Why Torture is Justifiable - Essay Example

Torture is Justifiable In recent times, there has been war on terrorism which has highlighted the occurrence of torture. Torture is roughly universally deployed. It is outlawed at international ruling and is not formally allowed by the laws of many countries. Regardless of this, it is commonly applied contrary to common belief that torture is not the safeguard of authoritarian military regimes in developing countries. Torture makes the person’s world completely taken up by severe pain and the torture victim is rendered powerless. In fact, given the great torment being experienced and the subsequent loss of independence, the sufferer would most probably rather be dead than alive during that time. The individual being exposed to torture is, for the period of the torturing course of action, physically powerless in relation to their torturer. The victim is cannot protect himself by preventing the torturer from instilling pain in his body. Besides, the victim cannot attack and physically cause suffering to the torturer. The torture can be defined as any physical or psychological harm done to an individual to obtain information to save others lives or community. There are numerous reasons why individuals torture others and different types of torture have varying additional reasons of doing so including breaking a victim’s will, satisfy a need on the part of the torturer to cause suffering and to put into effect power, to acquire information and to terrorize some political group. There are various kinds of torture which can be exercised in combination or one at a time and where deemed necessary such as hooding which means that a victim’s head is sheltered by an "opaque material bag with no ventilation" (Amnesty International) except during questioning or when in separation. Victim would frequently also be uncovered to enhance his sensation of vulnerability. Another type of torture is wall-standing which consist of forcing victim to upright and balanced against a cell wall in the "search position" for some time at a time stirring up agonizing muscle cramps. A victim is required to remain in this same position for at least 43.5 hours as and these w prompted more than6 other recorded cases of suffering being kept similar to this for more than twenty hours. It also includes subjection to noise where a victim of torture is placed in close nearness to the repetitive, such as a generator or compressor as a whine of machinery for as lengthy as six or seven days (Lukes, 35). At least one prisoner subjected to this handling informed Amnesty International it is the drive to the edge of madness by the noise he had given attempt to end his life by knocking his head against metal piping in his cell. Food and water denial as a method of torture meant a strict schedule of bread and water. Sleep denial was practiced prior to questioning and often in combination with wall-standing. Torture is justified under certain circumstances that will provide information to save someone’s life or the lives of many. It is extensively understood that the United States tortured senior Al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. There is indisputable proof that it tortured huge numbers of Iraqi prisoners and there is strong support that it tormented prisoners at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, where suspected al Qaeda terrorists are held (Lukes, 34). Victims of torture were usually subjected to this conditioning over the course of about a week. Another typical example in this situation is the ticking bomb in the mall. It is the German case of September 2002, which involved the kidnapping and assassination of 11-year-old Jakob von Metzler, and the intimidation by the police of his kidnapper with torture. After three day of Metzler’s kidnapping, security personnel watched a man collect the money and put him under arrest. The suspect toyed with the police about the location of the boy and the police chief permitted his officers in a written order to instill torture to the kidnapper. After he was threatened with pain, it took only 10 minutes for the suspect to expose the location of the boy, who was already dead. This method worked in this case and to disallow the use of preventive interrogational torture in such situation may be as ruthless and morally wrong as other ways may not yield positive results. It is ruthless since, in true tragic cases, the failure to use precautionary interrogational torture will result in the ruin of blameless individuals (Vinar, 332). Upholding the rights of the suspect will work against the rights, including the very basic right to life, of innocent persons. Denial the application of deterrent torture meant for interrogation in such cases is also insincere: experience tells us that when faced with severe terrorization to the life of the state, government -- any administration will take whatsoever actions it deems necessary bring the crisis to halt. Any rigid utter ban on torture sets unlikely standards that no one can expect to meet when faced with excessively difficult circumstances (Vinar, 328). To quote from Michael Walzer, sticking by the total ban on torture, no matter what, reflects a radicalism of people who do not expect to exercise power ever, and who are not prepared to make the judgments that this exercise requires. The “ticking bomb” metaphor has been vastly used to give explanation for torture in definite excessive cases. The idea of the “ticking bomb” was originally conceptualized in a literature book written by Jean Larteguy in 1960 (Kirilov, 14). It outlines a case whereby the persecution of a victim is considered essential to attain information to thwart a future calamitous event from taking place. The case is commonly described as one where terrorists have the idea of an assault that is going to occur very almost immediately. In such a case, a large number of people may die in the process unless the government attains vital information from the resource they have in hand. The state has endorsed torture to attain information in such circumstances. Advocators of the “ticking bomb” situation claim that torture may be wrong, but mass slaughter is worse, so the slighter evil must be condoned to thwart the greater one. For a long time torture has been a tool for unlawful investigation. For instance in 2002 Amnesty International documented many incidences of state-managed torture or atrocious abuse in at least one hundred nations (Tarrant, 513). On average, 59% of people in the whole world reject torture. There is clear division of thoughts amongst the states with strong rejection of torture. In Italy, for instance, only 14% of the population supports torture. This narrowed rejection is reflected in states severely and frequently endangered by terror attacks .For instance Israel, in spite of of its Supreme Court banning torture in 1999, shows 43% were for torture, but 48% of the persons opposing India revealed 37% supporting torture with 23% opposing the practice (Wood 140). This evidently showed that these countries to some extent accept torture to extract information from the victim. In almost all states of the world there is a comprehensible segregation between the positions taken by members of diverse cultural groups, political affiliations, religion, sometimes showing demarcations between groups in view of themselves as exposed to or victimized by terrorist actions and those from the assumed architect groups. For instance, a recent research done indicated that amongst Jews in Israel 53% to some extent supported torture and only 39 of 100 people sought after strong set of laws against torture while Muslims in Israel were tremendously against the use of torture (Dorfman, 99). This was contrary to the views Muslim population polled elsewhere. Differences in ideological and political views also can matter. While 24% of people who strongly identified themselves with Democratic in a 2006 report by the Scripps Center at Ohio University, the remaining 66% of Americans who know themselves as dedicated Republicans were in support of torture (Dorfman, 98). In a 2005 U.S. study 72% of American Catholics strongly supported the use of torture in some scenarios compared to 51 of 100 of American secularists. A Pew research in 2009 correspondingly established that the faithfully unaffiliated are the slightly likely (40 percent) to bear with torture, and that the further a person claims to concentrate on church, the more probable he is to assume torture; among religious and radical groups, white evangelical Protestants were extremely the most liable to support instilling pain as a scheme of interrogation. In conclusion, use of torture can be a very effective way of extracting information as reflected in the above scenarios .It has been in use in the past and will be used in future by numerous administrative systems in the world. Besides has been widely used by religious groups for the same purpose. Works Cited Dorfman, Ariel. "Are There Times When We Have to Accept Torture? / Are We Really so Fearful?" South Central Review. 24.1 (2007): 95-100. Print. Vinar, Marcelo N. "The Specifi City of Torture As Trauma: the Human Wilderness When Words Fail¹." The International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 86.2 (2005): 311-333. Print. Viñar, MN. "The Specificity of Torture As Trauma: the Human Wilderness When Words Fail." The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis. 86 (2005): 311-33. Print. Tarrant, M, N.R Branscombe, R.H Warner, and D Weston. "Social Identity and Perceptions of Torture: Its Moral When We Do It." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 48.2 (2012): 513-518. Print. Wood, E. (January 01, 2009). Armed Groups and Sexual Violence: When Is Wartime Rape Rare?. Politics & Society, 37, 1, 131-161. Lukes, S. "Liberal Democratic Torture." Peace Research Abstracts Journal. 43.5 (2006). Print. Lukes, S. "Liberal Democratic Torture." Sage Public Administration Abstracts. 34.1 (2007). Print. Kirilov. "Who Is Right?" Russian Education & Society. 2.2 (1959): 53-58. Print. Lukes, Steven. "Liberal Democratic Torture." British Journal of Political Science. 36.1 (2006): 1-16. Print. Read More