trickybeck wrote:
paulsol wrote:
I've always said its torture by any definition of the word. The UN just hasn't caught up yet.
They haven't?
The U.N. has a
definition for torture which waterboarding clearly fits.
Yes. So clearly that even though the technique of waterboarding has been used by many UN members for decades (including France and China), the UN committee on Torture failed to *ever* identify it as a banned interrogation technique until November of 2006. And they still didn't define it as "torture":
Quote:
rescind any interrogation technique, including methods involving sexual humiliation, "waterboarding", "short shackling" and using dogs to induce fear, that constitutes torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, in all places of detention under State's de facto effective control, in order to comply with obligations under CAT
Note, that this doesn't explicitly declare waterboarding to be torture. It includes it in a list of things that constitute *either* torture *or* "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment". Specifically, the second set are those punishments which the Geneva Convention prohibits to all categories of prisoners taken during a time of war (whether POWs, civilians, or unlawful combatants, all must be treated humanely).
Not exactly a ringing declaration.
Let me also point out that as far as anyone knows the US only used waterboarding on three prisoners, and that was back in 2002/2003. So, years before the committee request for the US to stop using the technique.
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If they have an official list of activities which are considered torture or not, I'd be interested in reading it.
There isn't a list, so much as sets of activities that have been clearly determined to be torture, and you'd have to dig through the documents of the committee on torture to find them all. I did a search for "waterboarding" and got only one hit. While it's possible that it may have been touched upon under a different name, I'm not going to go through every permutation possible to do this. I'll just trust the numerous sites out there that point out that the UN committee has never clearly defined waterboarding as torture. Which is not really surprising considering that the membership of the committee includes China, which is known to use the technique commonly, as well as other nations with pretty questionable human rights records.
Look. I tend to agree with you. I'd love to see waterboarding banned completely by the UN. But so far that body has failed to do anything except write one paper by one committee asking the US not to use it on prisoners captured in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's been incredibly selective as to how this is applied, which I find troubling. It's amazing the quantity of UN position holders who'll say to the media that it's torture, but this somehow never seems to translate into an actual resolution declaring it so.
A UN official telling a newspaper that waterboarding is torture is just one person stating an opinion. While it's a nice sound bite, it has no actual weight in terms of law.
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If that were the case, I'm pretty sure I could think of lots of tortorous activies that wouldn't be listed, unless their list happens to be infinite in length...
Correct. But those actually do "clearly" fall under the definition of torture. See. The problem with waterboarding is that it does not actually cause any physical harm to the subject, and the question of mental harm is in doubt. While some experts will argue that victims can be traumatized and suffer for years after being waterboarded, the same can be said of *any* interrogation technique that goes beyond just politely asking questions. The definition of torture is very clearly speaks of "severe pain and suffering". This traditionally means doing things like burning, shocking, cutting, hitting, etc. While it's possible for someone to be harmed during waterboarding, again, the same thing can be said of any of a number of legal techniques.
The main question is the mental aspect of waterboarding. And that's tricky. While it evokes severe fear reactions from the victim, the effects typically don't last long. Long enough to get an answer to a question, but not long enough normally to qualify as "severe pain and suffering" on a mental level. Heck. You can cause a higher rate of long term mental harm with sleep deprivation then you can with waterboarding. Yet we don't ban that technique entirely (you're just limited to doing it until before severe mental pain and suffering occurs).
I'm not apologizing for waterboarding at all. I'd be perfectly happy if the technique were banned entirely. But then, let's do that. Let's not leave it in this nebulous state where one nation is condemned for using it three times during a time of war, but numerous others use it habitually on their own citizens (as well as POWs) and no one cares. It's either torture and is a violation of the UN resolution on torture, or it isn't.
Let's not have a double standard here. I know we all expect countries like China and North Korea to violate human rights. But that shouldn't be used to turn a blind eye when they do it. I'm perfectly happy to hold the US to a higher standard on a moral level, but that should not translate into how we handle international law. That should be applied equally, yet that's clearly not the case with this issue.
Edited, Jul 7th 2008 6:49pm by gbaji