Why does torture still exist

Infliction of physical torture is in most cases reflected in psychological consequences. Applying torture methods of these types on someone can directly damage their memory and cause an extreme psychological trauma. For example, if affected by one of these methods, victims may become so mentally broken that they might not even remember simple things such as their home address.

Similarly, victims who are deprived of sleep may become confused and disoriented, which can cause them to convince themselves in things interrogators are suggesting them and, in this way, produce false information.

However, infliction of torture methods does not cause psychological trauma only to victims, but also to the torturers. Most often, state authorities and politicians who support torture are not the ones who inflict it personally. They leave to others to enforce their policies and apply torture methods, which affects them on a psychological level by being rooted deeply within their brain circuit. This means that both victims and perpetrators face a range of devastating psychological consequences.

The use of torture physically destroys people. Torture methods, such as sham executions, rape, sexual assaults, humiliation and sleep deprivation often leave physical consequences on affected persons such as chronic pain in certain parts of body and inability to lead a healthy and prolonged lifestyle. For this reason, people who had been affected by torture should have access to redress such as medical care, reintegration into society, rehabilitation and counseling.

When states and governments use torture to achieve their goals, they often see it as necessary to provide some type of justification for its implementation.

Governments and politicians must find ways to excuse and explain the use of torture, while those who publicly advocate for it must find arguments that would justify torture as a practice that is globally and universally regarded as immoral and condemned. The prohibition of torture is enshrined in many conventions and declarations within the international human rights and humanitarian law.

Similarly, it was established by the Geneva Conventions and the Additional Protocols that serious violations of international humanitarian law, including torture and other inhuman treatment, constitute war crimes in both international and non-international armed conflicts.

As already mentioned, perhaps the most significant international law instrument used to combat torture is the Convention Against Torture, or the CAT. Most of countries in the world have signed and ratified the CAT and other international human rights treaties and conventions. Inflicting torture on someone does not end without consequences. Both international and national law instruments oblige countries and governments to search for persons suspected to have committed torture acts and bring them before justice.

Countries have a duty to enact legislation that prohibits acts of torture and other forms of ill-treatment and punish those who commit them and those who order them to be committed.

Individual perpetrators, thus, can be held criminally responsible for committing these crimes. According to the Article 4 of the CAT, all countries must ensure that all acts of torture are regarded as offences under their criminal law, including attempts to commit torture and any acts by any person that constitute participation or complicity of torture. States are obliged to punish these acts in an appropriate manner, as well as to establish jurisdiction over the acts of torture where the offences are committed in any territory under their jurisdiction, or where the alleged offender or the victim is a national of the country.

Physical and psychological torture techniques include beatings, electrocution and sexual torture including rape, as well as sleep deprivation, threat to family members, and mock executions. At Freedom from Torture, we support people who seek refuge in the UK having fled torture all over the world.

Our data shows torture is still rife in many countries. Our specialist doctors use medico-legal reports to provide independent evidence of torture to people seeking asylum in the UK. Using data from those reports, we can see worrying trends of torture in certain countries across the world. Despite being a top holiday destination, over the past 10 years, Sri Lanka has consistently been the country from where we receive the most clients. It was hoped that the end of the Sri Lankan civil war in would mean the end of human rights violations in the country.

Torture continues to be rife in the country, however, including ongoing torture of Tamils allegedly in a security context. Everyone could say there is a new government, but there have only been a few changes of faces at the top.

Rape, torture and kidnapping are still happening, nothing has changed. Read more about torture in Sri Lanka. In Iran, torture and other human rights abuses are used by the government to sow fear among the population, suppress political activity, force confessions and act as punishment. We have evidence that since the Cultural Revolution of , torture has been used by the state to control a broad range of political, religious and social activity.

Our evidence shows that torture in Afghanistan is used frequently by state actors largely to attain information regarding the Taliban or links to the Taliban.

However, our records reveal a terrifying reality as they show an equal number of Afghanis have been tortured by militant groups like the Taliban for either refusing orders or refusing to join them. Most of the Afghan clients seen by Freedom from Torture are children or young people. Despite the commitments made by the government to adhere to the Optional Protocol of the Convention against Torture, much work is needed to be done to eradicate the practice.

For decades, President Isaias Afewerki has led Eritrea with an iron fist. There is no legislature, no non-governmental organisations or media outlets or even a judiciary.

There is a harsh system of conscription which sees every Eritrean serve for an indefinite period often lasting around 10 years. Whilst in service, Eritreans are subjected to treatment which has been characterised as enslavement and attempts to avoid national service has led to imprisonment and torture.

We have evidence that women and men exercising their rights to participate in political or human rights activism have frequently been detained and tortured by the state to silence any political opposition. Read more about torture in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was woken from sleep for the purpose of the rape and taken out of the room she was detained in.

She thinks that three different soldiers were involved and she would be raped by two of them at any one time. She was pushed onto her knees and raped vaginally and anally. She was also raped orally. There have been a variety of human rights abuses permitted by the former Sudanese government of Omar al-Bashir over his year rule. And in the military commissions, the CIA maintains that virtually everyone who participated in torture is entitled to a cover-up of their crimes.

Everyone must pretend that national security is threatened by a torturer publicly stating well-known truths. It is impossible to see how a fair trial is possible under these conditions. No ordinary criminal proceeding, much less a death penalty case, can be fairly conducted when the government holds all the cards.

The artificial secrecy the government imposes on discussing CIA torture also constrains the recovery of torture survivors and their families. After torturing a man named Gul Rahman to death more than 17 years ago, the CIA still refuses to inform his grieving family of what it did with his body so that the family may give him a decent burial. And rather than promoting and protecting the people — like Haspel — complicit in torture, the government should honor the public servants who, when our nation went off course, stayed true to our most fundamental ideals and objected to torture.