A Dangerous Shift of Norms

'There is no responsible use of torture'
By Brita Sydhoff

If the entertainment industry, not least Hollywood, reflects a prevailing state of mind in the United States and the West in general, torture may be steadily gaining acceptance as a means of extracting information from suspects. Or is it just a coincidence that the entertainment industry increasingly appeals to its audience through scenes of torture and violence at just this time when politicians and intellectuals are arguing in favour of interrogation methods that amount to torture, as a countermeasure in the socalled war on terror? In an earlier season of the popular Fox television series 24, Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) agent Jack Bauer fought a radical Islamist plot to cause meltdown at US nuclear power plants.

The series is highly entertaining, but it is also a test of its audience's views on the ticking-bomb scenario: are they prepared to condone torture if thousands of innocent lives are at stake? Is it acceptable, for example, when a CTU agent tortures his colleague's husband with electric cables in an attempt to extract the information that could possibly prevent the meltdown? The fact that 24 presents the enemies of the US as dehumanized beings who are willing to kill even their own children in their terrorist fight against a democratic society suggests that the upholders of law and life are left with no alternatives, so that torture becomes acceptable in extreme situations.

The series also gives the impression that torture is not always as bad as its reputation. In one scene a CTU director used a stun gun repeatedly against a female staff member who was assumed to have knowledge that could prevent the meltdown. What was her reaction when the director realized she was not involved in the plot? She was disappointed with her superior for mistrusting her, but then demanded a pay rise and went back to her desk. Just another bad day at work.

This presentation of what we can call the torture dilemma, combined with the minimization of the effects of torture, make it necessary to reiterate two facts that are increasingly questioned in anti-terrorism provisions:

- The prohibition against torture in international law is absolute: nothing can justify torture. This principle is reflected in the United Nations Convention Against Torture amongst other international law instruments. The logic is that allowing torture in exceptional circumstances would open a Pandora's box and would lead to a situation in which states would be at liberty to respond to perceived extraordinary crises by diluting existing definitions of torture.

In the words of the British law lord, Lord Hope of Craigshead: "A single instance, if approved to meet the threat of international terrorism, would establish a principle with the power to grow and expand so that everything that falls within it would be regarded as acceptable."

The US detention camp at Guantánamo aptly illustrates the problem. The UN has recently criticized the US for using interrogation methods amounting to torture against detainees at the camp. The US government denies the charges, relying instead on its own interpretation of what constitutes torture, an interpretation that is far narrower than that of the UN convention, to which the US is a signatory.

- In the real world torture is even worse than its reputation. Torture is not only about the immediate pain; it is also about the all-encompassing fear associated with being completely at the mercy of one's torturers.

In most cases the actual physical and/or psychological abuse coupled with complete helplessness makes the victim's subsequent life a hell of depression, rage, anxiety, nightmares and feelings of guilt, which are a few of the common consequences of torture. The victim's family is heavily affected too. And all of this happens whether the victim is in fact "guilty" or not.

These two crucial factors - the slippery slope associated with questioning the absoluteness of the prohibition against torture, and the effects of torture in the real world - must be at the forefront of the debate at a time when leading democratic countries have implicitly and explicitly expressed reservations as to that absoluteness.

Any attempt to open a Pandora's box, in entertainment or the real world, should raise deep concern. Torture is not something you walk away from with a disappointed shrug, whether at the hands of your boss at the office, hooded thugs in a soundproof room at the back of the local police station, or foreign soldiers in the dungeons of Abu Ghraib. And it is no less torture when secret agents working for democratic governments use stun guns and electric cables to interrogate another human being than when the henchmen of dictatorships extract their victims' fingernails or burn them with irons.

Those who claim otherwise are playing a dangerous game, and contributing to a treacherous discourse that has developed in the context of the war on terror, a discourse that has caused a slow but unmistakable shift of norms and values to the point that it has become plausible to suggest that torture can be used in a responsible and morally sound fashion. It cannot. In empirical terms, history does not give us one single example to support the claim that there can be such a thing as responsible use of torture. No torturing governments in the history of humanity, whether dictatorships or democracies, have limited their use of torture to indisputable ticking-bomb scenarios. If anything, the present US government's unclear policies on torture and the resulting abuses at detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan have confirmed the lesson that any opening, however small, that allows the use of torture will turn instantly into a festering gap, even when the perpetrator is a leading democracy.

The claim that there can be responsible use of torture ignores the fact that, even in theoretical terms, foolproof safeguards against mistakes (such as that of the stun gun incident in 24) are not possible. Nothing can establish beyond doubt that the guy in custody is the right guy. That the information leading to his arrest is 100% reliable. That he does not just look convincingly like the real guy. That he has not been set up.

The logical next step is to allow torture on the grounds of justified suspicion. And so it goes. Accept a shift of norms, however small and well argued, and you blow the lid off Pandora's box. Allow a little torture and no one will be entirely safe.
Brita Sydhoff is the secretary general of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims