Individual Friends who have experienced torture directly or through their own family have witnessed to the power of prayer in tackling the evil from which torture springs and they have expressed concern about societies in which torture is used in a spectrum of punishment. Factors and circumstances which give rise to the use of torture have been analysed both by the international and regional mechanisms and by non-governmental organisations. We know, therefore, the legal and practical measures needed to stop it, and yet it continues. Governments are reluctant to take effective measures, as was illustrated by the impasse reached in the recent negotiations in Geneva to establish an international system similar to the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture. There is a need for education to help recognise how torture is built into cultures and institutions and ways of eradicating it from systems.
Torture creates evil and causes unacceptable suffering for individual victims and their families.
It undermines the spiritual and moral well-being of societies. The effect on the torturer too is just as destructive. Thus to order torture, just as much as to execute it, of itself places each responsible party in spiritual and moral jeopardy. It is inadequately challenged by religious leaders, and yet its nature undermines the spiritual well-being of societies worldwide. Support Amnesty International whose Third Worldwide Campaign on Torture will begin in the Year 2000.