Torture

About: Torture is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 8173 publications have been published within this topic receiving 109895 citations.

Coercive US interrogation policies: a challenge to medical ethics.

Abstract: AS WORLD ATTENTION HAS FOCUSED ON ALLEGAtions of torture and ill treatment (cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment) by US forces, there have been questions about the role of physicians and other health professionals in abusive interrogations. Considerable light has been shed on these allegations by documents released in 2004 and 2005 under the Freedom of Information Act and official US Department of Defense (DoD) investigations initiated since the Abu Ghraib investigations in 2004, including an internal review of medical practices regarding detainees by the US Army surgeon general. Following the release of these documents and reports, in June 2005, the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs released new ethical guidelines for all health care personnel, including physicians, nurses, and medics. The new guidelines are troubling, however, because they do not come to terms with the participation of physicians and other health care professionals in officially authorized interrogation practices that are absolutely prohibited by international human rights law, the Third Geneva Convention, and US military and domestic law that criminalizes torture, including psychological torture. While the new DoD ethical guidelines apply to all health care personnel, we focus on how the guidelines enable physicians to facilitate and monitor abusive interrogation practices and subvert well-established ethical duties to support health and human dignity.

The mental state of detained asylum seekers

Abstract: The persecution of civilians by the Iraqi forces in Kuwait and subsequent acts of revenge on the Palestinian population have caused widespread revulsion throughout the world. Stories of torture and rape have been described in the Western media and issues of human rights have gained considerable prominence of late. Perhaps now is a good time to examine how Britain responds to the needs of survivors of torture who seek asylum here.

Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial

Abstract: On Easter Sunday, 1475, the dead body of a two-year-old boy named Simon was found in the cellar of a Jewish family's house in Trent, Italy. Town magistrates arrested all eighteen Jewish men and one Jewish woman living in Trent on the charge of ritual murder - the killing of a Christian child in order to use his blood in Jewish religious rites. Under judicial torture and imprisonment, the men confessed and were condemned to death; their women-folk, who had been kept under house arrest with their children, denounced the men under torture and eventually converted to Christianity. A papal hearing in Rome about possible judicial misconduct in Trent made the trial widely known and led to a wave of anti-Jewish propaganda and other accusations of ritual murder against the Jews. In this engrossing book, R. Pochia Hsia reconstructs the events of this tragic persecution, drawing principally on the Yeshiva Manuscript, a detailed trial record made by authorities in Trent to justify their execution of the Jews and to bolster the case for the canonization of "little Martyr Simon." Hsia depicts the Jewish victims (whose testimonies contain fragmentary stories of their tragic lives as well as forced confessions of kidnap, torture, and murder), the prosecuting magistrates, the hostile witnesses, and the few Christian neighbors who tried in vain to help the Jews. Setting the trial and its documents in the historical context of medieval blood libel, Hsia vividly portrays how fact and fiction can be blurred, how judicial torture can be couched in icy orderliness and impersonality, and how religious rites can be interpreted as ceremonies of barbarism.

Human Rights-Based Approaches to Clinical Social Work

Abstract: Rights-based vs. Conventional Needs-based Approaches to Clinical Social Work.- Rights-based Approach to Working with Torture Survivors.- Rights-based Clinical Practice with Survivors of Human Trafficking.- Intimate Partner Violence and a Rights-based Approach to Healing.- The Use of Self in Engaging in Rights-based Clinical Practice.

State Immunity and Hierarchy of Norms: Why the House of Lords Got It Wrong

Abstract: The proper way of addressing the impact of normative hierarchy on state immunity is to adopt the normative-evidentiary approach cleansed of preconceptions motivated by certain risk factors that possess only theoretical significance. The European Court stated in Al-Adsani on the hierarchy of norms issue without properly examining most of its crucial aspects. The Joint Dissenting Opinion of six judges has exposed the weaknesses in the Court's reasoning. Still, some national courts, especially the House of Lords in Jones v. Saudi Arabia, have taken the Al-Adsani ruling as axiomatic, and accepted its outcome without enquiring into whether the line of reasoning the European Court had pursued was consistent or supported with evidence. The outcome is an unfortunate thread of judicial decisions, which do not properly examine the impact of the hierarchy of norms on State immunity, and consistently uphold the impunity of the perpetrators of torture as well as the denial to victims of the only available remedy.