Torture; a sword that cuts you back

By Chaeri Park

Torture has been long used in human history, and the sufferer has always varied from time to time from prisoners to captives. It has been efficient in obtaining information, but it has been controversial when the matter changed to “human rights” and other important social issues. Many nations, understanding the harmfulness of torture, has actually made it illegal, but still some nations are using this method because they think that this might be an effective way in making sure that they keep their power and such. Regardless of what the reason is, one thing is for sure: torture is not a morally permissive thing to do.

        The first reason is simple: It’s on the harm torture brings to an individual’s life. Torture is, as we all know, a method that uses excruciating pain in order to achieve a certain result, find out information, and so on. Of course, temporary pain is also a very harmful thing, but in this case, torture brings about permanent pain both physically and mentally. You might have scars for the rest of your life, but you would also get extreme trauma from the frightening experience. It breaks your mind because you go under extreme conflict when being tortured as you continuously waver between telling information or keeping your stance, and if you somehow tell the torturer some information, you would also suffer from extreme guilt. Moreover, in cases where torture is inflicted on a community as a whole, torture rips apart communities because people cannot trust each other.

        Not only the harms that go to the individuals, but also the harm that goes to democracy is extreme. The very fact that torture is being done in your nation shows that proper democracy is not being carried out and that the nation does not care about protecting you. This could lead to distrust towards society, causing more problems. Here some people might say that there are actually benefits to torture and somehow argue that torturing could actually lead to obtaining useful information, preventing major terrorist attacks beforehand or that there might be a few cases in which someone deserves to be tortured (in case of a war criminal).

        However, there are actually some practical issues considering this argument. One, there are high chances that the suspect (who is also ironically the victim) might just give out wrong information under high amounts of pain. Pain prevents our memory from working properly and the suspect might confuse the sequence of the events that happened Two, maybe the suspect might just deliberately give out misleading pieces of information even when being under torture. In an even more extreme case, the suspect might not say anything at all, thus the only result being a mangled body and a damaged mind. Three, if our country starts engaging in torture, our soldiers might not be treated well by the other countries as well. Feelings are reciprocal after all.

        And lastly but most importantly, their argument is not addressing torture on a fair basis as in this particular case the person who is being tortured is someone who is responsible for a certain act. To view the matter of torture more clearly, let’s change the situation a little bit.

        Let’s say that instead of the suspect being tortured, his or her child gets tortured until the suspect informs them of a certain upcoming attack. In this case, regardless of an attack about to happen, it itself is wrong that a young innocent child is suffering from extreme pain. And this form of torture is what is common in the status quo in nations where the government tries to get rid of people opposing them, and therefore we could say that their scenario isn’t properly representing reality. Also, even if the government isn’t as bad as this one, there still is a high possibility that an innocent person wrongly framed for a crime might be suffering from torture. Therefore, we can’t stop doubting the effectiveness of torture.

        Not only the practical aspects, but torture is also wrong on a principle level.

        Torture itself is wrong regardless of who’s being subjected to it because it goes against basic human rights. In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 5 states that “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishments”. This is also contained in Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and

Political Rights and other different documents. What do they all say? They argue that torture is not something that can be done to other human being as it goes against the right to live or the right to live in a better environment. Torture is something “inhumane” that absolutely no one deserves regardless of what they have done. In this aspect it won’t be wrong to say that the person who is in charge of torturing is also guilty; if someone should be punished or even ‘tortured’ according to the logic of some people, they should not be exempt from that possibility.

        To sum up, even if we say that the others were right in saying that torture brings about more benefits than harms, still torture is not going to be justified; the fact that something is beneficial (which isn’t really a fact to be exact in the case of torture) doesn’t really mean that it is morally a good thing. The same would go for torture, as torture severely harms people’s right to live; therefore torture is something immoral.

        Torturing another individual leaves countless scarson his/her life, on democracy, and would torture your conscience back.