The practice of torture is so ancient that its origins are lost in the distant past. However, recorded history shows that all major civilizations practiced it, either as a form of punishment or as a means of obtaining information. The ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, Persians, Romans, and Chinese left records of it, and the Bible recounts many examples.

During the 15th and 16th centuries in Europe, the Holy Inquisition used torture to elicit confessions of heresy or other beliefs or actions contrary to the dogma of the Catholic Church. During the 17th century, suspected witches were subjected to tortures for essentially the same purpose, with those found guilty of heresy or of witchcraft burned alive.

Examination of ancient castles reveals areas reserved as prisons and designed to be as unpleasant as possible. Some spaces were simply deep pits below the lower floor of a castle tower, where a prisoner was literally dropped and then left until such time as someone cared to retrieve him. Such spaces are called "oubliettes," after the French word oublier, meaning "to forget." Sometimes formal detention facilities were in basement areas with barred entrances. These were usually too low for a person inside to stand upright, and their location permitted frequent flooding from ground water or the castle moat. In general, the quarters reserved for housing prisoners were themselves a mode of torture.

Modern practices of torture have several possible goals: extraction of information, incitement of fear or terror, inflicting pain to punish, obtaining a confession pursuant to a criminal investigation, or, in rarer instances, application of pain for perverse sexual pleasure.

Among Western nations, legal barriers to torture became universal between 1750 and 1820, partly as a result of the Enlightenment and partly in recognition that torture was not an effective method of obtaining confessions or information, since the victim would say anything to make the torture stop. The Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment," thereby outlawing torture.

International efforts to end torture by legislation resulted in a number of conventions. Article 1 of the UN Convention Against Torture defines torture as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person . . . when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official." The European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment also prohibit torture. The Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War also specifically prohibits torture and mistreatment of prisoners. This is but the latest in a series of Geneva Conventions beginning in 1864, all of which prohibited torture. Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations states, "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." Despite this apparent universality of legal bars to torture, resistance to its abandonment was remarkably stubborn, and local police routinely brutalized prisoners to elicit confessions well into the 20th century. Many nations still allow their police to beat and torture prisoners, especially throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Generally, torture attempts to obtain compliance from the victim by inflicting or threatening severe pain or mutilation or through psychological methods, where one is deprived of sleep, disoriented, isolated, and in some instances subjected to sensory deprivation and the application of drugs. Threats or displays of torture of others may also be used.

Torture methods vary by culture and utilize available technology. The ancient Greeks wrote about the use of a brazen bull in which victims were roasted to death. The Romans practiced crucifixion and flagellation (whipping with a special multistoried whip weighted with lead at the ends). In the Middle Ages, the state and/or the church used mechanical devices in torture. The thumbscrew, rack, and iron maiden are a few of the best known of these tools of torture.

Modern torture methods vary by country. For instance, Latin American countries favor using la capuche, placing a hood filled with noxious fumes over the victim's head, and submarine, suspending upside down by the ankles and submerging in a barrel of water until the victim nearly drowns. Many Arab states practice falanga, beating the soles of the feet with a narrow hard object, inflicting excruciating pain and leaving the victim unable to walk. Strapping may be part of other torture methods, or a torture by itself, and involves immobilizing the individual in unnatural positions by means of ropes or other restraints.

In the United States, where the law prohibits torture, intelligence agencies practice forms of psychological torture and teach them to agents of other nations. The CIA has run a training program for decades at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, teaching many interrogation techniques, including those defined as forms of torture, as illustrated by the acts committed at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Rape and sexual abuse are common methods of torture worldwide. Both men and women may be subjected to sexual abuse and mutilation to humiliate them and break down their will to resist questioning. Societal taboos about sexuality often work in favor of the torturer, so that the victim becomes a social outcast as well as a traumatized torture survivor. Soldiers, insurgents, guerilla fighters, and paramilitary forces routinely use severe beatings and rape to torture and terrorize the civilian population.

References:

1) American Psychiatric Association. 2000. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th ed. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.

2) Boss, Pauline. 2000. Ambiguous Loss. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

3) Duner, Bertil, ed. 1999. An End to Torture: Strategies for Its Eradication. New York: Zed.

4) European Union. 2000. Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. Brussels, Belgium: European Union.

5) Foa, Edna B., Terence M. Keane, and Matthew J. Friedman, eds. 2004. Effective Treatments for PTSD. New York: Guilford.

6) Forrest, Duncan, ed. 1996. A Glimpse of Hell: Reports on Torture Worldwide. New York: New York University Press.

7) Harbury, Jennifer K. 2005. Truth, Torture, and the American Way. Boston: Beacon Press.

8) Levinson, Sanford, ed. 2004. Torture: A Collection. New York: Oxford University Press.

9) Prip, Karen. 1994. "Physical Torture Methods and Their Sequelae." Torture (suppl. 1):9-13.

10) Timerman, Jacobo. 2002. Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

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