Introduction to Torture
Torture, the infliction of intense physical suffering or of mental suffering to obtain a confession or information, to punish, or to avenge a wrong. Governments and organizations have used torture to extract information, punish criminals or enemies, or to keep the members of a group under their check. Torture may also be used by terrorists to set an example for those whom they are trying to intimidate. Sometimes it has no purpose other than to give sadistic pleasure to the torturer.
Examples of physical torture are burning, stretching, cutting, flogging, beating the body, suffocating a person with water, and depriving a person of food and water. Victims have often been tortured to death. Mental torture, used generally to bring compliance, sometimes causes insanity. Solitary confinement, prolonged interrogation, and threats of physical violence are kinds of mental torture. Electric shocks, pain-causing drugs, and other psychological techniques are also used. The use of torture has been opposed by human-rights organizations and most democracies.
Self-torture is or has been practiced in various religions as a demonstration of spiritual strength or an act of penance. Christians, for example, have fasted almost to the point of starvation, worn uncomfortable hair shirts, and scourged themselves. Hindu holy men may sleep on a bed of nails or stare into the sun until blinded. Among American Indians, self-torture was practiced to prove manliness.
Torture is illegal in most parts of the world and most countries support treaties or agreements that ban torture. Nevertheless, it is used in warfare and espionage to obtain information and terrorize enemies. Police in a number of countries, including the United States, are sometimes accused of using mental and physical tortures, known as the “third degree,” to extract confessions or information from suspects, particularly those who are suspected of terrorist activities. Many countries with military regimes or dictators still use torture. Wherever torture has been legally sanctioned, enlightened people have opposed it—on the grounds that a person may say anything to escape pain or that cruel punishments do not act as a deterrent to crime, or on humanitarian principles.
History
Torture was used for punishment and revenge in most of the ancient world. It began as a legal method of getting confessions from suspected law offenders. Early Greek and Roman law permitted torture for questioning suspects, if they were slaves, foreigners, or people considered dishonorable, but only when there was clear evidence against them. During the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D, torture became a regular affair in the Roman Empire and spread to other social classes. Its use dropped in the late 5th century after the empire broke up. In the East Asia, many terrible tortures were devised, including the Chinese “death of a thousand cuts,” in which portions of the victim's body were cut off so as to cause a slow death.
During the 12th century, some of the Roman legal methods, including torture, were revived in various parts of Europe. During the Middle Ages, torture was widely used for punishing and executing criminals. Medieval instruments of torture included the rack (a rectangular frame on which the victim was stretched) and the wheel (a circular frame on which the victim was stretched, flogged, clubbed, crushed, or otherwise tortured).
The Roman Catholic Church revived the legal use of questioning by torture in the inquisitions of the 13th to the early 19th century. Persons accused of heresy, witchcraft, or other religious offenses were tortured to obtain confessions and names of other offenders. Many of the tortures attributed to the inquisitions existed only in the imaginations of sensational writers, and many of the torture instruments supposedly used were fakes made in the 19th century to add atmosphere to castles. Among the actual inquisition tortures, one of the most terrible was the water torture, in which water was slowly dripped on a rag stuffed in the victim's throat, forcing the person to swallow the rag to avoid suffocation.
The practice of using torture while questioning a prisoner quickly spread from the church courts to the civil courts. Devices often used included the rack, the thumbscrew for crushing thumbs, and the boot for crushing legs. Questioning by torture was illegal in England, but it was frequently allowed for a person accused of treason or some other serious crime.
During the 18th and 19th centuries the use of torture was gradually outlawed in most of Europe and Asia. At that time, the practice was condemned extensively on both moral and legal grounds. The United States Bill of Rights, adopted in 1791 as the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, banned “cruel and unusual punishments” (Amendment 8). In 1816 Pope Pius VII forbade the inquisitors to use torture. Gradually, tortures such as keelhauling (dragging a victim under the keel of a ship) and picketing (hanging a victim by one arm with his bare foot just touching the point of a tent stake) were eliminated as methods of disciplining sailors and soldiers.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, torture resurfaced again. This time, the military forces, police forces, and other groups started using torture illegally to reprimand and control people and to gather information. In the 20th century, totalitarian governments have used physical and mental tortures to suppress nonconformity and obtain confessions for propaganda purposes. In the 20th century, torture was particularly common during times of political uprising or instability when political ideologies were put above human rights.