Torture Doesn’t Work
By Mowahid Hussain Shah

The death on Boxing Day of South African Bishop Desmond Tutu brought to the forefront the atrocities that underpinned South Africa’s apartheid. Bishop Tutu was a transnational humanitarian. He transcended tribal, ethno-national, and geographical barriers to speak up. On the plight of the Palestinians, he pointed out: “What's being done to the Palestinians at checkpoints, for us, it's the kind of thing we experienced in South Africa."

He led a UN fact-finding mission to Gaza, describing the Israeli siege there as “a gross violation of human rights.” He was convinced that there is no military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, but rather the solution “is more likely to come from the nonviolent toolbox we developed in South Africa in the 1980s, to persuade the government of the necessity of altering its policies.”

Equally, he was condemnatory of black despotism in Africa, incurring the wrath even of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. who once called him an “evil and embittered little bishop.”

Bishop Tutu’s principal corpus of work lay at home in South Africa, where he headed the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This court-like body held hearings and took statements from witnesses, unearthing a horrifying pattern of torture. The Commission stated in its final report that it received “over 22,000 statements from victims alleging they had been tortured; in most instances, the torture had been at the instance of members of the security forces” and “the state perpetuated a state of impunity by tolerating and sanctioning the practice of torture.” Anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, who founded the Black Consciousness Movement that challenged apartheid, was tortured to death in September 1977. While chairing the Commission, Bishop Desmond Tutu occasionally broke down.

The late US Senator and Republican Presidential candidate John McCain, who ran against Barack Hussein Obama during the 2008 Presidential campaign, was a doughty opponent of torture, having experienced it himself while being held as a prisoner of war in Hanoi from 1967 to 1973. Official Bush-Cheney policy then prevailing condoned torture, and the mainstream entertainment industry, with TV shows like “24”, starring Kiefer Sutherland, and “Homeland” were, in effect, complicit. The movie, “Zero Dark Thirty” was an excuse for torture. McCain went against the flow by valiantly opposing torture, pointing to its wider ramifications, including the shrinkage of American moral leverage. Senator McCain said of torture practices: “I believe they are a violation of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions … it is difficult to overstate the damage that any practice of torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment by Americans does to our national character and historical reputation.” (Congressional Record, May 12, 2011, p. S2897.)

Further illustrative clarity is furnished in the December 2021 film, “The Forever Prisoner,” by Oscar-winner documentarian Alex Gibney. It tells the story of Abu Zubaydah, who was subjected to what is euphemistically sugar-coated as “enhanced interrogation.” In other words, torture. Bush administration lawyers were at the beck and call to provide its rationale and legal cover. The film speaks for itself, for those who can bear watching it.

Torture has been the bane of many countries, including Muslim-majority countries, despite the existence of the UN Convention Against Torture, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1984, and which came into force on June 26, 1987. The Convention has 84 signatories, and 173 states are parties to it, expressing their explicit consent to be bound by the treaty. Pakistan is both a signatory and a party. India has signed the treaty but has not as yet agreed to be bound by it.

Despite signing the UN treaty against torture, India – the so-called ‘world’s largest democracy’ – has systematically practiced torture tactics in occupied Kashmir, according to amply documented human rights reports (In Kashmir, “since 2019, the security forces have been implicated in numerous abuses … including … torture and extrajudicial killings,” Amnesty International, November 26, 2021; India: Abuses Persist in Jammu and Kashmir, August 4, 2020; “Many thousands of Kashmiris are arbitrarily detained …Torture by the security forces is a daily routine and so brutal that hundreds have died in custody as a result.” INDIA: Summary of human rights concerns in Jammu and Kashmir, Amnesty International, January 1995.)

The recently deceased Indian Army chief, General Bipin Rawat, who was stationed in Kashmir, endorsed the lynching of so-called ‘terrorists’ as ‘a very positive sign.’ New York Times, December 8, 2021; “Indian army chief defends soldiers who tied man to vehicle and used him as a human shield,” Guardian, May 29, 2017.)

Torture is a tool of terror inflicted by the powerful against the powerless. It is a crime against God and humanity. Just like forcible occupation doesn’t work, torture doesn’t work.