Talk:Use of torture since 1948

NPOV tag

 * See Archive1: NPOV tag for earlier discussions on this topic.

Objection to: Vietconginterrogation1967.jpg - as described in text box

 * See Archive1: Objection to: Vietconginterrogation1967.jpg - as described in text box for earlier discussions on this topic.

Go to stress positions. This indicates that the image has been obtained from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration under the ARC identifier 531447 where it is titled "Thuong Duc, Viet Nam, a Viet Cong prisoner awaits interrogation atthe A-109 Special Forces Detachment at Thuong Duc, 25 miles west of Da Nang". It was taken on 23 January 1967 by PFC David Epstein, US Army--Streona (talk) 22:39, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Susan J Crawford interview in The Washington Post
No doubt this entry will cause some discussion. As a Brit living the good life in Sydney, Australia, I should just like to say to the good citizens of the US that when your friends are saying such things then perhaps notice needs to be taken.BillMaddock (talk) 23:46, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Singapore: caning as punishment = torture?
I would argue that reliable sources are necessary for claims that caning of adults when done with a limited number of strokes as punishment is torture, such as Amnesty International, or Human Rights Watch.

(Though certainly caning may certainly be considered cruel and/or degrading, has any adult suffered permanent physical or psychological injury (beyond minor scarring) as a result of a limited number of strokes? And is it more cruel and degrading than locking somebody up for a few years? Torture isn't pain alone - it's the use of pain for the coercive extraction of information, and perhaps the gross or wanton use of pain as punishment - if a finite, limited, and chronologically proximate amount of pain is inflicted on an adult as a punishment in a non-disfiguring manner - then is it torture? And if that is torture, then does the term "torture" have any real meaning besides as a political epithet to be bandied about recklessly? Not that I agree with caning - but still - if caning is torture, what isn't?) - Katana0182 (talk) 21:34, 17 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I have amended the Singapore part to take that into account. However, surely the crucial point is that caning in Singapore, Malaysia, Tanzania etc. is an official penalty given lawfully on the order of a court for a specific offence under the law of the country concerned. Isn't it the absence of the rule of law that essentially characterises torture? I think it waters down the concept of "torture" to include these things. Unless anyone violently objects, I am minded to delete the Singapore entry altogether. Alarics (talk) 16:54, 24 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I concur with with your suggestion to remove mention. Unless someone comes up with some source that claims that caning is torture, it should be removed as original research.Katana0182 (talk) 08:39, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I am unfamiliar with the argument that torture can only be classified as torture if it is illegal. Torture was part of the judicial process in France until 1789 and in England until 1640, and peine forte et dure even after that, not to mention hanging drawing & quartering. Torture has had more to do with the infliction of terror upon a population than extraction of information even though that is usually given in justification. The prohibition of caning as a punishment has been outlawed in the EU (e.g. the Isle of Man) under the same article of the European Convention on Human Rights as torture. (Article 3)--Streona (talk) 09:01, 30 March 2009 (UTC)


 * That Convention lists torture separately from "inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" (albeit under the same article), which suggests that the people who drafted it did not think, or at least were not sure, that it was the same thing. Anyway, if it is to be decided that official judicial corporal punishment under the rule of law can be classified as torture, it makes no sense to list Singapore and not Malaysia, Tanzania, Brunei, UAE, The Bahamas, Botswana, Trinidad, etc. Alarics (talk) 09:43, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, since you mention the Tyrer (Isle of Man) birching case, the judgment in that case says at para 29:


 * The Court shares the Commission’s view that Mr. Tyrer’s punishment did not amount to "torture" within the meaning of Article 3 (art. 3). The Court does not consider that the facts of this particular case reveal that the applicant underwent suffering of the level inherent in this notion as it was interpreted and applied by the Court in its judgment of 18 January 1978 (Ireland v. the United Kingdom, Series A no. 25, pp. 66-67 and 68, paras. 167 and 174).


 * That judgment also contains various indications concerning the notions of "inhuman treatment" and "degrading treatment" but it deliberately left aside the notions of "inhuman punishment" and "degrading punishment" which alone are relevant in the present case (ibid., p. 65, para. 164). Those indications accordingly cannot, as such, serve here. Nevertheless, it remains true that the suffering occasioned must attain a particular level before a punishment can be classified as "inhuman" within the meaning of Article 3 (art. 3). Here again, the Court does not consider on the facts of the case that that level was attained and it therefore concurs with the Commission that the penalty imposed on Mr. Tyrer was not "inhuman punishment" within the meaning of Article 3 (art. 3). Accordingly, the only question for decision is whether he was subjected to a "degrading punishment" contrary to that Article (art. 3).


 * So the Human Rights Court here is clearly differentiating between "torture" and "degrading punishment", ruling that judicial corporal punishment such as birching may constitute the latter but does not constitute the former.Alarics (talk) 09:59, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

US School of the Americas teaches torture
I think William Blum's book "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower" should be added because he documents the way US has been teaching torture in School of the Americas in order to "fight communism" & force it to fail, to make it look like a socially just system where all people own all things can't work (TINA-There Is No Alternative). Can it be added? Stars4change (talk) 16:45, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

"Lacking credible evidence"
I've removed the following odd sentence for now:


 * Lacking credible evidence, The Guardian Newspaper reported (2 June 2008) that upwards of 26,000 prisoners are being secretly held in bases throughout the world and in US warships outside due legal process.

It is unsourced, and the statement that it lacks credible evidence is equally unsourced. Perhaps it should be rewritten to reflect more accurately what has been said and what evidence, if any, it's based on. --TS 20:11, 8 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I have found the article online and put in a quote from it, with reference. Alarics (talk) 20:50, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Canada
Fully sourced material recently added to prove that torture is potentially legal under current Canadian Constitutional law (through the effect of Charter s. 33 on Charter s. 12 was edited out. Why?  Is this political censorship?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.241.211.163 (talk) 03:53, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Israel
The part about Israel lists claims of sleep depriviation, sensory depriviation, sight depriviation, etc. against suspected terrorists. Nearly every complaint is some kind of "depriviation". I think this could be considered mistreatment of prisoners, but torture? Seriously? The Wikipedia definition of torture is "the practice or act of deliberately inflicting severe physical pain and possibly injury on a person". This hardly qualifies. --2602:304:6F77:6E99:DC7B:B7C3:C60E:201D (talk) 05:19, 9 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I have now reinserted this and it's unfortunate it has gone so long before this has been spotted. I only saw it because I was looking around after the new Haaretz investigation about Israeli torture.


 * You yourself can't define what's torture and not and you removed more than that about "depriviation". Here you removed one about beatings while adding a label to B'Tselem to apparently degrade their status. Secondly, removing info because there is a dead link is not good either, and it's easy to find new links if you search. This changed the meaning too. --IRISZOOM (talk) 22:35, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Vague title; needs renaming
Article at present has title "Uses of torture in recent times". What does this suggest? 21st c? Since 2005? Text says "since 1948". Lets use "Uses of torture since 1948 banning", "Uses of torture since UDHR", or similar. Pol098 (talk) 10:46, 14 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Done. Pol098 (talk) 17:10, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV
I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:
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Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 15:00, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Kenya
This section needs to be rewritten npov. Wikipedia takes no stand on whether people should be tortured or not! That neutral, npov, stance needs to be made clear here in what is now an "war of adjectives with no facts" against the British. Doubtless, the British were at fault. But let's use facts and data. Data is missing. What little I can gather from other articles does not add up here. For example, you can't work "everybody" to death burying "everybody." It just doesn't work out mathematically. Particularly with 20,000 dead (top estimate) over 8 years. Having said that, you can work some people to death. That may have been done. Let's report it factually instead of with adjectives. It may become believable at that point. Student7 (talk) 00:12, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

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Red terror
Why is there an image of victims of the Red Terror in Russia? As cruel as the Bolsheviks were, such events are about thirty years out of the scope of this article. Liberscriptus19 (talk) 02:56, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

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