Form Of Torture Research Articles

Wine Mixed with Myrrh (Mark 15.23) and Crurifragium (John 19.31-32): Two Details of the Passion Narratives

This article deals with two details of the passion narratives: the wine mixed with myrrh (Mk 15.23) and the breaking of the legs of the two men crucified with Jesus (Jn 19.31-32). It is written jointly by a botanist (Kirsi Nisula), a physician (Jorma Toppari) and an exegete (Erkki Koskenniemi). Most scholars believe that the wine mixed with myrrh was used as analgesic and refer to b. Sanh. 43a. However, this passage does not deal with myrrh, which, moreover, has no strong analgesic effect. A small amount of myrrh in wine preserves it, but if it is used excessively, it makes the wine impossible to drink, and offering it to a man suffering from strong dehydration would be a form of torture. Breaking the legs was used widely as a deterrent punishment for the slaves, also without crucifixion, and it could lead to death. It was apparently common to break the legs of the crucified, which added to the deterrent effect, but also hurried their death.

Boundary-Breaking Courage

South History Across the Color Line. By Nell Irvin Painter. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2002. 256 pp. $37.00 cloth; $17.95 paper. South of Tradition: Essays on African American Literature. By Trudier Harris-Lopez. Athens: U of Georgia P, 2002. xii + 230 pp. $24.95. Nell Painter's Southern History Across the Color Line and Trudier Harris-Lopez's South of Tradition: Essays on African American Literature highlight scholarly careers of originality and complex vision. These texts move beyond traditions of historiography and literary criticism, which often forestall critical wholeness and "down-home" fun, to demonstrate excellence marked by the transgressive verve of two innovative and progressive scholars. In these texts, Painter and Harris-Lopez offer insights beyond the borders of popular critical models. They demonstrate boundary-breaking courage that distinguishes their work from the volumes of often "ordinary" and sometimes-redundant essay collections available today. This two-part review looks at both books, highlighting moments that reveal why the courage and vision found in the best-of-the-best in African American studies shines through most dynamically in these scholars' work. I. Standing in the Breach Nell Painter's journey towards intellectual distinctiveness frames and structures her collection while encouraging a decompartmentalized articulation of American history. Each essay here bypasses tightly defined race, class, and gender categories of exploration, which Painter describes as the "blunt tools of analysis." They bridge "the old habit of writing only [End Page 145] about white people or writing only about black people" with a conscious exploration of "individual subjectivity" and the inter-subjective arrangements of time and place as defined by various patterns of personal and communal growth. Painter investigates class, the body, cultural symbolism, and sexuality from a materialist perspective with many of her interpretations and insights illuminated by what she characterizes as her interdisciplinary "auto-education." "I had to learn a great deal more than what my graduate education had provided," she explains. The thoroughness and thoughtfulness of the essays that result from her self-taught interdisciplinarity inspire and open a conversation about scholarly possibilities and exchange that ultimately reject traditional academic paradigms, particularity those that are "locked-down" by the notion of area specializations. The value of engaging in a versatile and trangressive intellectual exchange among disciplines and among a variety of analytical tools is evident in the opening chapter. "Soul Murder and Slavery: Toward a Fully Loaded Cost Accounting" is one of Painter's best essays. In it she asks readers to sojourn with her into the painful psychology and body politics of slavery. It is an extremely successful attempt to move with intellectual rigor and consistency toward a meaningful interpretation of a world mapped in blood by cruelty and violence. While crossing analytical racial boundaries as well as violating class and gender sectioning, Painter engages feminist and "social science scholarship on child abuse and other forms of torture," psychology, and African American literary studies in her broad, interpersonal view of the wounds and perpetual assaults of slavery and its legacies. Painter's methodological chronicle and challenge continues in essays focusing on the life, individual development and "auto-education" of two southern activists whose personal identities and psyches were affected deeply by the race and gender politics of their time, Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas and Hosea Hudson. Painter reveals how each adjusted to personal realities couched within worlds and ideologies that molded their lives broadly and, sometimes, in unexpected and dramatic ways. For Hosea Hudson struggling for the civil rights of slave descendents and other minorities during the mid-twentieth century carried him from sharecropper to popularity as an organic intellectual (one who "educated himself out of the thrall of conventional thinking"). On the other hand, Painter's discussion of Gertrude Thomas reveals how this southern lady's [End Page 146] formal education fell short of providing what she needed to survive a change in circumstances brought about by the end of the Civil War. Painter's collection is consistent in its concern for...

What's Wrong with Torture?

Why is torture morally wrong? This question has been neglected or avoided by recent moral philosophy, in part because torture is by its nature especially difficult to discuss. Torture involves degrees of pain and fear that are often said to be utterly indescribable; indeed, these experiences are sometimes said to destroy in their victims the very hope of any sort of communication or shared experience whatsoever. Torture has proved surprisingly difficult to define. There is no clear agreement on the distinction between torture, coercion, and manipulation, or whether such techniques as sleep and sensory deprivation, isolation, or prolonged questioning should count as forms of torture. In addition, we may be fearful of deriving some sort of perverse titillation from the subject, or of being able to dispassionately contemplate the agonies of real victims of torture. Those who have not suffered torture may well feel What’s Wrong with Torture? DAVID SUSSMAN

Responses by health care providers in Ireland to the experiences of women refugees who have survived gender- and ethnic-based torture

Women refugees who have survived gender-based torture comprise one of Ireland's most vulnerable segments of the refugee population. There is widespread agreement regarding the particularities of women refugees' experiences, including interrelated issues like lack of language training and childcare options. The increasing number of women in Ireland's refugee community accentuates the disparity between their particular needs and the various services available to them. I propose a holistic and humanitarian approach to the rehabilitation of torture survivors. I will contend that rape as a form of torture is invariably a gendered and ethnicised phenomenon. Because the social constructions of gender and ethnicity manifest themselves in the physical body, women's bodies are targets of violence. Women who have survived gender-based torture share unique survival and healing needs. I will argue that it is necessary to develop specific policies and programs, as well as an integrated service delivery model, to address the situation of this marginalized group to ensure women's opportunity to create a healthy life for themselves and their families. I will posit community-based approaches to torture rehabilitation that have been successful in Canada and Nigeria to advocate for the implementation of appropriate services to these women survivors in Ireland.

Abu Ghraib: Arguing against Exceptionalism

Such dehumanization is unacceptable in any culture, but it is especially so in the Arab world. Homosexual acts are against Islamic law and it is humiliating for men to be naked in front of other men, Bernard Haykel, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at New York University, explained. Being put on top of each other and forced to masturbate, being naked in front of each other-it's all a form of torture, Haykel said. -Seymour M. Hersh

An Examination of the International Understanding of Political Rape and the Significance of Labeling it Torture

This study aims to discuss and define rape as a form of torture in order to elevate the status of a crime which is consistently under-represented and under-estimated. Rape is seen as a crime committed by one individual against another as a specifically personal, sexual crime, an interpretation which ignores the wider motivations of the act which can be founded on political, religious, cultural grounds, as part of a larger oppressive regime of subordination. Where rape has been assimilated, from the criminal act, into a key weapon of war or violence, it has become instrumental in campaigns for the devastation, destruction and alienation of society, its power extended by the knowledge that the intimate damage done to the actual rape victim will reverberate through the larger social context. It is essential for this type of torture to be recognized as such in order for its victims to be able to fully benefit from the protection and the prevention of

Peace as a Human Right: The Invasion of Women into the World of High International Politics

In February 2001, under United Nations (UN) auspices at The Hague, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia found three Serbian men guilty of rape and sexual enslavement for their violent abuse, forced impregnation, mutilation, and murder of Muslim women in Foca during the Bosnian War between 1992 and 1995. In the mid-1990s, for the first time in history as well, similar charges were lodged against generals in the gruesome Rwandan war in a trial ( Prosecutor v. Akayesu) presided over by South African jurist Navanetham Pillay under the jurisdiction of the UN-sponsored International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Their guilty verdicts were delivered in 1998, concluding what has been described as the worse human rights abuse case and genocide since World War II. That these cases were even brought before the international tribunals can only be attributed to the relentless determination of an international community of feminist crusaders who haunted diplomats at the UN meetings on human rights in Vienna in 1993 and in 1995-1998 in Rome and the Netherlands, where they had assembled to negotiate a treaty to establish a standing International Criminal Tribunal. These activists, the Women's Caucus for Gender Justice, comprising feminists from every continent, lobbied to insure that the protocols establishing the tribunals included women prosecutors and judges; that the war crimes charges moved well beyond the familiar definitions of genocide used in Nuremberg and Tokyo after World War II; and that high crimes and human rights abuses of a broad sexual category be understood to fall under the definition of torture. define domestic violence and family abuse as forms of torture and...sexual exploitation, domestic violence, family abuse, dowry murder, stoning

Rape as a Form of Torture

Using material taken from contemporary feminist theory and also from work on human rights, it is argued that rape is a form of torture, and that it operates on powerful levels, both literally and metaphorically. Part of the argument is that rape has achieved the status it has as political force for exploitation because of strong beliefs about cultural reproduction and about the roles that women play in cultural reproduction.

Sexual Rights as Human Rights – Protected under Existing Human Rights Treaties?

AbstractExisting case law under human rights treaties, in particular Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, includes several findings and interpretations related to sexual rights. The sexual identity and orientation of a person, as well as his or her sexual autonomy and integrity have found protection under the right to respect for one's private and family life. Among other important treaty provisions giving protection to sexual rights in the framework of international human rights law are the prohibition of torture and other inhuman or degrading treatment, the prohibition of discrimination, the right to a fair trial and the right to marry and to found a family. Under humanitarian law rape, one of the main forms of violations of sexual integrity and autonomy, is defined as a crime against humanity, with the consequence of individual criminal responsibility arising. Rape committed by a public official during detention has been defined as form of torture by the European Court of Human Rights. Positive state obligations exist under the right to respect for an individual's private life to sanction rape or other breaches of sexual autonomy and integrity when committed by other private individuals. Sexual identity and its manifestations, again, enjoy protection under the right to private and family life, as has been shown by international case law related to homosexuality and transsexualism. Here, the autonomous and independent non-discrimination clause in Article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is a basis for further guarantees.

Severity of trauma as predictor of long-term psychological status in survivors of torture

Severity of trauma as a predictor of long-term psychological functioning was examined in 55 tortured political ex-prisoners in Turkey. The assessments included semistructured interviews and measures of anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder. The severity of torture was assessed by measures of number of types of torture, number of exposures to torture, duration of captivity, and perceived distress. The survivors reported a mean of 23 different forms of torture and a mean total of 291 exposures to torture during their captivity. Despite severity of trauma, the number of exposures to torture did not predict posttorture psychological problems, whereas ratings of perceived distress did. Implications of these findings for theory and classification of psychological trauma and for legal practices concerning torture survivors are discussed.

Preventing the ITU syndrome or how not to torture an ITU patient! Part I

Staff working in intensive therapy units (ITUs) have known about the 'ITU syndrome' for many years. In spite of this the syndrome continues to occur. It is suggested that one of the reasons for this continued occurrence is that ITU staff place a lower priority on psychological care than they do on physical care. In this paper the potential seriousness of the ITU syndrome is emphasised by describing it as a form of torture. Publications from Amnesty International which describe methods of psychological torture are provided to support this suggestion. The analogies between psychological torture and ITU care are explored, and this is followed by consideration of ways of reducing the incidence of the syndrome and a suggested method of auditing an ITU in order to identify potential problem areas.

Psychological Disturbances Among 47 Croatian Prisoners of War Tortured in Detention Camps

To the Editor. —As medical professionals providing immediate health care to Croatian prisoners of war (POWs) released from detention camps in Serbia or occupied parts of Croatia, 1 we witnessed grave violations of their human rights. Of the 5261 POWs released by February 1993, the majority reported being tortured. We present a few of our findings, regarding a group of 47 POWs. These were members of the Croatian Army from Vukovar who had been severely tortured, both physically and psychologically, in a detention camp in the occupied area of Croatia. All were beaten and denied any information about their families. Most experienced other classic forms of torture 2 including forced body position, mock executions, hard labor, and blackmail. Half were forced to eat salt without being allowed to drink water, or they had salt put in incision wounds made on their thighs. Twenty-three percent were tortured by exposure to cold,

Researching the Minimum Wage: A Moral Economy for the Classroom

Writing and research assignments in a composition class may seem politically inert but are not. Even the trivial is ideological. Writing about one's summer vacation, that quintessential cliche of composition instruction, is inherently since it must necessarily elicit sensitive socioeconomic information about the writer, information that can scarcely be considered value-free. Ironically, the numerous assaults on what has recently been termed the neoFascism of the left (Camille Paglia qtd. in Stanfill 24) and illiberal education (D'Souza 51) have inadvertently revealed the severely ideological intent of all pedagogies. This backlash against so-called political correctness has made glaringly explicit the extent to which every cultural practice is a practice. In fact, thanks to current conservative retrenchment, one need not any longer justify the claim that writing is always already a act. Certainly, the writing assignment to be discussed here, an assignment which requires students to research and report on what it would be like to live on minimum wage, is not really any more than a more traditional research assignment on, say critical perspectives on Hamlet or the effects of television on children; it is simply more obvious about its content because it involves an inquiry into economics rather than literature or culture. As this assignment suggests, my approach to teaching composition is openly in that I choose, for pedagogical reasons, to focus writing classes on social issues. I take this socially-oriented approach to the teaching of writing not because I regard writing as form without content but because I find that my students squirm when I deal with rhetorical issues and research techniques in isolation. While I find the detailed analysis of rhetorical structures fascinating, the majority of my students regard this exercise as a form of torture. By contrast, they find discussion of social concerns intellectually engaging and thus, because they are engaged, they perform better rhetorically. Like Toni-Lee Capossela, whose article, Students as Sociolinguists: Getting

The Swedish Red Cross Centre for the rehabilitation of tortured refugees

In 1985 the Swedish Red Cross opened a Centre for the Rehabilitation of Tortured Refugees in Stockholm. It did so on the bases of a thorough study of what had been done elsewhere in the world, especially in Denmark where the first centre of this kind was established.Sweden accepts about 15,000 refugees each year. The largest groups come from Chile, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Ethiopia, Turkey. Many of them have been exposed to different forms of torture. Hospitals, the social welfare system, lawyers, immigration officers — none of these has any experience in dealing with the consequences. Now all sectors of Swedish society have to meet the needs of these new citizens. Lack of knowledge and understanding can, unintentionally, lead to callous treatment. It was therefore natural for the Swedish Red Cross to start collecting and developing existing knowledge on how to deal with the effects of torture.

Spanking Hurts Everybody

“Is it possible that our children are learning violence across their mommy's and daddy's knees in the name of love, and done in the best interests of the child, with approving nods from the religious and educational establishments—even the courts—while all of us abhor rioting, terrorism, street crime, capital punishment and any form of torture, brutality, and human inhumanity?”