Victims of Torture and Their Rehabilitation

Abstract

International declarations prescribing torture, while necessary and useful, have had little effect on the practice of torture in 50 or more countries around the world. It would seem that the equalising balance of nuclear power, and corresponding increase in subversion or insurgency have resulted in increasing levels of counter-insurgency operations by security forces. Man has always been willing to invest immense treasure, ingenuity and creativity in the waging of war. Of course insurgency is not exclusively a modern phenomenon and some techniques of interrogation of prisoners are as old as mankind. Techniques often have both a psychological and physical basis, and Amnesty International (I) and others have widely published the details of physical tortures, some new, some old, but all equally abhorrent. Often sexual assault and humiliations, rigid control, threats and promises are combined with physical pain through beating and painful postures. Deprivation of sensation, food, water and sleep combined with other techniques have been known for centuries as methods of coercion. Their systematic use seems to have reached a higher level of intensity than previously known.