Outsourcing Torture

saminshah:
..you guessed right, I am no spring chicken! and mittar is the panjabi pronunciation of ``mitr``.

Rsaxena#86:
How come I am still poor?:-)

Romair:

Yes, I am an Iindian citizen. And yes, I would be outraged. But, is it not just to look at the matter from America`s perspective rather then a foreigner`s perspective? I mean, gimme a break, would you look for an Iindian perspective on Ppakistani national security issues?

Stuka: I am assuming you are a non-US citizen.

Suppose tomorrow someone picked you up, locked you in a jail, and started torturing you. Would you want others to try to get you out? Or would you want others to state that whatever is happening to you is legal?

A writer of a Pakistani newspaper was picked up and locked up the FBI in the USA. He is one of the most pro-USA writers, in one of the most pro-USA newspapers in Pakistan. The newspaper itself seems to look more like an American paper than a Pakistani one. He was himself, doing a stint in the Brookings Institute. He was picked up for not reporting to immigration for some visa issue. Eventually one of the guys from the institute had to come and get him out. Had he been just a normal non-US citizen, who knows what would have happened to him.

If torture was legal, he could have been tortured.

Similarly, 27 Indian software engineers were arrested a few years ago. They were handcuffed and put under house arrest. Some were pregnant women.

“It is a travesty of natural justice that 27 Indian computer professionals are being treated as common criminals by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) which has confiscated their driving licences and told them they are under house arrest until brought before a judge.

In all civilized countries the underlying principle of law is that all are innocent until proven guilty. But in the case of 27 Indian citizens confined to their suburban Texas apartments, the INS has already convicted them and taken away their most basic human rights, including the right to social contact, freedom of movement and the right to purchase food for survival.” (http://www.immnet.org/h4.html)

If torture was legal, they could have all been tortured as well, based on a statement of a witness, or based on the judgement of a police officer.

The biggest flaw in your argument is not the mention of torture itself. Though that is a problem. The biggest problem is giving any person with authority the power to utilize torture. And the limitations you set as a boundary, i.e. citizens and non-citizens. Not only will the authority be misused. But the boundaries will be removed also. Soon it will become legal for citizens also.

The only boundary should be the boundary of being a human being.

There is a law called the Blasphemy law in Pakistan. It carries the death penalty. If one looks at the law, itself, it actually looks quite balanced. It seems like an incorrect law, but applied equally to all communities, and to all Pakistanis. I believe, it also takes into account blasphemy against religious figures of religions other than Islam, also. Everybody would suffer under this law, equally.

However, invariably, this law gets applied discrimnately, i.e. by one majority community against another. And invariably, it is applied in power struggles as a means to achieve some other objective, e.g. land dispute, political dispute, etc.. Hence, it is just another powerful instrument given to the already powerful.

The purpose of laws should always be to protect the weak. Not to empower the already powerful.

re: saminasha

{whts mean of ``mitter`` }

...that thing you put quarters in when you park your car next to it...

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Laws are not written in stone. They and their implementation change according to the needs of the time.

Times have changed. USA was once called a melting pot. People who came to the US didn`t come here to spread Islamic hatred and kill innocent people because their religion asked them to. A neighbor could be trusted not to be working for an International gang of murderers while pretending to be a friendly student, a diplomat, or a loyal American.

None of those assumptions can be made now. There is no guarantee that people who write on Chowk are not financing terrorism, killings, and kidnappings in other countries. When people believe that violence is a religious duty, they will do anything.

America has to deal with this reality. If Canada becomes the home of terrorists and a financier of worldwide Jihad, it will have to pay a very large price. Blind anti Americanism and alliance with Islamic fanatics will not do Canada and non Islamic Canadians any good.

FerozeK:

I am technically not qualified to decide if torture is a better way to extract information. Hence, my opinion in this regard is inconsequential. I guess my post was taken as a defense of torutre. Let me add the caveat that my statement is based on the ASSUMPTION that torture is helpful in extracting information. By thw way, Ii am sure even you and Dost Mittar are aware about a similar discussion taking place amongst liberal as well as conservative acadamics, and that for a change, the division of opinion was not based on political convictions alone.

I would reject the term ``apartheid`` simply because it is legal as well as normative, in many ways, for a state to differentiate between citizens and foreigners. The discussion should therefore be ``Is torture useful or not`` and other arguments should flow from that decision. Ii do recognize that my distinction of citizens as well as non citizens is flawed, not on the basis of your argument, but on the flawed assumption that only non citizens would be terrorists. As we well know, terrorism can acquire many forms and have adherents inside and outside the mould of citizenship.

My proposal therefore, is a flawed one, and is a reaction to a flawed situation where competing moral and legal imperatives are at play.

re: Stuka # 79

Stuka, I was amazed by your suggestion to legalize the use of torture on non-American citizens. You are simply asking for a national apartheid to be based on a new classification of citizenship rights and different laws for the Americans. You are more than welcome to do this, but remember that a law which favors one against the other is an argument for tyranny and that goes against the basic character of the American legal traditions, which would be purely anti-democratic in its nature. If you destroy the very principles on which the United States was created, pray tell me how have you saved or benefitted America?

This is a seriously flawed logic; the logic which can be best labelled as ``I have to destroy the village in order to save it``.

If you honestly feel that this the method, which best serves the interests of the United States, then the issue of legalizing torture is only as complex as your rationale to make it legal. How are you going to make it legal? Constitutionally or through case precedent or presidential authority?

Incidently, torture is not the best means to extract information. Emperical studies from the Second World War, Vietnam, and from the French experience in Algeria suggests that most people will say things and make confessions simply because the pain has exceeded their threshold tolerance of suffering. If you torture me to find out information and you pull my finger nails out and soak my bloody fingers in a cup of lemon juice and then push them in a jar of salt, I will sign anything you want just to stop the pain and agree to anything you want me to say. I will lie to end my pain and you will have your information, but it will be worthless.

You are more than welcome to legalize torture, but I disagree with you on this issue, because I do not see any utility in its intentions and what good it will serve.

Ciao

``Is it morally correct to torture one innocent people so a thousand innocent lives can besaved?``
Are there any studies that show that torture as an interrogative technique is more effective than other techniques? Isn`t it also likely that a tortured person will tell you whatever you want to hear. As one sikh famously said once, ``Give me Rajiv Gandhi and he will confess that he murdered his mother!``.
I would like to think that when the US decided against using torture as an investigative tool, they did it with the knowledge that the incremental benefits of using this technique are not significant as compared to the more modern, scientific techniques. You refer to the Haryana and Panjab police use of torture, do I need to tell you how abysmal their success rate is in the courts?

dost-mitter
``I too was born in a Muslim country. Should I carefully try to recall who I came in contact with during my 35-year stay in Canada and be careful not to transit through an American airport? ...``

dost-mitter bhai what`s ur age.jus curious and whts mean of ``mitter``

Dost Mittar:

I think the US should legalize torture for Non US citizens who are arrested on grounds of suspicion for terror. I agree that it is easy to feel sympathy for an innocent person. What about actual terrorists? How to get info from them?

Your article addresses one very valid aspect of the war on terror. Another, equally valid aspect is how to prevent further attacks from taking place. How to handle suspects who may have information that threatens American lives. This is a theme that is being debated and has multiple aspects.

Is it morally correct to torture one innocent people so a thousand innocent lives can besaved? Or is torture not acceptable in any circumstance even if a thousand lives are at stake? Your article can treat this issue in black and white terms only because it is dealing with one solitary case. Take this to the abstract level in terms of policy and you will enter grey areas.

stuka:
You can make joke about it, but you have not addressed the fact that your favourite Americans are breaking their own laws and civilized behaviour. I am not talking here about their right to racial profiling or even to question people on slightest suspicion, but of their right to to send people away from their jurisdiction where they know that he would be subjected to inhuman treatment.

Inquirer:
But Mahir Arar did not knowingly- and so far it has not been established even unknowingly- contacted any belligerent.
But as I said to stuka above, the issue is not one of Arar`s innocence. If there were grounds for suspicion against him, he could have been interrogated in the US. If they simply did not want him in their country, they had to do nothing, he was already on his way to his home country.

Semipreciousme...

Dost mittar is DEFINITELY visiting Lahore!!!!

:)

Yasser

re:#63 by Urstruly
Thanks for the post. YOu may be right. However, i always wondered how far a nation could go to defend its interests, faced with a terrorist assault. India mobilsed an Army following attack on its parliament to show the world how it felt. It is all a question of: how acute the threat is. Still, i believe you when you say Canada been good to people who came there after 9/11.
Sridhar

re:#65 by temporal
Thanks for the offer. For now, i will think about it.
Sridhar

re:#62 by Fosa
I have not interacted with you in the past but if you are a Khalistan sympathiser, you should go to some other forum. I think the Khalistan issue is a ``dead one`` but some rich Khalistanis in Canada and US try to revive the issue now and then. Sikhs of Indian Punjab have already decided long ago where they want to stay.
Sridhar