In 2000, human rights group Amnesty International and African social sciences organization CODESRIA (Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa) published a handbook for watchdog groups monitoring prisons with suspected torture. The guide offers insight into just what qualifies as cruel, inhuman and degrading (CID) treatment.
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The book also discusses the worst torture methods, among them beatings, electric shocks, hanging a person by the limbs, mock executions and forms of sexual assault, especially rape. In this article, we focus on the unfortunate realities of these practices around the modern world, not torture-devices.htm">medieval torture devices like the brazen bull or breaking wheel.
In addition to Amnesty International's list, we'll also look at what Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights cites as five common forms of torture, including burns, penetrating injuries, asphyxiation, forced human experimentation and traumatic removal of tissue and appendages.
In addition to Amnesty International's list, we'll also look at what Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights cites as five common forms of torture, including burns, penetrating injuries, asphyxiation, forced human experimentation and traumatic removal of tissue and appendages.
Torturers inflict immense pain on others through various methods, including the use of torture devices, getting into a victim's head or having a person stripped naked or hung upside down.
Most of these endured horrors are physical, or black torture. Mock executions are white torture (psychological) [source: Cesereanu]. There's little distinction between black-and-white forms of torture; both are equally insidious.
As the humanitarian group SPIRASI (Spiritan Asylum Services Initiative) puts it, “Methods of physical and psychological torture are remarkably similar, such that one should not separate their effects from each other” [source: SPIRASI].
Is Torture Illegal?
International law bans and condemns torture, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. However, more than 150 countries follow the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states, "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In particular, no one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation."