Torture

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

Violence and Health: Preliminary Elements for Thought and Action:

Abstract: Violence is one of the most serious problems that society, and the public health sector in particular, has to deal with today. This article begins with a discussion of the concept of violence itself, bringing out its historical and cultural dimensions and emphasizing its essential relationship to the exercise of force in the interest of power under conditions of inequality. Violence must be seen as a process that includes its origins, the conditions that allow it to happen, its different forms of expression, and its individual and collective consequences. The violence–health relationship is seen as having different levels: violence threatens or denies not only health but the entire vital human process. The author analyzes the different forms of violence: violence that impairs health (torture, disappearances, rape, child abuse, elderly abuse) and violence that kills (suicide, homicide, war). Recent data show that the problem is on the increase and pervades everyday life. The author then examines the mechan...

The paradoxes of human rights

Abstract: The article discusses controversies and paradoxes related to practices of human rights. It mentions the records of high number cases on human rights violations during the end of World War II, and again after 1989. It highlights continues presence of issues on several political and social issues including religion, ethnicity and ideology. It mentions the failure of political philosophy and liberal jurisprudence on understanding and implementing the practices of human rights protection. It also highlights the debates which were raised by Charles V of Spain regarding the torture of Spanish towards Indians of Mexico in April 1550.

The social context of torture: Policy process and authority structure.

Abstract: Conceptualizing torture as a crime of obedience implies that it must be understood in the context of the policy process that gives rise to it and of the authority structure within which this policy is carried out. This chapter looks at the policy process and the authority structure to identify the major determinants of acts of torture as well as the major correctives against these practices. Democratic countries are less likely to practice torture precisely because of the nature of the policy processes and the authority structures that characterize such societies. While individual and cultural factors are important determinants of torture, they operate in interaction with the policy process and the authority structure that ultimately give rise to the practice. There are social conditions under which democratic cultures that ordinarily respect human rights may sanction torture, just as there are social conditions under which ordinary, decent individuals may be induced to take part in it.

Are Torture Warrants Warranted? Pragmatic Absolutism and Official Disobedience

Abstract: May torture ever be morally or legally permissible? In Why Terrorism Works, Professor Alan Dershowitz makes two important claims. First, he rejects the notion that a prohibition on torture ought to be absolute. Second, in an attempt to limit the use of torture and maximize civil liberties Dershowitz suggests the mechanism of judicial torture warrants as a prerequisite to torturing suspected terrorists in interrogations. This article challenges both of Dershowitz's propositions by introducing two interlinked claims based on concepts of pragmatic absolutism and official disobedience. I argue that an absolute legal ban on torture ought to be maintained. However, in truly catastrophic cases the appropriate method of tackling extremely grave national threats may call for going outside the legal order. The way to deal with the extreme or catastrophic case is neither by ignoring it nor by using it as the center-piece for establishing general policies. Rather, the focus is on the possibility that truly exceptional cases may give rise to official disobedience: Public officials may act extralegally and be ready to accept the legal ramifications of their actions. Whereas Dershowitz argues that torture may be both morally and legally permissible under certain circumstances, I suggest that even if we recognize that torture may be morally defensible in exceptional cases, that fact should not affect an uncompromising legal ban on torture. The debate about the moral and legal nature of the prohibition on torture has followed the fault lines separating deontologists and consequentialists. The article introduces the two opposing perspectives and suggests that the picture is more complex than either camp would have us believe. It argues that the case for an absolute prohibition on torture can be made stronger and more compelling by wedding together non-consequential and pragmatic claims. The article goes on to suggest that catastrophic cases present open-minded absolutists with a dilemmatic choice and argues the case for official disobedience as a mechanism to address that tragic choice. Catastrophic cases may entail public officials going outside the legal order, at times violating otherwise accepted constitutional principles. It is then up to society as a whole to decide how to respond ex post to extralegal actions undertaken by these officials. The article explains the advantages of such ex post ratification and suggests that a method of ex post ratification is preferable to ex ante judicial approval of interrogational torture.

God's Assassins: State Terrorism in Argentina in the 1970s

Abstract: In the words of both the perpetrators of terrorism and their victims, God's Assassins explores what happens when a state turns on its citizens. Between 1976 and 1983 an estimated 30,000 Argentines "disappeared" under the military junta. Most were imprisoned and tortured before being murdered by the military. Patricia Marchak interviewed many who were involved in the horror including military personnel who justified the torture and killings, Roman Catholic clergy who encouraged the state to "save" the country from liberation theology, citizens who refused to believe that their government could commit such atrocities, and survivors whose tragic personal experiences attest that a state can indeed terrify and kill its own people.