Role Of Torture Research Articles

PTSD with secondary psychotic features among trauma-affected refugees: The role of torture and depression

This cross-sectional study examined the prevalence of PTSD with secondary psychotic symptoms (PTSD-SP), its comorbidities, and its association with torture and depression in treatment-seeking refugees. Data were pooled from the Danish Database on Refugees with Trauma (DART). The sample represents approximately 90% of trauma-affected refugee-patients (N = 627) attending a Danish psychiatric outpatient clinic from 2008 to 2013. PTSD, secondary psychotic symptoms, and comorbidities were assessed with structured and routine clinical interviews. The association of PTSD-SP with torture and depression was investigated using hierarchical logistic regression. The prevalence of PTSD-SP in treatment-seeking refugees with PTSD was 30%. Among these, 44% fulfilled the criteria for Enduring Personality Change After Catastrophic Experience (EPCACE). Psychotic symptoms comprised hallucinations and persecutory delusions, often reflecting trauma-related themes. Comorbidity with depression was high (79%). Neither torture, nor other war-trauma (ex-combatant, imprisonment, civilian war trauma) predicted PTSD-SP, but comorbid depression did. Depression only explained a small amount of the total PTSD-SP variance. Results indicate that PTSD-SP is common in treatment-seeking refugees. However, its etiology is poorly understood. This highlights the need for further research to improve diagnosis and treatment for this patient group.

France admits role in torture and murder of mathematician during Algerian war

President Macron’s acknowledgement that the army killed Maurice Audin prompts wider admission that torture was ‘legally’ used during the conflict. President Macron’s acknowledgement that the army killed Maurice Audin prompts wider admission that torture was ‘legally’ used during the conflict.

Permission to Torture

9/11 introduced a new phase in us foreign policy launching the war on terror. Integral to this new us global counterinsurgency was the use of torture as technique deployed to save us lives threatened by international terrorism. President George Bush’s declaration in 2001, ‘Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists’ expresses the logic of counterinsurgency strategy to divide the world into friends and enemies. The division of the world into friends and enemies is based on asymmetrical counterconcepts based on the negation of the ‘Other’. This article argues that the legitimation of torture in the Cold War and Post 9/11 eras arises from imperial/global politics based on a counterinsurgency, terror and torture nexus. Through an analysis of the role of torture in Cold War us counterinsurgency policy in Latin America it argues that torture was a technique of governance to produce victims and forge new political subjectivities. In the Latin American dictatorships abduction, detention and secrecy created legal voids that allowed torture. Post 9/11 global counterinsurgency practices are differentiated between geographical zones identified as the zone of integration and zone of intervention. It is in the zone of intervention that torture has been deployed as a technique in which the distinction between civilian and terrorist has become blurred. It argues that Obama’s failure to close Guantánamo Bay prison as promised reveals that global counterinsurgency continues and that the issue of the us military or intelligence resort to torture remains live despite legal and political attempts to stop it.

'Humanized torture' code Constitutio Criminalis Theresiana

The work is divided into four major parts. In the first, introductory part, the author deals with the theoretical basis, the main rules and the role of torture in criminal proceedings inquisitorial type. In the second, the central part of the paper, the author presents the full text of all 32 members of the head 38 of the Code containing provisions on torture in Serbian translation with brief comments. The third part is dedicated to the abolition of torture in the Habsburg Monarchy 1776, after only eight years of the publication of the Code and the difficulties in implementing that decision. The fourth part is the conclusion, in which the author points out that the code can be criticized because of the legacy of the medieval spirit, but at the time of publication, but mostly because torture. Međutim, unlike their predecessors, providing for the unlimited brutal violence against suspected Code contains numerous provisions that protected the suspect and torture gave a milder, 'humane' form.

A Choreographer's Notes on Making a Dance about the Economy

A collection of process notes by the choreographer and instigator of Turbulence (a dance about the economy). Jokingly referred to as a collective failure, Turbulence is a dance-based performance that intentionally confuses and tweaks the theatrical frame, disappointing expectations and risking collapse through large ensemble improvisation and intentional lack of ensemble or conceptual coherence. Offering some insight on the movement from concept to choreography, and from political crisis to theatrical experiment, Hennessy introduces some of the key texts, games, attitudes, and debates from which the performance emerged. Hennessy's notes are presented as a list, a brief history of behind-the-scenes commentary. Subtitles included Race & Casting, Piss, What We Learned & Practised, and The Dancer's Body. Other sections point to the work's relationship to queer tactics and queer failure, Anzaldúa's borderlands, the role of torture in democracy, and the language of financialization. The notes include commentary by Julie Phelps, one of the performers, and Abby Crain, a colleague in dance making. Turbulence was developed in residencies in the US and Europe, premiered at Portland's TBA festival in September 2012 and has since toured the US and Europe.

EPA-1582 - The role of torture in asylum seekers: preliminary data

Asylum Seekers experience different kinds of trauma, such as tortures, threats and loss of family members in the countries of origin, but also desperate journeys and legal concerns in the accepting countries. Our aim is to investigate mental health disorders among AS and to study the importance of torture in the development of their symptoms. We recruited 45 AS (males, age 29±6), guests of a reception center in Borgo Mezzanone (Foggia, Italy). The following instruments were administered: MINI, SCL-90-R and Davidson Trauma Scale (DTS). Pre-migration, migration, and post-migration stressors were assessed using a self-administered scale. 75,6% of our patients reported a Major Depressive Episode currently, while 20% in the past. 35,6% suffered from PTSD, 13,3% agoraphobia. and 88,9% GAD. 2,3% reported psychotic symptoms and 13,3% alcohol or drugs abuse in the last year. Torture showed a correlation with PTSD (p<0,01), while physical injuries correlated with alcohol abuse (p<0,02), but not with other psychiatric disorders. Tortured ones had greater scores in pre-migration stressors scale (p<0,001) and greater DTS avoidance (p=0,03), DTS global gravity (p=0,003) and DTS total score (p=0,04). Both torture and PTSD did not correlate with SCL-90-R scales. most of AS showed depressive and anxious symptoms and one-third had PTSD. All of them experienced different kinds of traumas, but only torture seems to play a major role in developing PTSD, while all kinds of trauma are equally important as to the perceived symptomatology, since both torture and PTSD did not correlate with higher SCL-90-R scores.

Reconciling the Past: Torture's Place in US Policy

The Politics of Prisoner Abuse: The United States and Enemy Prisoners After 9/11. By David P. Forsythe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 315 pp., $29.99 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-521-18110-5). Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation. By W. McCoy Alfred. Madison: University of Wisconsin, 2012. 401 pp., $24.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-299-28854-9). Can a country confront its past and change the norms that guide its policy decisions? The controversy surrounding the United States' detention and interrogation policies during the War on Terror has provided ample opportunity to engage this question and discuss what these policies mean to US security, values, and legitimacy. The “enhanced” interrogation techniques championed by the George W. Bush administration, the use of offshore detention sites, and the establishment of military commissions attracted media and scholarly attention and spurred vigorous debate over the legality and morality of US policy (Danner 2004; Sands 2008; Wittes 2008). As we gain some distance from the immediate post-9/11 period, researchers are now able to analyze how abusive tactics came to be a tool of the US government and compare the policies of the Bush and Obama administrations. Two recent books on US abuse of detainees delve into the policies that began under the Bush administration and reverberated into the Obama years in order to extract some lessons about how we arrived at these policies, how these policies have shaped the politics and culture of the United States, and how we should move forward. David P. Forsythe's The Politics of Prisoner Abuse: The United States and Enemy Prisoners After 9/11 and Alfred W. McCoy's Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation draw upon an abundant body of research from the pre- and post-Bush administration periods to provide comprehensive analyses of law, torture, and post-9/11 policy. As the authors construct windows into the creation and implementation of detainee policy, they present incisive, thorough critiques of Bush administration actions and the nagging impunity that has followed. In asking how detainee policy was constructed, they also grapple with the more difficult question of whether the United States can confront the role of torture …

Dutch Cases on Torture Committed in Afghanistan: The Relevance of the Distinction between Internal and International Armed Conflict

On 14 October 2005, The Hague District Court sentenced two Afghan asylum seekers for their role in torture in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The Court determined that the conflict in Afghanistan between 1978 and 1992 had been non-international in character. In a previous issue of this Journal, Mettraux questioned the need to distinguish between internal and international armed conflict. This comment argues that the preoccupation of the court with the nature of the conflict was understandable and necessary.

Torture and Photography

Torture and Photography: Abu Ghraib attempts to think the mutual relation, ships between torture and photography, addressing issues of objectivity, publicity, and distance. In a world where bodies have been divested of human rights, the objectification of the camera seems the perfect complement. Exploring the prophylactic character of film, the author proposes human touch as always in excess of this objectified state of affairs. Along with memoranda from the Bush administration on the issues of detainee rights and the role of torture in interrogation, the essay engages with the theoretical work of Susan Sontag, Elaine Scarry, Michel Foucault, Georges Bataille, Erwin Straus, and Giorgio Agamben in staking out the intersection of torture and photography.

Should doctors apologise for their role in torture?

Doctors have been involved in inhumane treatment of people throughout history.1 They have harmed patients by being either obstinate believers in flawed medical theories or instruments of corrupt political regimes. Notorious examples include the inhumane treatment of mentally ill patients in medieval “asylums,”2 torture by Nazi doctors on thousands of prisoners in German concentration camps,3 and the unethical radiation experiments on prisoners conducted by American doctors during the cold war.4 Recently, US military doctors were alleged to be complicit in prisoner abuse in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, collaborating in designing …

Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran

The role of torture in recent Iranian politics is the subject of Ervand Abrahamian's important and disturbing book. Although Iran officially banned torture in the early twentieth century, Abrahamian provides documentation of its use under the Shahs and of the widespread utilization of torture and public confession under the Islamic Republican governments. His study is based on an extensive body of material, including Amnesty International reports, prison literature, and victims' accounts that together give the book a chilling immediacy. According to human rights organizations, Iran has been at the forefront of countries using systematic physical torture in recent years, especially for political prisoners. Is the government's goal to ensure social discipline? To obtain information? Neither seem likely, because torture is kept secret and victims are brutalized until something other than information is obtained: a public confession and ideological recantation. For the victim, whose honor, reputation, and self-respect are destroyed, the act is a form of suicide. In Iran a subject's 'voluntary confession' reaches a huge audience via television. The accessibility of television and use of videotape have made such confessions a primary propaganda tool, says Abrahamian, and because torture is hidden from the public, the victim's confession appears to be self-motivated, increasing its value to the authorities. Abrahamian compares Iran's public recantations to campaigns in Maoist China, Stalinist Russia, and the religious inquisitions of early modern Europe, citing the eerie resemblance in format, language, and imagery. Designed to win the hearts and minds of the masses, such public confessions - now enhanced by technology - continue as a means to legitimize those in power and to demonize 'the enemy'.