05-01-2009, 10:36 PM
Quote:Whoa, Nelly. In my struggle to start a discussion of what torture is, I said "Defining that line may be difficult, but as a start, physical harm should be a criterion." Nowhere did I exclude mental torture. Nor would I.That would be the source of the misunderstanding, then. I had assumed, apparently incorrectly, that you meant criterion as "necessary but not sufficient". If all you mean is "some kinds of torture involve physical harm", then of course, I agree.
As for criteria (in the broad sense) that I consider important, I think there are several. Pain is one of them, I think anything involving inflicting pain to coerce or interrogate is almost certainly torture. Acute terror is another. Obviously, anything that leaves wounds or disfigurement is included. Anything which compromises the long term health of the prisoner, or causes a nontrivial chance of death, is also included. Discomfort is tougher, but I think stress positions is clearly over the line, as it has a fairly good chance of causing harm. Confinement in some kind of narrow box or cage is torture, but a small prison cell is not; I think space to lie down is the minimum there.
Humiliation, as I said before, is questionable. I don't think (for instance) desecrating holy text is a civilized thing to do from the perspective of an interrogator, but it's not on the level of torture. Subjecting them to sexual humiliation is similar. I think those things should be banned and punished by any organization simply for internal discipline reasons, but I'm less sure they need to be banned by international treaty. However, I don't think those tactics have ever yielded good information, and so are probably quite pointless anyway.
-Jester