Attitudes to torture

A BBC survey of global attitudes to torture showed 59% opposed; 29% in favour in some circumstances; 12% didn't know.

Should we be pleased, or horrified?

There were marked differences by country: countries most accepting of torture included Iraq (42%), the Philippines (40%), Indonesia (40%), Russia (37%) and China (37%). Those most opposed were Italy (81%), Australia, France, Canada, the UK and Germany.

Israel's result was most striking:
A majority of Jewish respondents in Israel, 53%, favour allowing governments to use some degree of torture to obtain information from those in custody, while 39% want clear rules against it.

But Muslims in Israel, who represent 16% of the total number polled, are overwhelmingly against any use of torture.

In my view the end does not justify the means when the means are the violent breaking of individuals and the ends are uncertain.

But I would guess that very little torture is targetted to a narrow goal - that vital piece of information which will pre-empt the proverbial atrocity.

For the most part torture is state policy - and not just permission or turning a blind eye. The state makes the physical arrangements of torture, the training of state employees as torturers, the promise of indemnity for those who abuse, hurt and kill others. The state uses tax revenue to torture its taxpayers.

Torture is intended to intimidate the population, to rule by fear and violence. It is not primarily used against the outside threat to stable social order: it is the nature of a state's ordering of its society.

Torture is an instrument of government which divides the population from one another. It does not spur people to band together in opposition but to hide separately in fear. That is why torture is done in secret - and why it has to be an open secret.

Torture thus destroys social institutions (the Church, trades unions, clan affiliation). Only the state remains, and its character is violence.

And torture is widespread. Therefore every country which does not practice it is complicit: in the manufacture of materials for torture, in sending people to countries without caring about what will happen to them, in refusing to care adequately for victims of torture who flee their country, in ignoring the issue in bi-lateral discussions, in accepting (tainted) intelligence obtained through torture, in keeping silent.

And I abominate it.

See: William T Cavanaugh Torture and Eucharist (Blackwells 1998)