Why torture is good

The recent settlement is unprecedented, and the plaintiffs, two surviving victims of CIA torture, and the family of one man who died from it, are the only individuals so far to receive some measure of justice from the U. With the settlement, the victims and it is important to mention them by name , Suleiman Abdullah Salim and Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, who survived the torture, and Gul Rahman, who did not, were spared a trial. They and in the case of Rahman, his family were not forced to revisit, personally and in the global media, the excruciating details of the torture they endured: suspension, stress positions, being slammed into walls, crammed and confined in small locked boxes, dietary manipulation, prolonged sleep deprivation, forced nudity, water dousing in freezing temperatures, being strapped to waterboards, death threats and more.

For years. And so we are grateful that they got some modicum of justice for the torture inflicted on them. But this settlement is hardly a crack in the wall of impunity. Two psychologists were held to at least some form of account, but there were many others.

Others who ordered torture. Others who condoned torture. Others who worked to create loopholes for torture. And today we have a president who openly, repeatedly and aggressively asserts his support for the use of torture. So this evening I want to talk about why torture is such a scourge. Why we must never return to its use. And why we must wipe it from the face of the earth.

I want to share a little background. We rebuild the lives and restore the hope of people who have survived torture, who have escaped from the most despicable regimes on the planet. Almost all of our more than 4, annual clients are refugees and asylum seekers, trying to put their lives back on track after torture.

My colleagues are psychologists, social workers, physiotherapists, researchers, international program managers, human rights experts and advocates.

We work with people who have survived the most extreme cruelty the human mind can devise. CVT rebuilds the lives of survivors in the U. Paul and in Atlanta. We work in Ethiopia, with survivors of brutality committed by the Eritrean government, one of the most repressive on the planet. We work in Nairobi, with urban refugee survivors from around the region; in the Dadaab refugee camps in northeastern Kenya; and now in the Kakuma refugee camps in northwestern Kenya, where hundreds of thousands have fled and continue to flee the bloodbath in South Sudan.

And we work in Jordan, with Iraqis and Syrians who have endured torture and atrocities committed on a scale that is difficult to comprehend. We also build the capacity of colleague organizations in the U. We conduct research on effective approaches to healing torture survivors. Over 35 years now. I mention that because, as I read the testimonies of the three individuals in the lawsuit filed in the Eastern District of this state who were tortured at the hands of the US, and particularly the systems of torture designed by Mr.

Jessen and Mr. Mitchell, it became clear that what their victims endured—the subject of this lawsuit—was every bit as savage; every bit as brutal, as any testimony I had ever taken from victims and survivors.

The torture to death of Gul Rahman at the Salt Pit in Afghanistan was every bit as terrible as the worst details of testimony shared with me by surviving family members who had a father or a son tortured to death in Iraq or Afghanistan or Turkey. Throughout most of my years doing this work I learned, frankly, not to be very surprised to be confronted with deaths in custody as a result of torture, if it happened in Iran or Syria or in Chile under Pinochet or in South Africa under apartheid, but tortured to death at the hands of the U.

It is terribly gruesome reading, but we all need to know how horrific the torture was that our government carried out. And reading the details will help us all better understand what was, after all, done in our name. It is precisely the kinds of torture described in that lawsuit that our staff hear and see evidence of every single day.

Survivors—our clients—come to us bringing horrific stories of torture, imprisonment, rape or other forms of sexual and gender based violence.

Many bear physical evidence, such as scars from being lashed with cables; stabbed or burned with cigarettes; head injuries and broken bones from beatings; musculoskeletal disorders from being hung by their arms or put in other stress positions; paralysis or lost limbs.

The methods improvised are boundless. So out of my personal background and the plus years now that CVT has been working every day with survivors of torture comes a profound sense of the devastating impacts of torture.

We know the impacts on individuals and families and communities. Amnesty International has reported that over the past year, nearly countries have engaged in the use of torture—that is, the deliberate infliction of severe physical or mental suffering, carried out by a public official for a specific purpose—a confession, information, to intimidate.

And in scores of these countries, the practice is not isolated, but widespread and systematic. It occurs in countries that lean to the right. It occurs in countries that lean to the left. It occurs in countries with free elections. It occurs in countries with no elections. Countries that are dictatorships. Countries that are democracies. It occurs every day, in every region of the world.

Men, women and even children are subjected to torture. Read more. This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets CSS enabled.

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Find out more about page archiving. Ethics guide. Why is torture wrong? On this page Reasons of principle Consequentialist reasons Page options Print this page.

Erskine, Toni. Moral Agents and Intelligence Gathering. Evans, Rebecca. Feinstein, Dianne, and United States. Select Committee on Intelligence. Book, Whole. Forsythe, David P. Freeman, Colin. Gutting, Gary, and Jeff Mcmahan. Hassner, Ron E. Isikoff, Michael. Masters, James. Mayer, Jane. United Nations. Quinlan, Michael. Serwer, Adam. Can He Do It? Accessed November 25, Sullivan, Andrew. Thienel, Tobias. Walton, Calder. Damien Van Puyvelde Date written: December Before you download your free e-book, please consider donating to support open access publishing.

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