The United Nations Convention Against Torture - Research Paper Example

The United Nations convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment defines torture as “any act where severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental is deliberately inflicted on a person with intention of obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession” (Paust, 2005, p817). The person is punished for an act he or a third person has committed or on suspicion of committing the act. Public authority normally instigates the pain or suffering to such person. In view of the escalating levels of insecurity in the globe, security agencies in different countries use different forms of extracting confessions from criminals or suspects and torture is the most prominent technique. In spite of the severe implications that the technique has on the criminals or the suspected offenders, torture is legally accepted in many countries as a way of extracting confession and preventing crime (Paust, 2005, p821). Regardless of the level of the crime that a person has committed, it is unacceptable to use torture methods as a way of obtaining confession from the captive because it is a violation of human rights in addition to being ineffective and against religious beliefs. Any form of torture is a violation of human rights. According to Alfred (2006, p 62), prisoners retain their human rights and the basic freedoms with exception of the conditions presented by the environment within the areas of incarceration. However, the conditions of the incarceration should not exacerbate the suffering that is inherent in the prison. Torture is one of the most common methods that violate the fundamental human rights of the prisoners. However, the international law provides protection to all prisoners against any form of torture by prohibiting the practice. According to Alfred (2006, p69), the prohibition is an issue of jus cogens, an authoritative standard of the international law custom that bids all countries in the world. This law bans all forms of torture regardless of the prevailing conditions including times of war, during civil or internal unrest or other exceptional circumstances, such as declaration of a state of emergency (Alfred, 2006). Torture is a total violation of the safety of a person’s body because it inflicts severe mental or physical suffering through pain and mental trauma. This is totally unacceptable because unlike other forms of human suffering, authorized persons carry out torture deliberately. In this respect, the most important aspect of torture is not only the pain, but also the fact that it is intentionally inflicted on a person to achieve a particular objective including obtaining confession from a person. Other forms of torture include deprivation of basic needs such as sleep, food and other necessities, which result to a lot of pain or suffering to the deprived person (Basoglu, 2009, p137). Although the immediate effect of torture is physical and mental suffering, Basoglu (2009, p 143) noted that another immediate impact and objective of the practice is to break the spirit or resoluteness of a prisoner. Torture is structured to demolish the identity of a strong person, making him or her conform to the ideologies of particular leader in authority. Autocratic and intolerant regimes in different countries apply torture to silence opposition, union, ethnic and leaders of the minority groups into submission. This treatment is violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which articulates the basic rights of people in 30 articles. Torture violates human rights because it lowers the dignity of the prisoner and it threatens his right to life, freedom and security by inflicting mental and physical pain. Moreover, the universal declaration of human rights prohibits any form of cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment (Parry, 2003, p241). One of the most repugnant characteristics of torture is that it erodes the dignity of one person by another (Lawrence and Travis, 2004). Torture, is a form of asserting authority and control by inflicting pain and presenting despairing situations. The fact that torture is perpetrated by state apparatus including police, military, security intelligence agencies, the very persons supposed to safeguard the safety and security of people makes it even more disgusting. In many despotic countries, these state security agencies are used to curtail the freedom of expression of individual members and the media. Torturing suspects in order to suppress the right to express their idea and opinions is tantamount to denying the person the right to his or her conscience. Torture compromises on the safety of the body psychologically and physically. Some techniques applied in psychological torture include terror and confusion. Terror entails application of techniques such as displaying the tools of inflicting pain to a prisoner and threatening to use physical methods of forcing a confession (Harbury, 2005, p203). Some prisoners succumb to this method of torture by admitting guilt, even in situations where there are innocent to avoid further pain. Confusion is the second common method of inflicting psychological torture to prisoners by subjecting them to conditions that hinder their logical judgment to their current state. Some of the methods applied to confuse prisoners including putting them in dark cells, and subjecting them to intense temperatures, with no natural lighting or conditioning. This treatment confuses the prisoners on the sense of time (Harbury, 2005, p217). Other methods applied to confuse prisoners include feeding them at irregular time, putting them in cells drenched with water and depriving them sleep. A series of these treatments are intended to make a prisoner lose self-confidence from the resulting confusion (Paust, 2005, p826). These forms of psychological torture could have long-term effects on the health state of the prisoners including mental illnesses and disturbances that eventually affect the psychological and physical functioning of such individuals in the society. Physical torture entails application of different methods, such as beatings, use of electric shock, systematic burning of sensitive body organs , squeezing of genitals among other methods such as spitting on the face or in the mouth of a prisoner in order to degrade his dignity. Torture is also a gross violation of the right to privacy. The arrests of person is usually accomplished by forced entry into private property, handcuffing the suspect, use of physical violence and covering the face of the suspect with blindfold. These practices are inhuman but are also in contravention with the universal declaration of human rights. In this respect, torturing a prisoner is a violation of human rights because it damages the character of a person by subjecting him or her to intense physical and psychological suffering. In addition, it attempts to compel an individual to stop participating in any actions of resistance and forcing him or her to collaborate with the authority (Parry, 2003, p250). Torturing prisoners is against the established beliefs of many religious and contemporary spiritual organizations. Many world-renowned monotheistic religious organizations, such as Christianity and Islam do not condone torture and any form of violence towards a human being in the religious doctrine. Besides religious beliefs, most traditional practices do not advocate torture of suspects in order to extract or to force a confession. Though crime is abhorred in virtually all beliefs, heavy punishment was usually meted to the offending party after proving beyond reasonable doubt that the person could have committed the crime. Most monotheistic beliefs advocate for extreme caution in dealing with criminals or suspected offenders. According to Gudjonnson (2003, p41), forgiveness and tolerance to offenders are virtues that dominate most monotheistic religious beliefs. In Christianity for instance, torture is clearly documented in the trial and subsequent crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Though Christian teachings allege that Jesus had not done anything wrong to warrant persecution, he was tortured and forced to acknowledge the false allegations against him. The entire episode of Jesus crucifixion does not portray torture as a humane method of treating suspected criminals. Instead, it portrays torture as a backward practice used by people in authority to persecute non-conformists and principled people in the society. In addition, most monotheistic beliefs consider torture as unethical practice, where powerful but paranoid people in authority abuse rights of innocent persons. The people in authority fear to be challenged and hence they resort to torture as a method of silencing the hurting but true voice of the people. Similarly, polytheistic religious beliefs such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Shintoism do not tolerate torture of prisoners or sinners to extract confession or to compel individuals to conform to the authority. Both monotheistic and polytheistic religious beliefs respect the individual free will, where an individual is at liberty to choose whatever belief or conviction to follow without the pressure from the religious or spiritual leaders (Deborah, 2006, p 59). In this regard, polytheistic and monotheistic beliefs associate torture of human beings to lack of respect and dignity towards creation. Christianity and Islam beliefs hold that man should not revenge for any evil committed to him by another person but wait for Devine intervention to punish the offender. Therefore, from monotheistic, polytheistic and atheistic beliefs, torture of fellow being is unacceptable. Applying torture is not effective method of extracting information, because it entails the removal of all possible personal controls in an individual in order to expose his or her vulnerability to an authority (Gudjonnson, 2003, p 60). The exposure to multiple and intense forms of stressors trigger a powerful distress in the interrogated person which ultimately induce a sense of hopelessness to the victim. Therefore, the objective of the torturers is for the victim to attain this state where the prisoner is utterly hopeless and vulnerable to making confessions regardless of their authenticity in order to avoid any further form of suffering. According to Alfred(2006, p36), interrogation even without the use of physical violence is coercive and traumatic experience because it is conducted with a purpose, intent and subjection to varying degrees of traumatic experiences in order to break the resistance or resoluteness of an individual. According to Lawrence and Travis,(2004, p119), about 20% of people detained in a normal police interrogation centre experiences high levels of stress attributed to uncertainty about their fate and lack of control to the immediate environment. Some of these prisoners usually develop posttraumatic stress disorders that could even result to suicide attempts. In this case, torture is ineffective form of extracting confessions from suspects because it is conducted in a state where the individual is not mentally astute and he or she is under duress. According to Basoglu (2009, p75), people with strong commitments to political, religious cause or belief show high resilience to any form of physical and psychological torture and hence any information obtained from such individuals is normally unreliable. According to Gudjonnson (2003, p63), applying torture to collect intelligence information or force a confession produces faulty information because the victim admits to what the interrogator wishes to hear. In this regard, torture produces false intelligence because the detainees agree to anything in order to stop the pain. This distracts the security agencies from their law enforcement duties as the try to investigate the forced confessions from the prisoners. Basoglu (2009, p137) noted that the torture of prisoners in Guantanamo bay did not result to significant drop in the number of terror attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan. The number of terror attacks in form of suicide bombers increased dramatically and sectarian violence rose to unprecedented levels that almost triggered a civil unrest in those countries when the reports about the prison were leaked to the public. Torturing terror suspects provided the militants with a cause for massive recruitment of militants to kill American soldiers and citizens in different parts around the globe Basoglu (2009, p152). Torture also exposes troops of the offending country in foreign missions to more danger because of the perception that such soldiers are inhuman and do not deserve any better treatment if arrested or detained. It is apparent that torture is not effective method of gathering intelligence information, and it is morally, legally and ethically wrong. Criminal psychologists recommend application of a better method of interrogation that entails building confidence between the interrogator and the offender (Paust, 2005, p 859). However, the effectiveness of this method is still doubtful in a global environment where suspicions between countries, religious beliefs and convictions have existed for long time. There is no form of interrogation is absolutely effective and humane, but applying torture to extract confession from prisoners is unacceptable, ineffective, unreliable and a gross violation of human rights. Work Cited Alfred, M. A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror. New York: Holt paperbacks, 2006. Basoglu, M. “A Multivariate Contextual Analysis of Torture and Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatments: Implications for an Evidence Based Definition of Torture.” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 79.2(2009): 130-149. Deborah, P. “Finding Effective Constraints on Executive Power: Interrogation, Detention and Torture.” Indian Law Journal, 81(2006): 1255-95. Gudjonnson, G. The Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions: A Handbook. Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons, 2003. Harbury, J. Truth, Torture and the American Way: The History and the Consequences of the US Involvement in Torture. Boston: Beacon Press, 2005. Lawrence, S and Travis, J. The New Landscape of Imprisonment: Mapping America’s Prison Expansion. Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2004. Parry, J. “What is torture, are we doing it and what if we are?” University of Pittsburg Law Review, 64(2003): 223-268. Paust, J. “Executive Plans and Authorizations to Violate International Law Concerning Treatment and Interrogation of Detainees.” Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, 43(2005): 808-868. Read More