What Torture Is

Norm Geras joins the conversation:

I think one needs some concept of acts that are inflicted directly upon the person, under physical constraint, and are in context severe enough to affect the physical or mental integrity of the person.

What Norm is concerned with is the possibility that broad environmental effects, such as simple indefinite imprisonment itself, or fear of what could be happening to one's family outside, could be construed as torture under the rubric I discussed. I think there is a clear distinction here, and it lies in the word coercion.

There are conditions - fear of the unknown, isolation, long-term imprisonment - that could break a prisoner's will to resist interrogation. But what makes it torture is force against the human body so that severe pain or suffering occurs. Force is using involuntary mental or physical processes against a human being. Torture is the intent to bring the prisoner to a breaking point by these methods - not discomfort, but breaking point. Stretching someone's limbs till they feel they have no choice but to surrender is torture; equally the use of force that leaves no physical marks - such as water-torture, water-boarding, hypothermia or deliberate subjection to extreme heat or dehydration - in order to coerce a response. The combined use of several techniques that individually might not be sufficient to destroy someone, but together, can be excruciating and brutalizing: this is torture.