Ghost Stories

http://harpers.org/blog/2016/12/ghost-stories/

by max_ • 10 years ago

38 12 10 years ago

Cyph0n2• 10 years ago

Interesting, but I was disappointed that there were no details of how people were tortured. I know it's ugly, but I believe that the details should be explicitly described as a warning for future generations.

The proximity of the prison to the city reminds me of my home country Tunisia prior to the 2011 revolution (the so-called Arab Spring). Some of the worst torture of political dissidents took place under the building of the ministry of interior on the busiest street in the capital. Thankfully, the death toll never was as bad as Uganda.

One popular form of torture used in Tunisia involved hanging the prisoner upside down and naked. The torturer would then proceed to use electrical shocks, beating, cigarette butts, and sexual abuse. Torture was usually done without reason - i.e., they were not looking for a confession. When they were looking for a false confession, they usually threatened the prisoner with imprisonment of family members and even rape of siblings and mothers. Once a prisoner was released into society, they remained close and asked about every movement the prisoner made and continually harassed them. On top of that, there was the social stigma of being a prisoner, which was especially difficult for women after release.

I'm proud that my country has recently been following South Africa's model by setting up a truth commission [1]. During each session, victims of abuse and torture and their relatives are given a platform to air their grievances on live TV. There have been four sessions already, and it has been a huge success, so there will be more to come.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/17/tunisia-to-bro...

afandian2• 10 years ago

"Torture was usually done without reason"

That's an odd way to look at it. Torture is usually done with the purpose of the torturer getting sadistic enjoyment from torturing.

It has happened consistently throughout history and continues to happen, and probably always will. It seems clear to me that there's a predisposition in certain proportion of humans to want to torture, and a predisposition in the population at large to construct social structures to enable it (private armies, state armies, colonial occupying forces, CIA etc).

hprotagonist• 10 years ago

Torture is usually done with the purpose of the torturer getting sadistic enjoyment from torturing.

Much like rape, I'm pretty sure torture is done for power and control and subjugation. It's a little worse to imagine an impartial or dispassionate torturer, "just doing my job", but I am convinced they exist.

Cyph0n2• 10 years ago

I agree that there is definitely a reason why humans use torture in general. What I meant by "no reason" is that there was usually no immediate need for torture (confession, security threat, etc.) in the case of political prisoners in Tunisia.

I however disagree that it's "usually" done for enjoyment. My belief is that the primary motivation for torturers is either obeying the chain of command, or genuine belief that what they're doing is for some greater good.

Actually, one of the victims who spoke during the first truth commission session said that his only request was that his torturers come forward and explain why they had to sexually abuse him. He said that he understood the use of other forms of torture, but he felt that sexual abuse was just too much and simply unnecessary. I last heard that some of his torturers approached the truth commission (anonymously) in compliance with his request.

newswriter99• 10 years ago

But do you think there's some sort of gain for a person or someone in a society to enjoy torture? Obviously if everyone did it would lead to chaos, but is it possible that torture is, at some point, necessary?

tyingq• 10 years ago

There's some detail, and some chilling photos here: https://scholarsandrogues.com/2013/01/16/uganda-journal-afri...

afandian2• 10 years ago

It's good that these stories are brought to light. It's also important that, every story about "look at how this third-world country went off the rails" is accompanied, where relevant, with the story of how the first-world encouraged and enabled it.

The actions in Uganda “disgusted the entire civilized world,” said President Jimmy Carter during Amin’ s reign, without mentioning that the CIA had reportedly been showering Amin in aid and weapons throughout the 1970s, as Cold War blocs scrambled to control the Third World.

dom0• 10 years ago

In the past I had to make lengthy explanations involving three-later agencies and which always came across tinfoil-hatly (although I tended to understate, not ex-aggregate).

However, I discovered this Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio... and this one in particular https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio... which pretty much do the job for me, and since it's Wikipedia it's not perceived as tinfoil (even though anyone could have looked up the stuff I talked about as well, but as far as I know few people did).

happywolf• 10 years ago

tl;dr version please...

Ghost Stories

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