Pick up any dictionary and you will find something along
these lines: ‘To cause extreme physical pain esp. To extract information. To
give mental anguish.’ What you may not find in the dictionary is that for
‘torture’ to occur it is usually when someone acting in authority (a police
officer, soldier etc.) causes you serious physical or mental pain to make you
give them information, to punish you or to cause you to fear them.
Newspapers and history books are often filled with
atrocities committed to people. Thankfully these are usually extreme cases but
we are not so mentally developed that we cannot do atrocious things to each
other in the name of one cause or other.
Protection
The Human Rights Act (Article 3) and The European Convention
on Human Rights specifically prohibit torture; there are no provisos. This is
an absolute right. Interestingly, it also includes threatening to torture
someone or treat them in an inhumane or degrading manner – so it is not just
the act that can breach your rights, it is the suggestion that this will be
done. And that’s not all.
Inhumane Treatment
Inhumane treatment, and punishment; include: inhumane living
conditions serious assault interrogation using psychological methods failure to
give or refusing medical treatment to someone with a serious illness, disease
or defect
The authorities have a duty to protect you from someone
treating you in this manner, and they are certainly prohibited from inflicting
this on you themselves. Because this right is absolute, it cannot be restricted
through, for instance, lack of funding, or limited as a result of some crime
that you may have committed.
Nor can it be accepted as a means of treating suspected
terrorists. From immigrants on the street to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, there
are stories of horrendous acts perpetrated against people in the name of
national security. This can never be acceptable, no matter what the cause.
I do not claim to have ever been in a war-zone, nor to have
worked for the security services but, as an ordinary person on the street, I
find it abhorrent that someone should use the name of my country to degrade or
torture another human being. The shame of it is that the stories that make it
back to us via the media are usually of soldiers treating inmates in this way
for fun, for no other purpose than their own amusement. I am not saying that it
would be acceptable for the purpose of obtaining information, it isn’t, but at
least it would be close to understandable.
It may be that someone could say, ‘well they would do it to
us’. This is an argument akin to ‘Billy made me do it’; do we lower ourselves
to the level of these ‘others’; do we sacrifice our self-respect and dignity in
the name of national security?
As a nation we benefit from the protection of Article 3 and
the Convention it stems from, we cannot therefore justify behaving in this way
to others. As a generation, these things may be lost in memory one day, but
equally history will judge us and our leaders.
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