Talk:Torture

Placement of the comma in the quotation from the Catechism of the Catholic Church

It has recently become fashionable among torture advocates to point to the lack of a comma in the prohibition of torture in the English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

"Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity..."

As a result, torture proponents claim that because there is no comma after the word "torture," torture is legitimate for reasons not listed. Accordingly and predictably, the introduction to this quotation was changed to indicate that torture was permitted by the Catholic Church in some (unnamed) situations.

However, the "normative" (official) version of the Catechism is the Latin version, which states:

"Cruciatus, qui physica vel morali utitur violentia ad confessiones extorquendas, ad culpabiles puniendos, ad adversarios terrendos, ad odium satiandum, observantiae personae et dignitati humanae est contrarius."

There is clearly a comma in the normative Latin version. Ergo, the lack of a comma in the English version is an error.

The complete opposition of the Church toward torture is made clearer by the paragraph following the above, which calls for its total abolition:

"In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the Church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture. Regrettable as these facts are, the Church always taught the duty of clemency and mercy. She forbade clerics to shed blood. In recent times it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person. On the contrary, these practices led to ones even more degrading. It is necessary to work for their abolition. We must pray for the victims and their tormentors. "

This paragraph was also removed from a previous version of this article.

Just because some people want official Catholic teaching to support their views on torture does not mean they can rely on typographical errors of the English version, omit pertinent passages or ignore the requirements of Canon Law on what constitutes official versions.

NPOV template

see Talk:Torture/Archive 3#NPOV template

user:Ashe the Cyborg please state the reason you think that this page needs the {{POV}} template on the top of the article. If you do not do so I shall remove the template. If you do not think that the whole article has non neutral point of view poblesms then please be more specific by adding a {{POV section}} in the specific sections where you think there is a problem of bias. --PBS (talk) 11:40, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Treaties are inherently POLITICAL statements and often have no scientific basis beyond the current power and popularity of signatories. Citing a treaty does not change that. Scientifically speaking there are many fairly famous incidents in history where torture did work and was for the user practical in a secular sense. (read a few Holocaust or medieval siege diaries - though you will need to search hard since those are not heroic stories) Given that proving spiritual balances and values is out of the realm of Wikipedia, a better less political statement might be...

The primary controversy about torture is the spiritual and social question: WHEN IF EVER DOES THE ENDS JUST THE MEANS?

Almost no one disagrees that as a source of intelligence torture does not always work and its results almost always require FURTHER verification before action. Failure often occurs when the torturer is prejudice or gullible about answers or the mentality of the individual being tortured. (You should be able to get many recent USA or UK anecdotal citations, if nothing official.) Furthermore, information sought by torture is often "perishable". This time limitation is often in conflict with means of torture that the torturer or his political backers find acceptable or reliable, further degrading torture as a viable tool.

As a tool of forced confession, torture is normally successful but such confessions are usually suspected by others of being false or at least of questionable validity. Also the use of torture is quite often visible or suspect via past reputation of the user. As such such forced confessions usually become merely demonstrations of brute, unrestrained power or rallying points for the already convinced.

As demonstrations of power and punishment, torture serves only to ensure a strong polarization of sides in a conflict, but with some chance of defection among those less rigorous supporters with limits on polarization or ethical objections.

Thus even when torture does work it is often ill-advised due to political and socio-religious repercussions. For spiritual extremists torture is never viable even to potentially prevent all life on Earth from destruction -- if someone acts to help in an impure way, like torture, they damn you spiritually. However, due to differing judgments and systems of spiritual and secular values, the debate remains. Many secularist views spiritual extremists as unrealistic in seeking the "high road" at literally any cost to self and all others. Is there ever a negative side to seeking world wide spiritual perfection and ignoring the secular concerns of large groups of people?

I suspect that a country could have a reputation for wise and very selective use of torture. But so far countries that use torture in the modern age tend to be bumbling idiots...or too willing to release examples of failure and too reluctant to publish successes (there is a point at which long term info security hurts you).

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.26.139.168 (talk) 14:29, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Furthermore the use of citations in this article is appalling. Citations should be from subject matter experts according to Wikipedia standards. However here, citations that torture never works are from people who are not experts in performing torture on multiple people. Few of these citations ever make an effort to collect reliable data on torture. Heck almost none of them have even had the very narrow experience of being tortured for information, especially not by sophisticated torture experts. A modest fraction have however experienced torture as a demonstration of power by some of the less professional torturers, but their conclusion that the two types and goals of torture seems quite unsupported and mostly a very horrendous personal experience. Rather most citations are from spiritual experts about a hypothetical world without torture and making unsupported political or socio-religious statements. The best citations here are from political experts on the potential negative political repercussions of torture -- the existence of which few people dispute. "Never works"...using an absolute statement is almost always a clear indicator of a wish or lie or unrestrained exaggeration. But then the debate would enter fair debate if opponents admitted as little as "rarely works in a timely manner". Funny how Wikipedia bends its standards to accommodate the more vocal and politically poplar. 65.26.139.168 (talk) 15:16, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Subjective and objective

On the 8 June 2009 I replaced rather vague accusation against the USA with a specific hypothetical example from an international court case, on the on subjective as well as objective criteria for torture as put forward by one of the judges in that case. On the 10 June 2009, the USA accusation was put back in by user:Likesausages with the comment "added back controversy in US, with citation as suggested, to supplement EU case", I do not see how this accusation against the USA provides any more information about the Subjective and objective of torture than is provided by the non-political EU example. --PBS (talk) 08:39, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

The accusation against the USA need not be vague. The US government officially, if not always openly, endorsed torture. Some officials employed Orwellian double speak, and redefined "torture", others were quite open about practising it. Bizarre really, even Nazi Germany wasn't so open about committing torture.JohnC (talk) 06:52, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Strange link

This reference "The applicable sanction is publicity that nonconforming signatories have broken their treaty obligations.Maggie Farley A UN inquiry says the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, which at times amounts to torture, violates international law. in The Los Angeles Times" Is odd. The Truthout article claims to be a reprint from the LA Times but if you follow the link they give the LA Times article is not the same. Should we use this link? Bonewah (talk) 14:36, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I did a bit of seaching, the article is all over the net but luckily the original is also available on line http://articles.latimes.com/2006/feb/13/nation/na-gitmo13 so I suggest you replace the link with a link directly to the LA Times version. -- PBS (talk) 19:55, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Done Bonewah (talk) 20:02, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Sexual torture

There ought to be additional meterial on the topic of sexual torture, but it should be written in a way that distinguishes the practice from the otherwise legal practice of BDSM. ADM (talk) 07:47, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

This page discusses political torture, not torture in the dictionary sense, hence is misleading

From the "Torture (disambiguation)" page:

  "Torture, the infliction of pain to break the will of the victim or victims "

The topic as covered on this page seems to be specific to political torture, is therefore overly specific and misleading, and is not in accord with the link from the disambiguation page (see above). It completely misses reference to, for instance, sadistic torture: the creation of human pain in another as a way to induce pleasure in the person applying torture. Note: even inclusion of sexual torture as per one of the comments here is overly specific. For instance, concentration camp inmates and child abuse victims are routinely subjected to torture which has no "political" objective, nor is it sexual in nature, used merely to exercise power and control over its victims/witnesses and/or to satisfy the sadistic intentions of its perpetrators (e.g. heads held underwater, hands held on burning stoves, etc...)

I would suggest updating this page to cover the standard dictionary definition of torture &/or creating a page dedicated to the topic of political torture.

From the Miriam-Webster On-Line Dictionary: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/torture

Main Entry: 1tor·ture Pronunciation: \ˈtȯr-chər\ Function: noun Etymology: Middle French, from Old French, from Late Latin tortura, from Latin tortus, past participle of torquēre to twist; probably akin to Old High German drāhsil turner, Greek atraktos spindle

Date: 1540

1 a : anguish of body or mind : agony b : something that causes agony or pain

2 : the infliction of intense pain (as from burning, crushing, or wounding) to punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure

3 : distortion or overrefinement of a meaning or an argument : straining —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.27.0.187 (talk) 22:04, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Other motives for torture is mentioned in the introduction "In addition to state-sponsored torture, individuals or groups may be motivated to inflict torture on others for similar reasons to those of a state; however, the motive for torture can also be for the sadistic gratification of the torturer, as was the case in the Moors murders." and there used to be more on this aspect of torture in the body of the , but AFAICT it was removed because the paragraphs were not sourced.

There is no one dictionary definition. It is important to note that torture involves the infliction of "severe pain or suffering" not just "pain of suffering". The Oxford English Dictionary make this point in its primary definition of the noun torture "The infliction of severe bodily pain, as punishment or a means of persuasion; spec. judicial torture, inflicted by a judicial or quasi-judicial authority, for the purpose of forcing an accused or suspected person to confess, or an unwilling witness to give evidence or information; a form of this (often in pl.). to put to (the) torture, to inflict torture upon, to torture." and as a verb " 1. trans. To inflict torture upon, subject to torture; spec. to subject to judicial torture; put to the torture. Also absol. --PBS (talk) 13:06, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Torture in mosques

There are reports about the existence of torture chambers in various mosques throughout the Middle East. It might be helpful if there were an article entitled torture in mosques which could help explain the origins and extent of this strange phenomenon. [1][2][3] ADM (talk) 22:59, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Correction - there is one report of a torture chamber in a Mosque replicated across multiple media outlets. It is hardly a great surprise that in a country ran in no small part by paramilitary organisations who rely on extra-judicial killing and torture to impose political objectives on the people this occurs. Hardly something reasonable people would or could consider a region wide network of torture chambers in Mosques as you infer.

By the same logic it might be necessary to create a whole series of articles Torture in homes, Torture in Churches, Torture in Prisons, Torture in Schools, Torture in Parks, Torture in Gardens, Torture in Castles, Torture in Properties Associated with the National Trust, Torture in US Embassies... etc.. etc... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.23.16.229 (talk) 19:56, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Dead Links

Citation 1 is a dead link. --Trakon (talk) 19:56, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Fixed. I found the article on the UN website, rather than wherever the other one pointed to. --Trakon (talk) 20:02, 25 February 2010 (UTC)