TORTURE

the infliction of excruciating physical or psychological pain for such reasons as punishment, intimidation, coercion, the extraction of a confession, or the obtainment of information. Throughout history, governments have used torture against their enemies and as a part of their legal systems. The term has also been more generally applied to acts by individuals outside of government, as, for example, by criminals. Modes of inflicting pain range from physical devices to chemical injections to elaborate psychological techniques designed not only to break down resistance but to subvert personality. Torture was apparently commonly practiced in many ancient civilizations. The ancient Greek practice of torturing slaves to obtain information influenced early Roman laws, in which torture gave the testimonies of slaves and those of low social status more validity. A renewed interest in Roman law, the dissatisfaction with earlier modes of securing reliable information, and the development of strong political authorities contributed to the increased use of torture in Europe beginning in the 12th century. Prior to this period oaths, ordeals, and combats were common ways to resolve judicial conflicts, but by the 13th century confession became, along with the testimony of eyewitnesses, the means of determining guilt in most of Europe. Suspects could not be convicted on the basis of circumstantial evidence. Torture was increasingly used to extract confessions, but in general was legal only if there was considerable evidence against the suspect. From the mid-14th century to the end of the 18th century, torture was a common and sanctioned part of the legal proceedings of most European countries and the Roman Catholic church, which had approved of its use by the inquisition in cases of heresy. Among the instruments of torture used during this period were the strappado, a machine that hoisted the suspect's weighted body by a rope tied to his hands, which were fastened behind his back; the rack, an instrument that stretched the limbs and body; and the thumbscrew, a metal-studded vice in which a suspect's thumbs were compressed. While the effectiveness of torture has been defended by many people, notably Aristotle and Sir Francis Bacon, it was attacked as early as Roman times by Cicero and Seneca, who claimed that it forces even the innocent to lie. In the European Middle Ages, St. Augustine pointed out its moral perversity: If the accused be innocent, he will undergo for an uncertain crime a certain punishment, and that not for having committed a crime, but because it is unknown whether he committed it. While legal and moral arguments against torture had been heard for centuries, they did not have force until the Enlightenment period, when there was not only a humanitarian movement but also a dramatic change in European law. Eyewitness accounts and confession became less important as new procedures allowed for conviction on the basis of strong suspicion from circumstantial evidence, as had been held in England, whose laws for the most part never supported torture. By 1800 most European countries had legally abolished the use of torture, but in the 20th century it reappeared in unexpectedly high proportions. The political pressures of the modern state were blamed for this increase, particularly its use by armies during wartime and by intelligence agencies. It was in countries that used law as a means of imposing ideology, however, that torture became most widespread, for example, in the fascist countries of Italy and Nazi Germany and the communist government of the U.S.S.R. under Joseph Stalin. In Nazi concentration camps, doctors became involved in creating gruesome tortures and in sustaining individuals so that they could be tortured again. Despite the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), a document decrying the use of torture, revelations of the widespread practice of torture in French Algeria and in Greece during the 1950s were only a glimpse at how it had become adaptable to many cultures in the late 20th century. Although torture has been universally condemned, it is still widely practiced in many regions, including Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. The modern techniques of torture include not only the traditional methods of physical pain but also the use of complex psychological and pharmacological methods that have been developed out of studies of medical research and the psychology of pain. One of the most disturbing is the suppression of the body's natural process of pain inhibition, causing an enhancement and extension of an already excruciating pain. Other methods include sleep and sensory deprivation, the forced extraction of teeth and nails, mock executions, and the use of nerve stimulants. The belief that only sadistic individuals are capable of committing torture was seriously questioned by an American study conducted in the 1960s in which volunteersordinary people from various occupationswere told to administer a memory test. After each incorrect answer by the learner, who was strapped down and attached to an electrode, a scientist ordered the volunteer to increase the voltage of the electric shock. Unknown to the volunteer, the learner was an actor and no shock was actually transmitted. The majority of volunteers gave what they knew to be dangerous levels of electric shock when ordered to, even after hearing the screams and protests of the victim.