Talk:Uses of torture in recent times/Archive 1

message: You keep posting these biased reports about the use of torture within countries and cultures that don't tolerate it.  But you won't allow any reports on countries that use it every day, such as Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Niger, etc...<Br>
You are a biased fool.
Epsilon3 02:17, 18 December 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bias Against the U.S. 

message: :...However, it has been used throughout history, and, despite its prohibition, it is still used by many governments.
:Realistically, torture has been a tool of many states throughout history and for many states it remains so (unofficially and when expedient and desired) today.
FT2 it seems to me that the two sentences say the same thing. Is there any way you can combine them? Philip Baird Shearer 10:30, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Try that.  Edit it if its not perfect :)  FT2 04:49, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)
done ;-) --Philip Baird Shearer 08:37, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

text: to use techniques which appear to be a form of torture
-- Viajero 15:06, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Introduction

message: I feel the treatment of Israel is unfair. Firstly, it does not even mention the landmark 1999 Supreme Court ruling (http://62.90.71.124/files_eng/94/000/051/a09/94051000.a09.HTM) that all torture - even moderate physical pressure - is illegal. This makes Israel the ONLY country in the world to have outlawed any form of physical violence in a non-military setting. To say the least, this is impressive. Please can people read the Supreme Court ruling, and then decide how to incorporate it into the article.
Batmanand 17:37, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You said that "Israeli law - technically - allows it". Thus it's not illegal. // Liftarn
I assume you are referring to my discussion of the Supreme Court ruling on the Torture talk page. When I say technically allows it, I mean that there is a clause in an Israeli Law that basically says there is a legal defense called the "necessary defense". This is true of just about every country in the world. For example, if I am a fire-arms trained police officer, and I shoot a man who is carrying a piece of wood because I thought at the time that his action would harm me and others, I can use the "necessary defense" to say it was necessary, in that situation, from my viewpoint, to shoot him; even though shooting unarmed people is illegal. Torture, or even moderate physical pressure, are not legal in Israel. However, there are legal defenses for those who could be tried for them. --Batmanand 16:01, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Israel 

message: I made some changes based on your comments Batmanand, it did look a bit unbalanced after I read your post. Hope you find it better now. 
TonyClarke 22:45, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Israel changes

message: While I take Batmanand's point about lack of info, this article is so slanted it seems hardly worth bothering with. There are paragraphs on the Birmingham 6 (even though there doesn't seem to be any evidence of torture) but nothing on North Korea, Iraq, etc. Surely whoever created this article could have found evidence, for example, on Argentina in the 70s or 80s, or Guatemala. It's not as if this information isn't out there. In fact the UK section is particularly strange - is the 1977 case really eligible? After all, it was ruled not to be torture. As for Bread Basket, does that really qualify? Degrading treatment almost certainly, but torture? JW 12:12, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: So biased it's barely useful

message: "This practice is seen as ironic, given America's strong emphasis on the values of freedom and self-determination." I think this sentence was beyond a reasonable amount of POV. Its not wikipedia's job to decide what is and what isn't ironic. Frederick12 22:20, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Removed Sentence

message: yes, the US section was long, but it focused on individual cases in the last three years, when a pattern of domestic torture exists. it's about time to make this a separate article and condense the description here.--Carwil 19:27, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  US Expansion 

message: I took out the following text
:Western democracies tend to have fewer but far higher profile cases, compared to more numerous, lower profile cases in other countries, which introduces a significant element of geographic bias in reporting.
because the weight of evidence of systematic torture in prisons in the US, immigration detention facilities in various Western democracies, against political prisoners in Spain and Italy... is quite overwhelming. They are neither consistently high profile, nor infrequently numerous (see the prison torture additions I made to the United States). It's probably accurate to say that majority groups in Western democracies have an expectation of living free from torture which their counterparts in authoritarian states do not. I realize this was an attempt to overcome reporting bias, but it carries its own internal bias.--Carwil 07:09, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed pending sourcing and verification 

message: (I copied this discussion from Talk:Torture. This is recent but before 1948. -- Petri Krohn 13:22, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I added some material in Bad Nenndorf. Someone had already added the links. The agency involved was called Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC). Petri Krohn 12:59, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Britons tortured many communists to death in 1946  

message: is now fully referenced. We have several clearly referenced, criminally prosecuted, torturous assaults in one paragraph which should confirm that "police brutality has at times escalated to torture," a fairly cautious claim. I won't dignify the "some times consensual" argument with a reply. The Louima case even meets the Gonzalez memo's standard of damage to internal organs (Louima's bladder). Mainstream sources consistently referred to the event as torture, notably CNN and the New York Times. I hope we can put this debate to rest. --Carwil 04:46, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Abner Louima 

message: I've created a new main page, Torture and the United States, merging material from Uses of torture in recent times and Human rights in the United States. The merger is still sloppy, but I've tried to clean it up and at least create a clear format for references. Summary sections could make two very long articles shorter. The naming (not Torture in the United States, which will redirect) is due to the extensive interest in US practice of torture abroad, and because no neat line seemed possible to draw between this and the domestic legal issues. Have fun editing!--Carwil 18:55, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Main page for Torture and the United States 

message: I think I have tagged an article as globally "POV" by use of a template maybe a couple of times in 10,000+ edits. I try to fix them first. But in this case I don't know how best to and it needs collaboration.
WP:NPOV requires that an article, overall, presents an impression that gives a balanced view of the subject and aspects. Without taking sides, it seems obvious that there is much more said about torturous acts in UK/USA and these countries therefore have sections so long, compared to others, as to give an unbalance (non-neutral) impression of the subject.
There is a lot to say about those countries, and the material given is valid. But a way must be found to show it, without distorting a reasonably fair balance. 
Perhaps one easy fix would be to content-fork those, as they stand, to "torture in the UK" and "torture in the USA" (the latter now exists), then use edit summaries to ensure the sections in this article remain a balanced size, proportionate to other countries. That would work well. 
Thoughts and suggestions? FT2 (Talk | email) 02:23, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I created Torture and the United States for just that purpose. Just make sure that nothing is deleted that doesn't make its way to that page.--Carwil 04:10, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Looking through Human Rights Watch's website, as well as my own knowledge, I'd say there probably should be a mention of allegations concerning North African nations and also concerning North Korea. Probably Myanmar as well. I'm not willing to go through the work on it though. Still here's HRW on North Korea, HRW on Burma, HRW on Libya, Amnesty International on Torture in Egypt, Amnesty International on torture in Myanmar, AI on North Korea, and some Google News results. (Also some news archive results on police torture with several nations currently listed filtered out)--T. Anthony 14:32, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV tag 

message: And while we're talking about reorganization, are people up for switching to <ref> tags throughout? Editing without them is exhausting and we have two numberings right now.--Carwil 04:10, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: These days I'd take switching as a "given" on most articles. Go for it. FT2 (Talk | email) 09:35, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Footnotes 

message: It seems like the author has turned a BLIND eye to such countries like the smaller gulf nations. Countries like the United Arab Emirates and Qatar both have an unbelievable history in torture both against its citizens and foreigners. These cases are well known and they are in the thousands. You might want to look into the case were Tover SIX THOUSAND Qatari nationals were stripped of the nationalities and all documents. They were sacked from their jobs and kicked out of their homes literally. those who dared to talk were sentenced and tortured. Plus the secret police and the horrors they committed and still do to this day especially in the emirate of abu dhabi .Dubai is by far better than the rest of the emirates , so long as u don't do anything "stupid".
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Samjianka (talk • contribs) 16:32, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  torture in the gulf nations ! 

message: FYI, here are the unsourced statements I found:
**In 2002, in Cologne, Germany, a history of physical torture at Eigelstein police station only came to light because the victim died, and a post-mortem examination unearthed the facts.
**Under Enver Hoxha's Communist dictatorship, torture was widely used.
**The government headed by Baathist Saddam Hussein made extensive use of torture, including at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
**Israel has used "moderate physical pressure" on terrorist suspects defined as "ticking bombs" for their knowledge of imminent terrorist attacks against civilians which the information they possessed had the power to prevent, at least since the 1970s. In 1987 the Israeli Supreme Court formed a special commission headed by retired Justice Moshe Landau, to review the whole question of physical pressure during investigations of this kind. In their report they reinforced the criteria for the use of "moderate physical pressure".
**Russian army is believed to use torture extensively in Chechnya and the surrounding districts, as  investigative tool, and as a deterrent/punishment for captured fighters.
**Torture was widely practiced in the Soviet Union prior to its transformation to a federation in the 1980s, to extract confessions from suspects, especially in case of alleged plots against the security of the state or alleged collaboration with "imperialist powers".
--Carwil 21:56, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Source this! 

message: This is a useful article and should not be deleted.  It is ohvious that countries that engage in torture would want it to be deleted because they do not want their actions to be documented.  This is also a topic that should be separate from the main article on torture. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by  199.125.109.74 (talk • contribs) 23:17, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Argument in Favor of the Article

message: Two steps toward a global comparison on torture are provided by
* Oona A. Hathaway's Torture Scale (in "Do Human Rights Treaties Make a Difference?," The Yale Law Journal, 2002) a quantitative coding based on the United States Department of State Country Reports on Human Rights (yes, that's a political bias, which must be noted). Annual ratings for 1985 to 1998. Methodology described at p. 1969-1972 (35-38 in PDF). Data table at 2034ff (100ff in PDF). Online at 
* Self-reported assessments of the prevalence of torture in people's own countries in the Gallup International Millennium Survey, Survey shows no tolerance for Torture.
--Carwil 14:21, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The State Department doesn't produce a human rights report on the United States. Its reports are used as a source for Hathaway's coding, which is illustrated on this map.--Carwil 19:27, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comparative Sources 

message: Shouldn't china be added to this list? their abuse is clearly documented - —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.168.147.50 (talk • contribs) 
:If you have documentation, add it. 199.125.109.85 04:14, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: China

message: It links to a Yahoo page that declares that the article was not found. Recommend change or removal. Meta 17:34, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed. 199.125.109.74 19:21, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reference #10 

message: No they are not.
Streona (talk) 18:27, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Arguably Legal ?

message: There's a dispute tag on the Singapore section, but I don't see what is being disputed?  Caning does fit the letter of the definition of Torture, viz. any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as ... punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed. Jpatokal (talk) 11:38, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Singapore 

message: I am not sure most of the information in this section (France) is relevant to the article, as most of the exmples given don't constitute torture . I would suggest maybe removing the latter part of this section altogether Jihmiller (talk) 16:00, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  France  

message: In the section titled "Inter-state collaboration" there exists a text box photo/description combination which I object to. The photo linked to is "Vietconginterrogation1967.jpg".
I am interested to know the history of this photo - does the provable history of this photo support the description of the photo, as written in the text box?
The text says: "A Viet Cong prisoner captured in 1967 by the U.S Army awaits interrogation, he has been placed in a stress position by tying a board between his arms."
Let's examine the suspect assertions of the sentence:
:1) "A Viet Cong" - Are we certain the bound squatting person in the photo is indeed a "Viet Cong" or is this an assumption based on his appearrance?
:2) "prisoner" - Are we sure of this. Though it seems unlikely to us that he could be anyhting but a prisoner, I am interested that this be proven true about this particular photo.
:3) "captured" - this goes to prisoner. If he's not a prisoner, it's unlikely he was captured. How do we know he's not an ARVN soldier being punished for some reason?
:4) "1967" - Are we sure of the year? How so?
:5) "[captured in 1967 by the] U.S Army" - While do see the torsos of what appear to be US Army soldiers in the photo, does this prove that this man was "captured" by U.S. Army? No, the mere presence of those men in the photo, without more information, tells us only that they are present, not that they or any other U.S. Soldiers were involved in the squatter's "capture".
:6) "stress position" - Are we sure? If the arms are not tied too tightly, there is not much stress on the arms. Personally, from what see, I think that being in a squat position for a long time would cause more stress than having one's arms bound. The lynchpin here is how tight were the arms tied? If we don't have corroboration of that, we can't honestly say "stress"?
:7) "awaits interrogation" - Are we sure of this? He could be awating release, execution or transport to jail for all we know.
Without corroboration regarding the actual circumstances of this photo, our textual representations as they now stand are no more than our POV of what we think this photo shows.
I ask group consensus that this photo either be verified as to what it actually represents, or that we remove it from the article. From what I can tell, there are several equally plausable explainations for the content of that photo which makes our current description POV - unless we verify it some how... Any comments? 7390r0g (talk) 03:02, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Objection to: Vietconginterrogation1967.jpg - as described in text box