# Water torture

Water torture encompasses a variety of techniques using water to inflict physical or psychological harm on a victim as a form of torture or execution.

## Forced ingestion

In this form of water torture, water is forced down the throat and into the stomach. It was used as a legal torture and execution method by the courts in France in the 17th and 18th centuries. At the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century it was used against Filipinos by American Forces during the Philippine–American War and was employed against British Commonwealth, American and Chinese prisoners of war during World War II by the Japanese. The Human Rights Watch organization reports that in the 2000s, security forces in Uganda sometimes forced a detainee to lie face up under an open water spigot.
Water intoxication can result from drinking too much water. This has caused some fatalities over the years in fraternities in North America during initiation week. For example, a person was hazed to death by Chi Tau (local) of Chico State (California) in 2005 via the forcing of pushups and the drinking of water from a bottle.

## Waterboarding

Waterboarding is a form of torture in which water is poured over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages of an immobilized captive, causing the person to experience the sensation of drowning. In the most common method of waterboarding, the captive's face is covered with cloth or some other thin material and immobilized on their back at an incline of 10 to 20 degrees. Torturers pour water onto the face over the breathing passages, causing an almost immediate gag reflex and creating a drowning sensation for the captive. Normally, water is poured intermittently to prevent death; however, if the water is poured uninterruptedly it will lead to death by asphyxia. Waterboarding can cause extreme pain, damage to lungs, brain damage from oxygen deprivation, other physical injuries including broken bones due to struggling against restraints, and lasting psychological damage. Adverse physical effects can last for months, and psychological effects for years. The term "water board torture" appeared in press reports as early as 1976.

## Chinese water torture

Chinese water torture, or use of a dripping machine, is a mentally painful process in which cold water is slowly dripped onto the scalp, forehead or face for a prolonged period of time. The process causes fear and mental deterioration of the subject. The pattern of the drops is often irregular, and the cold sensation is jarring, which causes anxiety as a person tries to anticipate the next drip.

## Dunking

Ducking stools or cucking stools were chairs formerly used for punishment of disorderly women, scolds, and dishonest tradesmen in medieval Europe and elsewhere at later times. The ducking-stool was a form of wymen pine, or "women's punishment", as referred to in Langland's Piers Plowman (1378). They were instruments of public humiliation and censure both primarily for the offense of scolding or backbiting and less often for sexual offences like bearing an illegitimate child or prostitution.
The stools were technical devices which formed part of the wider method of law enforcement through social humiliation. A common alternative was a court order to recite one's crimes or sins after Mass or in the market place on market day or informal action such as a Skimmington ride. They were usually of local manufacture with no standard design. Most were simply chairs into which the offender could be tied and exposed at her door or the site of her offence. Some were on wheels like a tumbrel that could be dragged around the parish. Some were put on poles so that they could be plunged into water, hence "ducking" stool. Stocks or pillories were similarly used for the punishment of men or women by humiliation.

## Other forms

* Supposedly, the Rasphuis in Amsterdam, a 17th-century institution that attempted to rehabilitate young male criminals through labor, contained a "water dungeon", the so-called Waterhuis. If prisoners refused to work, they were placed in a cellar that quickly filled with water after a sluice was opened and were handed a pump that enabled them to keep from drowning. Geert Mak and other authors, however, point out that there is no evidence for the existence of this room.
* In the 1970s at Bautzen Prison in the German Democratic Republic there was a punishment cell that filled up with water up to a red light which a large prisoner described as at nose level if he is on tip toes.
* In the 20th century, various U.S. newspapers published details of "water torture" (or the "torture of thirst") in Japan which involved subjecting the victim to a high salt diet for several days, without rice or water, and then offering them water in exchange for a confession: "it is difficult to imagine a more cruel device."