Showing papers on "Torture published in 2020"

Africa, Prisons and COVID-19

Abstract: Africa’s prisons are a long-standing concern for rights defenders given the prevalence of rights abuses, overcrowding, poor conditions of detention and the extent to which the criminal justice system is used to target the poor The paper surveys 24 southern and east African countries within the context of COVID-19 Between 5 March and 15 April 2020 COVID-19 had spread to 23 southern and east African countries, except Lesotho The overwhelming majority of these countries imposed general restrictions on their populations from March 2020 and nearly all restricted visits to prisons to prevent the spread of the coronavirus The pandemic and government responses demonstrated the importance of reliable and up to date data on the prison population, and any confined population, as it became evident that such information is sorely lacking The World Health Organization recommended the release of prisoners to ease congestion, a step supported by the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture However, the lack of data and the particular African context pose some questions about the desirability of such a move The curtailment of prison visits by external persons also did away with independent oversight even in states parties to the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT) In the case of South Africa, prison monitors were not listed in the ensuing legislation as part of essential services and thus were excluded from access to prisons In the case of Mozambique, it was funding being placed on hold by the donor community that prevented the Human Rights Commission from visiting prisons The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted long-standing systemic problems in Africa’s prisons Yet African states have remained remarkably reluctant to engage in prison reform, despite the fact that poorly managed prisons pose a significant threat to general public health care

Institutionalized Police Brutality: Torture, the Militarization of Security, and the Reform of Inquisitorial Criminal Justice in Mexico

Abstract: How can societies restrain their coercive institutions and transition to a more humane criminal justice system? We argue that two main factors explain why torture can persist as a generalized practice even in democratic societies: weak procedural protections and the militarization of policing, which introduces strategies, equipment, and mentality that treats criminal suspects as though they were enemies in wartime. Using a large survey of the Mexican prison population and leveraging the date and place of arrest, this paper provides causal evidence about how these two explanatory variables shape police brutality. Our paper offers a grim picture of the survival of authoritarian policing practices in democracies. It also provides novel evidence of the extent to which the abolition of inquisitorial criminal justice institutions—a remnant of colonial legacies and a common trend in the region—has worked to restrain police brutality.

Political Repression in Bahrain

Abstract: Exploring Bahrain's modern history through the lens of repression, this concise and accessible account work spans the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, looking at all forms of political repression from legal, statecraft, police brutality and informational controls. Considering several episodes of contention in Bahrain, from tribal resistance to the British reforms of the 1920s, the rise of the Higher Executive Committee in the 1950s, the leftist agitation of the 1970s, the 1990s Intifada and the 2011 Uprising, Marc Owen Jones offers never before seen insights into the British role in Bahrain, as well as the activities of the Al Khalifa Ruling Family. From the plundering of Bahrain's resources, to new information about the torture and murder of Bahrain civilians, this study reveals new facts about Bahrain's troubled political history. Using freedom of information requests, historical documents, interviews, and data from social media, this is a rich and original interdisciplinary history of Bahrain over one hundred years.

Operationalizing a Human Rights-Based Approach to Address Mistreatment against Women during Childbirth.

Abstract: A growing body of evidence reveals that the mistreatment of pregnant women during facility-based childbirth is occurring across the globe. As human rights bodies have increasingly recognized, numerous human rights are implicated in the context of mistreatment of women in childbirth, including the rights to be free from torture and other ill-treatment, privacy, health, non-discrimination, and equality. This paper builds on a previous paper published in this journal by Rajat Khosla, Christina Zampas, and others, and the new body of evidence describing the types of mistreatment that occur during childbirth, to unpack the drivers of the mistreatment of women during childbirth and how they are understood and addressed within human rights. Tracing recent developments, it examines how the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe have addressed this issue. Understanding the drivers and human rights dimensions of the mistreatment of women during childbirth can contribute to accelerating progress toward universal health coverage, including access to reproductive health services, as mistreatment is a key barrier to women's access to such services. The article concludes by offering guidance to states on a human rights-based approach to addressing mistreatment against women during facility-based childbirth.

Capital Punishment in China: Towards Effective Public Policy and Law

Abstract: Based on an examination of the rationality and moral legitimacy of capital punishment in China, this research depicts the evolution of the Chinese death penalty law and policy from 1979 onwards; investigates the institutional and procedural shortcomings that lead to pre-trial torture, wrongful convictions, and executions of innocent or vulnerable people; and explores the prospects for restricting the application of the death penalty in retentionist China by focusing on feasible legal and policy changes to assure fair trials in capital cases. The key research questions to be addressed are: why capital punishment persists in China in an age of abolition; and if the abolition cannot be achieved in the foreseeable future, what reforms should be introduced to prevent miscarriage of justice? This research finds that the Confucian theory of punishment constitutes a compelling unified theoretical framework and establishes solid philosophical and ethical foundations for the introduction and persistence of capital punishment in China. Responding to the concerns expressed by and pressure from the international human rights community together with domestic calls for more caution in meting out capital punishment, China has launched a series of reforms in the death penalty regime since the middle of 2000’s which has resulted in a significant reduction in the use of the death penalty. However, it is also observed that: capital offenders with mental illness are at a substantial disadvantage in receiving psychiatric assessment and thus are at a high risk of being sentenced to death; police ill-treatment and torture are rampant due to the deeply-rooted presumption of guilt and the confession-oriented approaches predominantly employed in police investigation practices; and the procedural PhD Thesis Lilou Jiang vi loophole that suspended death sentence, although being a form of capital punishment, is not subject to review and final approval by the highest judicial authority has in effect condoned arbitrary sentencing in capital cases and consequently exacerbated the miscarriages of justice. It is concluded that the retention of capital punishment in China may be more impervious to abolitionists’ claims than other jurisdictions; hence, to improve its state competence in securing criminal justice, China should promote institutional and procedural changes in line with international human rights standards for protecting the rights of offenders facing the death penalty.

South Sudanese Refugee Survivors of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence and Torture: Health and Justice Service Responses in Northern Uganda.

Abstract: This British Academy/Leverhulme-funded research investigated the health and justice service responses to the needs of South Sudanese refugees living in refugee settlements in Northern Uganda who had been subjected to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and torture. It involved the collection and thematic analysis of the narratives of 20 men and 41 women who were refugee survivors of SGBV and torture, including their experiences in South Sudan, their journeys to Uganda and experiences in refugee settlements, in particular their access to health and justice services. Thirty-seven key stakeholders including international, government, non-government organisations and civil society organisations were also interviewed regarding their experiences of providing health and justice services to refugees. All refugees had survived human rights abuses mainly carried out in South Sudan but some had also occurred on route to Uganda and within Uganda. Despite the significant impact of their experiences, the analysis indicated that there was limited service response in refugee settlements in Northern Uganda once the immediate humanitarian crisis ended. The thematic analysis indicated five main themes coming from the interviews. These included: the nature of refugee experiences of SGBV and torture, including domestic violence and child abduction and forced marriage; issues associated with service provision such as lack of adequate screening and under resourcing of health and justice services; a lack of gender sensitivity and specialist services, particularly for men; the sustained involvement of civil society organisations and local non-governmental organisations in providing counselling and offering emotional support and hope to survivors; and enhancing health and justice responses and services to improve refugee recovery, dignity and resilience. The authors recommend that integrated gendered and culturally sensitive service provision should be adopted, which brings together formal and informal health, justice services and survivor support programmes.

How Constitutional Rights Matter

Abstract: Chapter 1. Introduction PART I: Theory, Background, & Methods Chapter 2. The Organizational Basis of Constitutional Rights Protection Chapter 3. Existing Evidence Chapter 4. The Rise of Rights Constitutionalism Chapter 5. Research Methods PART II: Individual Rights Chapter 6. Individual Rights: Speech, Torture, and Movement Chapter 7. Social Rights: Education and Healthcare Chapter 8. Support for Constitutional Rights Violations PART III: Organizational Rights Chapter 9. Freedom of Religion Chapter 10. Right to Unionize Chapter 11. Right to Form Political Parties PART IV: The Limits of Constitutional Rights Chapter 12. Conclusion APPENDIX A1. Data Sources A2. Regression Results A3. Conditional Results: Courts and Democracy

Torture and sexual violence in war and conflict: The unmaking and remaking of subjects of violence

Abstract: Despite the wide repository of knowledge about conflict-related sexual violence that now exists, there remains a lack of understanding about how victims/survivors of such violence themselves make sense of and frame their experiences in conversation with global and local discourses and with the categorisations that underpin support programmes. Such sense-making is important not only because the ways in which violence is categorised shape a victim/survivor’s ability to access particular forms of recognition and support, but also because it is central in how shattered selves and worlds are remade in the aftermath of violence. Drawing on individual and group interviews conducted with refugees living in Kampala, Uganda, this article charts how framings of ‘torture’ and ‘sexual violence’ become meaningful in participants’ accounts in the (re)formation of themselves as subjects after violent victimization. We trace how participants navigate the heteronormative societal and legal norms that shape their subjectivity and the effects of the violence they experienced through the deeply gendered and political work that these terms do in their narratives. Our analysis thus highlights and reminds us to pay attention to the political stakes involved in fluid processes of categorizing injury.

Not Being Able to Speak Is Torture: Performing Listening to Painful Narratives

Abstract: This Note discusses a new creative approach to intervene in the interaction between survivors who contribute their memories of a painful past and the public they want to reach. It proposes that by turning both the narrator and the public into performers of listening, they are placed in a relational context that offers an alternative space in which victims’ and the public’s memories, emotions and thoughts in a transitional context can be worked through. The method thereby corrects the notion of the public as a disembodied, virtual totality underlying state-led transitional justice institutions.

Rethinking the Postwar Period in Spain: Violence and Irregular Civil War, 1939–52:

Abstract: There is a consensus among scholars regarding the slow transformation of ‘hot-blooded terror’ into ‘cold-blooded terror’ during the Civil War and the postwar period in Spain. This article challenge...

Survival after Sexual Violence and Genocide: Trauma and Healing for Yazidi Women in Northern Iraq

Abstract: Introduction: In August 2014, the Yazidi community of Sinjar, in the Nineveh Governorate of Northern Iraq, was brutally targeted by the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) for annihilation through murder, torture, and the systematic and premeditated use of rape and sexual slavery of Yazidi women. In 2016, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights concluded that ISIS was committing genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes against Yazidis. Methods: Using current international literature, which includes reviews, qualitative interviews of survivors, and reports from medical and humanitarian actors, this paper explores the short and potentially long-term physical and mental health consequences of the extreme physical and sexual violence and atrocities perpetrated against Yazidi women. Results: Yazidi women survivors of kidnapping, sex slavery, and rape experienced significant levels of physical ailments, chronic pain, and mental health conditions. All women reported feelings of guilt, stress, insomnia, and severe flashbacks. The incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) ranged from 42% to 90%. Sixty-seven percent suffered from a somatoform disorder, 53% had depression, 39% experienced anxiety, and 28% suffered from dissociation. Conclusions: Sexual violence against women is a common tool systematically employed during wars and genocide. In recent ISIS attacks, intentional perpetration of mass rapes of women and execution of men was a strategy to destroy an entire population. PTSD and depression are common after traumatic stress. For disaster responders and humanitarian workers, training and education to understand, try to prevent, and plan for interventions when gender-based violence and sexual exploitation occurs must become a mandatory part of emergency preparedness.

Gender, North–South relations: reviewing the Global Gag Rule and the defunding of UNFPA under President Trump

Abstract: In 2017 American President, Donald Trump, reinstated the ‘Global Gag Rule’(GGR). This order bans new funding to NGOs that provide abortion as a method of family planning, lobby to make abortion laws less restrictive or, provide information, referrals or counselling on abortions. In the same year the Trump administration defunded The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The latter is reviewed against the backdrop of the conflict in Syria. These policies draw upon, and reproduce, normative representations of women as vulnerable, weak, passive and maternal. Focusing on women’s access to abortion following wartime rape, the meanings and implications of these policies are reviewed. Transnational and postcolonial feminist perspectives are used to unpack the core themes of this piece: gender, reproductive healthcare and foreign economic policy. Three main arguments are made: (1) US foreign policy on abortion under the Trump administration draws implicitly on conservative ideas about gender, sexuality and maternity (2), denying female survivors of rape access to abortion – which is discriminatory and violates key international instruments - is a form of structural violence that amounts to torture and (3), the GGR and the defunding of UNFPA reproduce structural inequalities between the Global North and the Global South.

Rehabilitating an empire: Humanitarian collusion with the colonial state during the Kenyan emergency, ca.1954-1960

Abstract: During the Kenyan Emergency of 1952–1960, one of the most violent episodes in the history of the British Empire, humanitarian organizations colluded with the colonial state to shore up British power. This article examines how aid agencies that claimed to exemplify the progressive internationalism of the postwar period participated in colonial violence. Far from condemning the brutality of the imprisonment and torture during the Kenyan Emergency, aid organizations were deeply implicated in parallel projects for women and children that sought to achieve the same objectives: the remaking of Kikuyu hearts and minds and the weakening of anticolonial resistance. Far from acting as a check on colonial violence in an era of burgeoning rights discourses in 1950s Kenya, self-proclaimed “impartial” internationalist organizations, while claiming to uphold values of universal humanity, worked as auxiliaries to the colonial counterinsurgency. Taking their cue from military counterinsurgency in 1950s Malaya, humanitarians sought to win “hearts and minds” and undertook material provision for imprisoned anticolonial activists and their families on behalf of the colonial state. They did so by importing new humanitarian expertise developed in wartime Europe and adapting it to fit within racist, colonial norms. In providing this allegedly impartial expertise, humanitarian organizations lent credence to the myth that rehabilitation in Kenya was a progressive program enacted by a liberal empire to modernize its subjects, rather than a ruthless attempt to stymie anticolonial resistance by any means necessary. In this case, postwar humanitarian internationalism did not challenge colonial brutality but enabled it.

Human Rights Concerns in Indonesia’s Counterterrorism Policies: The Emergence of a Domestic Security Dilemma in Indonesia’s Densus 88 Security Posture

Abstract: The counterterrorism policies of Indonesia have led the community to perceive the government as both protectors of human rights, but fear possible oppressions at the same time. The recorded figures of human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings, torture, and the dismissal of legal rights for individuals suspected as terrorists, have led to the construction of fear and insecurity among the Indonesian people of the state’s approach to counterterrorism. Employing the concept of ‘Domestic Security Dilemma’ developed by Field in 2016, this article argues that; (1) Detachment 88’s coercive methods in counterterrorism have led to human rights oppression and the construction of fear and insecurity among Indonesian citizens, and (2) the emergence of a ‘Domestic Security Dilemma’ due to the growing discourse of Detachment 88’s dismissal initiated by individuals and Islamic community organization in Indonesia.

Fracturing the “Exception”: The Legal Sanctioning of Violent Interrogation Methods in Israel since 1987

Abstract: This article examines the legal constructs governing the use of violent interrogation methods in Israel since 1987. It explores the shift from a sweeping suspension of the prohibition on torture to a fractured legal regime in which the different elements of interrogation—the perpetrator, the victim, the time of the interrogation, and the space in which it takes place—are effectively excluded from the prohibition on torture by means of separate legal constructs. I show how each of these constructs creates a narrow, seemingly proportional exception to ordinary law. Together, the four types of exception facilitate the sanctioning of state violence. I use this case to analyze the available configurations of the state of exception, distinguishing them from each other by what they exclude from ordinary law. By showing how the proliferation of legal constructs produces an entire ecosystem of different exceptions, I point to the inherent link between the suspension of the law and its proliferation: both create legal categories that rationalize and legitimize state violence.

Torture: banality of evil or radical evil?

Abstract: The text aims to explore legal and moral aspects of torture. Under the legal aspect the text compares three definitions of torture: UN definition, Brazilian definition, and Spanish definition. In this regard, neither the UN formulation nor the Brazilian formulation are ideal, because the Brazilian legal definition restricts the element of action by the part of the perpetrator of torture, and the UN convention restricts the effect on the victim, given that pain or suffering should be severe. The hypothesis is that a better proposal could be linked to the Spanish Penal Code, which in its art. 174 defines torture as the submission of someone “to conditions or procedures that, due to their nature, duration or other circumstances, involve physical or mental suffering, the suppression or decrease of their faculties of knowledge, discernment or decision, or that otherwise undermine their moral integrity”. Concerning the moral meaning of the repulse to torture it is intended to defend the paradigmatic character of the human right to not be tortured in at least two respects. The first aspect refers to its universalizing vocation in the full sense, since it can be extended to all sentient beings. In this regard, the prohibition of torture goes beyond the dominium of personality to advance in the direction of a domain of suffering not determined by the mask of personality. The second aspect is that the prohibition stands for an absolute right with no exceptions, precisely because of its deeper moral content. Keywords: radical evil, torture, perpetrator.

Kastrering og kongemakt

Abstract: This article discusses two acts of mutilation and torture during the struggles for royal power in the late 1130s. The first part argues, based on literary and legal sources, that such acts were not a particularly prominent element in the political culture in the Viking Age and early Christian Norway. It is concluded that acts of blinding and castration among the elite and pretenders were more likely to have been inspired from abroad, especially the British Isles, and not the other way around as several scholars of early medieval history tend to assume. A broad overview of the history blinding and castration as well as flaying up to the twelfth century is presented, focusing on its role in punishment, rivalry, and hagiography. It is argued that blinding, castration and flaying did not become a popular political tool during the otherwise turbulent rivalries for power in the twelfth century because of its ambiguity. This was caused partly by changed ideas of royal power, as well as related to the hagiographic discourse of bodily suffering. The aggressive part risked creating a martyr or even a potential royal saint that could increase support to the faction of the opponents.

Prison as a Torturous Institution

Abstract: Philosophers working on torture have largely failed to address the widespread use of torture in the U.S. prison system. Drawing on a victim-focused definition of torture, I argue that the U.S. prison system is a torturous institution in which direct torture occurs (the use of solitary confinement) and in which torture is allowed to occur through the toleration of sexual assault of inmates and the conditions of mass incarceration. The use and toleration of torture expresses and reinforces the moral exclusion of those subjected to it, particularly African Americans. Importantly, this moral exclusion and the experience of torture may be created and reinforced through institutional practices independently of the intentions of individuals acting within those institutions. By prioritizing torture victims’ experiences and severing the link between torture and intention, my account forces a recognition that, far from being inconsistent with U.S. values, torture is deeply embedded within U.S. institutions. The torture debate in philosophy has focused almost exclusively on the use of torture in the context of terrorism. Authors defending the possibility of justified torture, such as Jeff McMahan (2018), Fritz Allhof (2012), and Uwe Steinhoff (2013), often make use of hypothetical cases such as ‘ticking bomb’ scenarios to defend the view that torture could in rare cases be justified. Other authors have critiqued the use of these hypotheticals for being unrealistic, misleading, and irrelevant to the realities of torture.1 This back-and-forth between defenders of torture in ticking bomb cases and critics of such cases has effectively defined the contours of the torture debate in America since 9/11. This debate is characterized by an individualized narrative of torture that renders torture simultaneously hypervisible by asking us to consider whether torturing this person (whether real or hypothetical) is permissible yet makes the reality and true scope of torture invisible. Thus, philosophers have largely failed to see and address the scope and function of torture in U.S. society—in particular, the widespread use of torture in U.S. prisons, jails, and detention centers. Thus, they have 1 See, for example, Baron (2018) and Luban (2014, 84–107). Res Philosophica, Vol. 97, No. 2, April 2020, pp. 297–324 https://doi.org/10.11612/resphil.1893 c © 2020 Jessica Wolfendale • c © 2020 Res Philosophica 298 Jessica Wolfendale failed to recognize that, far from being antithetical to U.S. values, torture is deeply embedded within central U.S. institutions. To see the true scope and function of torture in the United States, we need to start not from hypothetical cases but from the reality of torture. In Section 1, I draw on philosophical and survivor accounts of torture to develop what I call an experiential definition of torture based on torture’s distinctive experiential imprint. The experience of torture is characterized by complete vulnerability to extreme suffering in a context of domination. This experience has the potential to radically undermine victims’ embodied sense of self and reality and to shatter the capacity for moral trust in the world. Accounts of torture victims also reveal that one of the defining functions of torture, regardless of the context in which it is used, is to express and reinforce the moral exclusion of those who are deemed torturable. Because torture represents the complete rejection of basic moral recognition, who is viewed as torturable tells us who in our society “gets banned or expelled” (Dayan 2011, 22) from the realm of moral consideration. In Section 2, I show how the conception of torture that I defend makes it possible to see how institutional structures, norms, and practices not previously conceptualized as torture can create the conditions of radical vulnerability to suffering and serve the function of moral exclusion independently of the intentions of agents acting within those structures. Institutions structured by such relationships of domination and moral exclusion are what I call torturous institutions: institutions in which certain groups are made vulnerable to torture and where such vulnerability is sustained and reinforced by social, political, and legal narratives of moral exclusion that are taken to justify the treatment of those subjected to them. In Section 3 and Section 4, I apply this analysis to the U.S. prison system. I argue that the U.S. prison system is a torturous institution in which direct torture occurs (the use of solitary confinement) and in which torture is allowed to occur (indirect torture) through the toleration of sexual assault of inmates and the conditions of mass incarceration. While the destructive effects of solitary confinement, sexual assault, and mass incarceration are well documented, conceptualizing the U.S. prison system as a torturous institution serves two important purposes. First, it highlights the severity of suffering and moral exclusion produced by institutional practices and conditions, where the true impact of such practices and conditions has been ignored, minimized, and even justified. Second, it enables us to see how the use and toleration of such torture is not accidental or the product of a few ‘bad apples’ but results from the long history of the U.S. prison system’s function in enforcing the racialized moral exclusion of people of color, particularly African Americans, from the realm of equal moral consideration. While all inmates may be subject to torturous conditions, and while gender and sexual orientation also affect vulnerability to torture in the prison system, race operates as a distinctive moral ‘marker’ that dramatically increases a person’s vulnerability to exposure to torturous Prison as a Torturous Institution 299 prison conditions. As a result, the nature of the U.S. prison as a torturous institution, and the way in which people of color are disproportionately made vulnerable to torture in this system, “is fully intelligible only in this specific racial context” (Swartzer 2019, 15). Conceptualizing torture in terms of its experiential imprint thus not only provides an important tool for analyzing and understanding the torturous impact of the prison system, but also opens up the possibility that other social structures and practices not previously conceptualized as torture might also function as torturous institutions, a possibility I touch on in my conclusion. 1 Experiencing and Defining Torture Rather than starting with a definition of torture and then applying that definition to different cases, I begin my analysis of torture by looking at the phenomenology of torture as derived from research on torture survivors and accounts of survivors of torture—accounts drawn on by a number of philosophers in developing conceptions of the distinctive moral wrongness of torture.2 Looking at the experiences of survivors of treatment that is unquestionably torture under any plausible definition allows us to see torture’s distinctive experiential imprint, without making any a priori assumptions as to what other actions, practices, or conditions might constitute torture. These accounts, and the philosophical accounts that draw on them, reveal that the experience of torture is characterized by complete vulnerability to extreme suffering in the face of total domination, that can lead to the destruction of the basis of selfhood and the subsequent loss of moral trust in the world and oneself. 1.1 The Experience of Torture: Vulnerability, Suffering, and Isolation Torture unquestionably involves the infliction of extreme suffering.3 What is clear from survivor accounts and research on torture survivors is that calculating the impact of torture primarily in terms of the severity of 2 See Bernstein 2015, Luban 2014, Scarry 1985, and Sussman 2005. For prominent accounts of torture by torture survivors, see Tillerman 1981 and Améry 1980. 3 For example, the UN Convention Against Torture defines torture as follows: For the purposes of this Convention, the term ‘torture’ means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions. (quoted in Betz 2006, 128) 300 Jessica Wolfendale suffering misunderstands and underestimates the trauma of torture. For many torture survivors, it is not the experience of physical suffering itself that is the most traumatic aspect of torture, but the awareness of their total vulnerability to the infliction of such suffering and their isolation from any source of help.4 This point is emphasized in a number of philosophical accounts. Sanford Levinson, for example, describes torture as “less about concrete acts than about the creation of a phenomenological reality of total control” (2007, 151). Theimo Breyer argues that in torture, one person is “utterly dependent on the will and action of those in power” and forced to be aware of her complete vulnerability and her isolation from any source of help or comfort (2017, 742, 744).5 It is these characteristics of torture that lead David Luban to describe torture as the purest form of a “totalitarian relationship” (2014, 134). The radical isolation that is characteristic of the experience of torture is not limited to the duration of the torture but is compounded by the difficulty of communicating the experience of torture to others. As Jay Bernstein explains, a person’s p

Torture as a Method of Criminal Prosecution: Democratization, Criminal Justice Reform, and the Mexican Drug War

Abstract: A criminal trial is likely the most significant interaction a citizen will ever have with the state; its conduct and adherence to norms of fairness bear directly on the quality of government, extent of democratic consolidation, and human rights While theories of repression tend to focus on the political incentives to transgress against human rights, we examine a case in which the institutionalization of such violations follows an organizational logic rather than the political logic of regime survival or consolidation We exploit a survey of the Mexican prison population and the implementation of reforms of the justice system to assess how reforms to criminal procedure reduce torture We demonstrate that democratization produced a temporary decline in torture which then increased with the onset of the Drug War and militarization of security Our results show that democracy alone is insufficient to restrain torture unless it is accompanied by institutionalized protections

Torture without Torturers: Violence and Racialization in Black Chicago

Abstract: What happens when trauma becomes a political frame for recognizing anti-black racism and police violence? I grapple with this question by illustrating the ways that survivors of police torture must...

Processes of Sub-Citizenship: Neoliberal Statecrafting ‘Citizens,’ ‘Non-Citizens,’ and Detainable ‘Others’

Abstract: Increasingly, scholars are exploring the politics of migration and the shifting terrain of citizenship from a critical mobilities perspective. To contribute to these discussions, in this paper, I explore how processes of sub-citizenship occur as nation-states craft immigration, citizenship, and border securitization policies and practices. I argue that complex and shifting processes of sub-citizenship largely occur through the nation-state’s production of ‘insiders’ (‘citizens’) and ‘outsiders’ (‘non-citizens’). As a nascent attempt to introduce sub-citizenship, I draw upon recent high-profile cases of family separation, abuse, and neglect experienced by children with ‘illegal migrant’ status in the United States and Australia. Under the international nation-state system and the neoliberal globalization paradigm, the border policing powers of nation-states are primed to expand and intensify processes of sub-citizenship. Those at lower levels of the sub-citizen hierarchy are at risk of experiencing various forms of state-led violence, including deportation, detention, and torture.

Internet and communications as elements for CIDT and Torture. Initial reflections in an unexplored field.

Abstract: The internet was once seen as a new and definitive window to freedom and a world without torture. There is however, another less obvious but perhaps more notorious side: torturous environments can also be created through the internet; a place where individu- als may be targeted for discrimination, coer- cion or control.There is a dearth of academic research and theoretical developments in this very new area of knowledge and this Edito- rial will review and reflect on various aspects, thereby suggesting possible lines of research.

National Liberation in Postcolonial Southern Africa. A Historical Ethnography of SWAPO's Exile Camps (Christian A. Williams),

Abstract: Part I. Camp, Nation, History: 1. Liberation movement camps and the past of the present in Southern Africa 2. Revisiting an image of a camp: remember Cassinga? Part II. Camps and the Formation of a Nation: 3. Living in exile: life and crisis at SWAPO's Kongwa Camp, 1964-8 4. Ordering the nation: SWAPO in Zambia, 1974-6 5. 'The spy' and the camp: SWAPO in Angola, 1980-9 Part III. Camps and the Production of History: 6. Namibia's 'Wall of Silence': challenging national history in the international system 7. Reconciliation in Namibia? Narrating the past in a post-camp nation 8. The camp and the post-colony.

Kesetaraan Gender Ditinjau dari Sudut Pandang Normatif dan Sosiologis

Abstract: This study discusses that gender equality must be paired with justice and justice, between men and women must be equal and there must be no differences or contradictions. A normative study looking at it from the perspective of the following law is that submission will discuss the rights of a woman, everyone has equal rights without exception, and those rights have existed since man is in a supported reserve. Research methods using the normative juridical method by reviewing the literature and legislation, where the findings or results have met the requirements for the rights of everyone listed in the regulations of Law Number 39 of 1999, but viewed from the point of view seen sociological that in society assumes that gender equality can occur if each party considers to be responsible, their duties and roles. While the usefulness of this research provides benefits and participation of law enforcers, the community must not represent gender differences or injustice in the community, all people have the same rights, novelty in this study agrees and then gender in community life to prioritize and prioritize there will be the right to life, because that right is a very determined right granted to all people such as the right not to increase torture, get education, health, and eliminate the perception of gender inequality in any field or area of life, because everyone is the same and supports , in the field of law, and also government.

Hunger: Deprivation and manipulation of food as a torture method. State of the art in research and ways forward

Abstract: Deprivation of food is one of, if not the oldest method of punishment. Hunger and famine are described in the Bible as a way of retribution when God was offended. There are accounts of the use of forced imposition of hunger or starvation in places of detention and concentration camps worldwide. Surprisingly, however, the quantity and quality of academic research on the subject is unusually low. (Rubin, 2019). It is neither mentioned as a torture method in source handbooks (i.e. Rejali, 2009) nor in the Istanbul Protocol, which mentions it marginally concerning conditions of detention without any other mention or guidance within its pages (UNHCR, 1999). In this Editorial, we would like to update the medical and psychological research on the impacts of starvation as a torture method and suggest some tentative conclusions and avenues for further research.

The Course of the War, 1954–62

Abstract: This chapter explores the different stages of the war, from the National Liberation Front (FLN)’s first attacks on 1 November 1954 to Algerian independence in July 1962. The conflict was fought across three interconnected arenas. Firstly, this was a military confrontation, which took place both in Algeria and in mainland France. The chapter examines the FLN’s use of revolutionary warfare—urban and rural guerrilla units, embedded in local populations—and the French army’s response—including large-scale military operations, population displacement, psychological action and torture. Secondly, this was a war between two competing claims: ‘Algeria is France’ versus ‘Algeria is the FLN’. The chapter analyses French strategies to ‘win hearts and minds’ by extending political rights and investing in housing, education and healthcare. The FLN, meanwhile, built a state-within-a-state and aimed to influence French and international public opinion. Thirdly, then, the war was fought on the world stage and shaped by a shifting global context. The chapter locates Algeria within broader processes of decolonisation, discusses the role of the United Nations and explores how the FLN leveraged Cold War rivalries. Throughout, it examines the perspectives of different actors, underlining that this was not a straightforward confrontation between ‘the French’ and ‘the Algerians’.

(Un)imagination and (im)mobility: Exploring the past and constructing possible futures among refugee victims of torture in Greece:

Abstract: Greece represents a unique context in which to explore the imagination-(im)mobility nexus: both a transit country and final destination for refugees. This article explores the imagination of refuge...