Survivors know best: Torture is always wrong

This article was published in Christian Science Monitor 3 February 2010

It’s immoral and it doesn’t make anyone more secure. Just ask those who’ve been tortured.

They live invisibly among us, 41,000 in the Washington area, half a million in the United States. They are survivors of horrific political torture. Unless they open their shirts, you detect few visible scars. “The mark of torture is more inside than out,” says “Elena,” a woman from Gabon who uses a wheelchair.

(Because everyone interviewed has living relatives in their native lands, all names have been changed at their request.)

Americans with no experience deceive themselves about torture. A friend told me that when the US tortured people it was somehow more humane.

But talk to torture victims at the annual gathering of the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition (TASSC) and they tell you that torture, whatever its guise, is always immoral.