of indignation Boaventura de Sousa Santos 7. Towards a cosmopolitan pluralist theory of constitutionalism Gavin W. Anderson 8. The state and constitutionalism in post-colonial societies in Africa Yash Ghai and Jill Cottrell 9. Comparative law, rights and the environment John McEldowney 10. Homage and heresy from a licensed subversive: theorising paradigm change in transnational economic regulation Jane Kelsey 11. Digital thoughtways: technology, jurisprudence, and global justice Abdul Paliwala Part III. Legal Theory: 12. Twining on Llewellyn and legal realism Frederick Schauer 13. Theorizing as activity: transnational legal theory in context Peer Zumbansen 14. Does global legal pluralism need a concept of law? Roger Cotterrell 15. How to do things with legislation, or, 'everything depends on the context' David Miers 16. How to do things with standards Jeremy Waldron 17. Glimmers of an awakening within analytical jurisprudence Brian Z. Tamanaha Appendix. A bibliography of William Twining Penelope Twining.

Ratification, reporting, and rights: Quality of participation in the convention against torture

Abstract: The core international human rights treaty bodies play an important role in monitoring implementation of human rights standards through consideration of states parties’ reports. Yet very little research explores how seriously governments take their reporting obligations. This article examines the reporting record of parties to the Convention against Torture, finding that report submission is heavily conditioned by the practices of neighboring countries and by a government’s human rights commitment and institutional capacity. This article also introduces original data on the quality and responsiveness of reports, finding that more democratic—and particularly newly democratic—governments tend to render higher quality reports.

Torture as a Mode of Governance: Reflections on the Phenomenon of Torture in Papua, Indonesia

Abstract: Torture in Papua,1 Indonesia,2 gained new attention when graphic footage was leaked to YouTube in October 2010. There are two separate incidents captured in the footage. The first part of the footage depicts eight Papuan highlanders stripped naked of their shirts in front of two Indonesian army soldiers. Two of the victims were identified under the names of Kotoran Wonda and Dipes Tabuni. While interrogating these terrified Papuans and calling them ‘monyet’, ‘anjing’ or ‘bajingan’ (monkey, dog, bastard), the soldiers kicked their heads with their army boots, and hit their heads using their helmets. The soldiers demanded they confess to being members of the Papuan separatist movement OPM (Organisasi Papua Merdeka or Free Papua Movement). The second footage shows two petrified Papuan highlanders: Telangga Gire had a knife at his throat (see Figure 1) and Tunaliwor Kiwo was being burnt on his genitals by members of the Indonesian army to get the men to confess the location of OPM weaponry near the highland town of Mulia.3

The responses of Liberal Democracies to the torture of citizens : a comparative study

Abstract: Liberal international law analyses typically focus attention on the role of domestic politics in shaping state responses to international human rights violations. The analysis, exemplified in Beth Simmons’s book, Mobilizing for Human Rights, assumes that stable liberal democracies will respond to international human rights issues in a similar fashion, based on the fact that political rights in these open, democratic systems are largely protected, leading to complacency among citizenries. This thesis tests this approach by examining the reactions of three liberal democracies Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada to the torture of their citizens detained overseas in the war on terror. It investigates why, despite sharing a common legal and political culture that values the protection of individual rights, they reacted quite differently to this phenomenon. I argue that the role of civil society as agents of accountability of government on matters of international human rights is a distinguishing factor in understanding the different responses of the three states. Where civil society mobilised, states tended to respond to concerns about the use of torture against their citizens in the war on terror and, where civil society did not, states were not so responsive. The thesis identifies the enabling and constraining factors that influenced civil society to mobilise, including domestic rights cultures, institutional frameworks and political opportunity structures. I suggest that civil society is more likely to mobilise when it exists within a strong human rights culture and has the right institutional tools and political opportunities at its disposal.

A Longitudinal Study of Changes in Asylum Seekers Ability Regarding Activities of Daily Living During Their Stay in the Asylum Center

Abstract: The aim was to assess change in activities of daily living (ADL) ability amongst asylum seekers and if there were any difference between tortured and non-torture following a 10 months post-arrival period, and if self-reported health and exposure to torture were factors related to change in ADL-ability. The study was a combined baseline, follow-up correlational study amongst individuals from Afghanistan, Iran and Syria, living in Danish asylum centers. Forty-three persons aged 20-50, were invited and participated in the baseline study. Twenty-two were still in asylum center at the follow-up and 17 of them participated. ADL-ability was measured using Assessment of Motor and Process Skills and questionnaires about exposure to torture, self-reported mental health and pain. ADL motor and process measures, well-being and self-rated health declined from baseline to follow-up. Measures of pain and depression increased. Exposure to physical torture and change in ADL motor (r = 0.525) measures were associated, as well as change in current pain and change in ADL process (r = 0.525) measures. Due to preponderance of torture survivors analysis of group difference was not applicable. Health care workers should be aware of ADL concerns and exposure to torture in this population to best address their needs within rehabilitation settings.

Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea: Green Light for Humanitarian Intervention

Abstract: Recent UN Human Rights Council mandated commission was established in order to examine grave and systematic human rights violations by the government of North Korea. The report included evidence on violation of fundamental human rights, such as the right to life, right to food, freedom of expression and freedom from torture. Michael Kirby, Chair of the Commission, while presenting the Report to the UN Human Rights Council said: "At the end of the Second World War, so many people said 'if only we had known. If only we had known the wrongs that were done in the countries of the hostile forces. If only we had known that.' Well now the international community does know, the international community will know, there will be no excusing of failure of action because we didn’t know, we do know." Now, a publicly available comprehensive report on North Korea's violations of human rights is available, and the subsequent questions that arise are on the legality and legitimacy of possible humanitarian intervention with the objective to cease the ongoing human rights violations in North Korea. This paper will examine the key findings from the Report, as well as the likelihood of international joint intervention in North Korea and the legal framework to justify such intervention.

War trauma and torture experiences reported during public health screening of newly resettled Karen refugees: a qualitative study

Abstract: Karen refugees have suffered traumatic experiences that affect their physical and mental health in resettlement. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends assessing traumatic histories and mental health symptoms during initial public health screening. This article reports the traumatic experiences that Karen refugees were able to describe during a short screening and contributes knowledge to existing human rights documentation systems. Four semi-structured and open-ended items asked about lifetime experiences of war trauma and torture. Interviews were completed with adult, Karen refugees during their initial public health screening. Experiences of war trauma and torture were coded using the extensive Human Rights Information and Documentation (HURIDOCS) Micro-thesauri coding system. Additional codes were created to describe experiences not captured by existing codes. Over 85% of 179 Karen people interviewed experienced life-threatening war trauma. All participants who reported war trauma or torture stories were able to describe at least one event. New war trauma codes proposed include: widespread community fear, systematic destruction/burning of house or village, exposure to dead bodies, orphaned in the context of war, injury caused by a landmine, fear of Thai police or deportation from Thailand, and harm or killings in the context of war. New torture codes include: forced portering; forced to be a human landmine sweep; forced to be a soldier, including child soldier; forced contact with a dead body; and removal of the eyes. Karen refugees were able to report traumatic experiences in the context of a brief health screening. The findings confirm existing reports of human rights violations against Karen people and suggest that additional codes be added to the HURIDOCS Micro-thesauri system that is used by torture treatment centers. Understanding the nature of traumatic experiences of this group is important for health providers working with resettled Karen refugees in their countries of resettlement. Health providers may need specialized training to understand the traumatic histories of this new refugee group, learn how to initiate conversations about trauma and its impact on health, and make appropriate mental health referrals in the context of a brief public health screening.

Understanding the Support Needs of Human-Trafficking Victims: A Review of Three Human-Trafficking Program Evaluations

Abstract: Human trafficking is a global crime and human rights violation that affects nearly every country of the world. Victims of human trafficking may suffer severe physical, psychological, and emotional health consequences as they are often subjected to a range of abuses such as physical violence, sexual assault, emotional abuse, mind-control, and torture. A variety of human-trafficking victim support programs exist in the United States and other countries that receive human-trafficking victims to support their immediate and longer-term needs. There is a dearth of contemporary literature on the subject of the support needs of human-trafficking victims. Further, due to a lack of publicly available program evaluations, little is also known about whether victim support programs are able to meet the needs of human-trafficking victims. This article aims to bridge a gap in knowledge and understanding of human-trafficking victims’ support needs and whether they are being met by support programs by reviewing three rece...

Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Russia

Abstract: Introduction Part I. Judicial Culture: 1. Foundations of the criminal law 2. The problem of professionalism: judicial staff 3. Staff and society 4. Policing of officialdom 5. Procedure and evidence 6. Torture 7. Resolving a case 8. Petrine reforms and the criminal law Part II. Punishment: 9. Corporal punishment to 1648 10. Corporal punishment, 1649-98 11. To the exile system 12. Peter I and punishment 13. Capital punishment: form and ritual 14. Punishing highest crime in the long sixteenth century 15. Factions, witchcraft and heresy 16. Riot and rebellion 17. Moral economies: spectacle and sacrifice 18. Peter the Great and spectacles of suffering Conclusion: Russian legal culture Appendix: punishment for felonies Bibliography.

Managing chronic pain in survivors of torture

Abstract: All generalist and specialist clinicians are likely to encounter torture survivors among refugees and asylum seekers. A minority of people survive torture and a smaller minority reach a developed country; those who do tend to be the more resilient and resourceful. They have many health, social and welfare problems; persistent pain in the musculoskeletal system is one of the most common. There is little specific evidence on pain in survivors of torture; the guidelines on interdisciplinary specialist management are applicable. Most of the literature on refugee survivors of torture has an exclusive focus on psychological disorders, with particularly poor understanding of pain problems. This article summarizes the current status of assessment and treatment of pain problems in the torture survivor.

Torture as normal work: The Bush Administration, the Central Intelligence Agency and ‘Enhanced Interrogation Techniques’:

Abstract: During the War on Terror, the Bush Administration authorized the US Central Intelligence Agency to employ ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ to extract intelligence from alleged terrorists. Many organizations contended that ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ were torture. Given that torture is morally reprehensible, the policy was constantly contested. This article argues that the Bush Administration attempted to legitimate the use of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ by making torture normal work. The Bush Administration did so by designating torture as legal, thus using a formal system of power that is publicly respected to validate and normalize their actions. Furthermore, by embedding torture in mundane organizational practices and rationalities, ‘enhanced interrogation’ was made to appear to be as ordinary as any other federal program. Hence, the article demonstrates how the legal system, as well as commonplace aspects of organizations can be employed by political elites to attempt to manage controversy around extreme policies by making them appear normal. However, a discourse of normality did not necessarily remove the taint from torture or create the results the political elites desired.

Why Torture Doesn't Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation

Abstract: Besides being cruel and inhumane, torture does not work the way torturers assume it does. As Shane O'Mara's account of the neuroscience of suffering reveals, extreme stress creates profound problems for memory, mood, and thinking, and sufferers predictably produce information that is deeply unreliable, or even counterproductive and dangerous.

Reconsidering trauma: towards a palestinian community psychology

Abstract: This article explores two contesting discourses about Palestinian political captives who experienced interrogation and torture by the Israeli security service (shabak). The first concerns the intersecting discourses of trauma and human rights as constituted by humanitarian psychiatry and the second is the discourse of sumud, a Palestinian construct engaged in anticolonial struggle. The discourses of trauma and human rights represent the Palestinian captive as an agentless, individualized, depoliticized victim to be treated by psychiatrists and defended by human rights activists. These discourses, which became hegemonic in the post-Oslo Agreement era, conceal the subjectivity of sumud and the form of anticolonial politics it generates. Based on the conceptions and praxis of sumud, the article offers preliminary reflections about a resistant community psychology in the Palestinian colonial condition.

The Transformation of the Value of Life: Dispossession as Torture.

Abstract: Workers at the oldest maternity hospital in Colombia experienced the privatization of health care and the flexibilization of their labor. Drawing on their experience, I illustrate how neoliberalism transforms the value of life. This transformation occurs first in terms of its moral worth: the worth of life changes over time, as people and public hospitals are stigmatized as the ‘living memory’ of the old. Second, the hospital buildings, the land on which they sit, and the roles of workers within the hospital are all transformed. Both similarities and differences emerge between a type of systemic or chronic violence that is inherent to the capitalist system and modern practices of torture. Examining how capitalist forces transform the value of life opens up new fields of inquiry to study links between critical political economy and subjectivity.

Predictors of suicidal ideation in treatment-seeking survivors of torture.

Abstract: In this study, we examined sociodemographic, persecutor identity, torture, and postmigration variables associated with suicidal ideation in a clinical sample of 267 immigrant survivors of torture who have resettled in New York City. The purpose of this study was to identify variables associated with increased risk for suicidal ideation in survivors of torture before they receive legal, psychological, or medical services for torture-related needs. Results from a binary logistic regression model identified a combination of 3 variables associated with current suicidal ideation at intake into the program. Being female, having not submitted an application for asylum, and a history of rape or sexual assault were significantly associated with suicidal ideation at intake, when also controlling for several other important variables. The final model explained 21.4% of variation in reported suicidal ideation at intake. The discussion will focus on the importance of conducting a thorough assessment of suicidal ideation in refugees and survivors of torture.

How can the lens of human rights provide a new perspective on drug control and point to different ways of regulating drug consumption

Abstract: When exploring the interplay between drug policy and human rights, commentators tend to adopt a harm reductionist approach, and centre their research on rectifying the vast amount of human rights violations carried out in the name of drug control These violations include the use of the death penalty, the infliction of torture, and the denial of basic healthcare, to name but a few Though this approach ameliorates some of the worst effects resulting from prohibition, a harm reductionist approach can only ever perpetuate the current regime The thesis puts forth an alternative human rights perspective, one which explores the human rights of individuals to consume psychoactives, to challenge the moral hegemony of the global drug regime and prohibitionist logic Part I (Chapters 1-3) comprehensively challenges the value of ?human rights? on a philosophical, political, legal and institutional basis- to appreciate their capacity to provide a new perspective on drug control Part I concludes that: human rights are conceptually broad living instruments, capable of reflecting the complex reality of human psychoactive usage; human rights can better address the State/individual binary which is identified to be at the crux of drug policies and; human rights and drug control regimes are legally compatible This bona fide human rights perspective is then applied to Part II (Chapters 4-5), which employs health and religious rights as conceptual starting points, to demonstrate how human rights could improve the drug control framework, and how the lens of human rights can point to different ways of regulating drug consumption The broader regulatory implications resulting from this unique perspective call for an application of human rights which moves beyond medical and traditional prohibitive paradigms, to integrate broader categorisations such as ?human flourishing? This broader perspective accounting for pleasure, well-being and spirituality etc would more thoroughly appreciate the often interconnected nature, and significance an individual accords their drug use The thesis also concludes that drug policy is inherently political, and through centring upon the relationship between the State and the individual, a human rights perspective can comprehensively unpack the moral arguments involved By introducing normative thinking in this sphere, as well as presenting the empirical evidence when weighing up the benefits and harms from psychoactives, a more open-minded, transparent approach to the issue of drug control can be adopted Analysing (predominately) domestic and international case law which explores the conflict between the human rights and the drug control regimes, finally demonstrates that human rights have a transformative capacity to alter the drug control system, even while operating within the prevailing prohibitionist paradigm The medical cannabis cases, and the religious exemptions for peyote and ayahuasca particularly demonstrate this, and give credence to the notion that the global regime of drug control is beginning to fall apart Ultimately, this thesis uses the lens of human rights to provide a new perspective and direction to the issue of drug control

Iraq and the Crimes of Aggressive War: The Legal Cynicism of Criminal Militarism

Abstract: From the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib to unnecessary military attacks on civilians, this book is an account of the violations of international criminal law committed during the United States invasion of Iraq. Taking stock of the entire war, it uniquely documents the overestimation of the successes and underestimation of the failings of the Surge and Awakening policies. The authors show how an initial cynical framing of the American war led to the creation of a new Shia-dominated Iraq state, which in turn provoked powerful feelings of legal cynicism among Iraqis, especially the Sunni. The predictable result was a resilient Sunni insurgency that re-emerged in the violent aftermath of the 2011 withdrawal. Examining more than a decade of evidence, this book makes a powerful case that the American war in Iraq constituted a criminal war of aggression.

Torture and terror post-9/11: The role of social work in responding to torture:

Abstract: Whilst terrorism is not a new global phenomenon, the fallout from the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US remain extensive and far reaching, including the sanctioning of harsher security measures and the denigration of human rights and civil liberties. Of particular concern is the move towards torture being an accepted practice for those deemed ‘terror suspects’ or captured ‘enemy’ combatants in countries where the so called ‘war on terror’ is still being played out. This article argues that the social work response, particularly in relation to challenging pro-torture rhetoric, has been limited at best, and to effectively address the problem there must be an international response if social work is to adhere to its obligations under the IFSW Code of Ethics, and fulfil its role as a human rights profession.