"Torture is not the exclusive preserve of totalitarian
regimes. No democracy is immune from the slide into prolonged exception or the
legal death of liberty, and certainly not the French Republic, where
anti-terrorist legislation is less and less respectful of fundamental
freedoms."
In a ruling made public on June 12th, the United
States Supreme Court declared that individuals detained at Guantanamo have the
right to challenge the lawfulness of their detention before an American civil
court. The decision is a scathing blow to the Bush Administration and finally
makes possible an investigation by the Justice Department into the conditions
of detention and interrogation that have been in force at Guantanamo since
2001.
Just days before The International Day in Support of
Victims of Torture, this is good news for supporters of Action By Christians
for the Abolition of Torture , who have been
fighting for years so that people detained by the U.S. Army as part of its War
on Terror aren’t subjected to torture or any other form of abuse prohibited by
international convention.
It's also an opportunity for us to reflect on the
nature of the torturers and in particular, the manner in which torture can be
installed so insidiously within the heart of a liberal democracy. A key point
here seems to be the problematic and unlimited interpretation of emergency
measures related to the fight against terrorism. “The costs of delay [by the
military justice system] can no longer be borne by those who are held in
custody,” so states the Supreme Court's majority opinion, thus pointing out a
chronic failure of the emergency regulations: their persistence well beyond
what was initially announced [BOUMEDIENE v. BUSH;
majority opinion written by Justice Kennedy ].
[HetParool, The
Netherlands]
THE ULTIMATE EXPRESSION OF A SOCIETY
These emergency measures resulted in the
suspension of the rule of law. So began a situation which entailed the suspension
of legal norms of unlimited duration. This explains in part why the question of
the legitimacy of this suspension - or adaptation - of the law, has often been
approached in the abstract - without reference to time. The measures a society
takes to confront threats to its own existence are the ultimate measure of that
society. And just as the attempt to breathe becomes more violent when one is
being choked, at moments of crisis, people are more willing to tolerate the
perpetration of morally reprehensible acts.
It's like a digression during which people are willing
to allow the abolition of the most elementary rules, because after all, it
would be absurd to try and regulate a suspension of rules. And behind this
abdication of judgment, always implicit is the idea that if danger is imminent,
the reaction will be too - and conversely, one anticipates a quick return to
"normalcy." But the American Supreme Court notes that, “the cases
before us lack any precise historical parallel. They involve individuals
detained by executive order for the duration of a conflict that, if measured
from September 11, 2001, to the present, is already among the longest wars in
American history.”
Here we are touching upon the skewed nature of
discourse that legitimizes torture. Torture is presented to us, infamously, as
something “temporary,” the use of which is triggered by the immensity and
severity of expected acts of terrorism. However for several years, many
non-American nationals have been detained and tortured at Guantanamo or at U.S.
prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq, without the capacity to challenge the
conditions of their detention before a civilian court.
MORE COMMONPLACE AND MORE COMPLEX
France's unrepentant
teacher of turture: General Paul Aussaresses, who first practiced his
craft in the Algerian war for independence in the 1960s.
Apart from the fact that the prohibition [on torture]
bears no exception, one must note that torture is not a "momentary"
phenomenon. Its use takes full advantage of the indefinite extension of
emergency measures. It sort of takes hold. It becomes commonplace. It also
becomes more complex. It has become an activity taught at special schools.
France hasn't fallen behind in this process, as evidenced by General Paul Aussaresses in his latest book published a few weeks ago . It calmly details
the many methods of torture he has taught around the world, with the consent,
he says, of the [French] Republic's highest authorities.
[Editor's Note: General Aussaresses
admitted in his 2001 book, Services Spéciaux, Algérie 1955-1957 [Special Services, Algeria
1955-1957], to the systematic use of torture during the war. Under orders
of the Guy Mollet government [France], he confessed
to having engaged in torture and to personally executing 24 Algerians. He also
acknowledged a number of other high-profile political assassinations that were
covered up as "suicides." He was condemned in court for justifying
the use of torture and stripped of his army rank and his Legion of honor .]
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
BANNED IN FRANCE IN 1960: THE
BATTLE OF ALGIERS
As Aristotle long ago noted in his NicomacheanEthics ,
vices have an inertia all their own. And this persistence sometimes takes on
incongruous forms. There is thus the unlikely affiliation of fellow torturers:
when one tries to understand the mechanism which has led to the use of torture
by Algerian authorities, even during the 1990’s, one cannot overlook the fact
that the torturers or their sponsors were the very people who had been tortured
by the French Army during the war of independence.
And one very quickly becomes accustomed to the
impunity conferred when the common law is suspended. How else can one explain
that some 50,000 mercenaries (civilians under contract with American security
firms) who are fighting in Iraq on behalf of the United States - do so outside
of any clear ethical framework, and clearly beyond any form of prosecution?
Torture is not the exclusive preserve of
totalitarian regimes; it can also thrive within liberal democracies. Thus one
cannot oppose torture and authoritarianism on the simple basis that
dictatorships are essentially perverse whereas democracies are intrinsically
anxious to promote the “good.” Unfortunately, ethical pronouncements don't have
the virtue of actually preventing the use of torture. “Society is not a temple
of value-idols that figure on the front of its monuments or in its
constitutional scrolls; the value of a society is the value it places upon
man's relation to man,” wrote Maurice Merleau-Ponty
in 1947 [Humanism and Terror: An Essay on the Communist
Problem].
Nothing can justify the use of torture, not even a
sense of extreme urgency. No democracy is immune from the slide into prolonged
exception or from the legal death of liberty, and certainly not the French
Republic, where anti-terrorist legislation is less and less respectful of
fundamental freedoms. A worrying trend, which is why Action By
Christians for the Abolition of Torture must be more vigilant that ever.
*Marc Zarrouati is the
honorary president of Action By Christians for the
Abolition of Torture.
