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A Perspective on "A Plague of Our Time" and "Working With Survivors of Torture"
Gerald Gray
Engstrom and Okamura have written a fine general introduction for social workers on the subject of modern torture and its treatment. The bibliography also shows many important writings, authors, and sources. I will only add certain emphases or expansions, some with reference to U.S. behavior in Iraq because that confronts us with immediacy, and we can learn better what our clients have been through.
1. On torture. Modern torture, when we speak beyond techniques, is primarily for political control through terror, not for traditional purposes of interrogation, punishment, or conversion. Clinical literature of the last 20 years is full of such examples. Think of the clear cases of Bosnia, Rwanda, Liberia; think of the mixed-purpose cases of South Africa and Central America (for both information and terror). Such examples cause suspicion that the United States in Iraq tortures for control because of the masses under arrest who have no information or no useful information, who are not even questioned-just tortured.
The control aspect is important to stress now, both because there is writing in U.S. popular journals advocating torture for interrogation (Atlantic Monthly, Los Angeles Times, etc.) and because the Administration states that torture in particular at Abu Ghraib was interrogation gone wrong. These arguments may prevent U.S. health providers from understanding U.S. torture as being for political control, thereby causing distrust among our clients as the inevitable confrontations come up. Unless health providers understand that mass torture is for control, fruitless time may be spent trying to help survivors understand why they were tortured, what information they could have had, how they could have behaved differently-especially as torturers will ask questions (often to which they know the answers). It is like believing the rapist wants sex.
2. On what is therapeutic. Modern torture breaks trust (and is intended to) because people do not know who might accuse them for any reason, and because many cannot trust after experiencing such sadism-and because victims are told in torture that there are no safe alliances. Not in the family, the neighborhood, the church, the trade union, the political party, the profession. Not in God. Thus armed force controls.
Therefore, anything that...