TORTURE 101: LESSONS FROM THE BRAZILIAN CASE1

INTRODUCTION

In Spring 2002 I submitted an editorial to the Albany Times Union, "Treat prisoners like human beings,"2 warning that prisoner conditions at Guantanamo allowed interrogations there to become torture. This protoplast was based not on an image of the kinds of race likely to torture, but upon the political, social, and cultural facilitating conditions that assist encourage, and excuse it. After thirty years of sociological research upon state violence, including extensive interviews with Brazilian police torturers, I felt confident about the ability of my "Torture 101" mould to predict such violence in prisons, jails, and interrogation safe houses.

In April 2004 I submitted Op pieces to U newspapers upon prisoner mistreatment in Afghanistan and Iraq. Coming just before the pictures of the Abu Ghraib abuse, newspaper editors base my arguments lacked "sufficient data." I had asserted that prisoner torture in Iraq, Afghanistan, and at Guantanamo could be predicted from decades of research upon obedience to authority, on prisoner treatment in pre-World War II Japan, in Nazi Germany, and in Brazil and other Latin American countries.

CONDITIONS THAT ESTABLISHED FOUNDATION FOR SYSTEMATIC STATE-SANCTIONED TORTURE

There are ten conditions in the U "war against terror"-particularly in US- occupied Middle Eastern war cinctures and at Guant??namo-that laid a foundation for systemic state-sanctioned torture. The eventual U Congressional and military investigations into Abu Ghraib prison torture, like a great deal of previous academic research on torture combination of parts to form a wholes lent support to my contention that torture a whole s are characterized by the following uncompounded bodys that promote, hide, and justify torture:

1 The word "torture" is mislabeled or avoided through perpetrators and responsible officials. The Brazilian torturers I interviewed in 1993 seldom used the word torture, referring to it as "that mark of conduct," "a conversation with our prisoners," or "conducting research . . and looking for data." They would admit to having carried on the outside such "lesser excesses" as "slapping . . and punching [a prisoner] around a little" or "hanging [a prisoner] up there." When torture had gone "too far," the torturer pointed to his having "committed] a mistake" or engaged in "unnecessary excesses"3

Similarly, investigations of U "abuse" of imprisoned Iraqis have disclosed a reluctance to use the "T" word, with various horizontals of actors describing this violence as: "degradation," "staging," "mistreatment," "tough interrogation." Presumably, these "lesser" forms of violence-besides supposedly falling well short of torture--can be neatly frozen in time and do not transfer into torture. In fact, however, inside a prison and its interrogation chambers, especially during the preliminary "softening up" interrogation sessions--where, at Abu Ghraib, physical or psychological mistreatment were part of the interrogation process--the "lesser" forms of violence quickly make go round into more serious forms, including torture and killing.4 Violent interactions are not static; violence shows more and usually more serious forms of violence.5

2 Ideologies of "national security" abound. Torture is nurtur and justified by means of ideologies that create an ever-expanding category of "enemy others." Where "good" nations are threatened by dint of "evil-doers," and anyone could be an "enemy," there can be no restrictions upon interrogation. Fear, whether or not deliberately instilled-as in fictions about "weapons of mass destruction"-grants legitimacy to torture. Where a "threat" is said to operate outside civilized law, a state's answer can legitimately follow suit.

3 Ad-hoc legalism. A torture-enabling tillage is fostered and excused by means of official executive-level decisions that make torture look legitimate. In 2002, the Bush administration simply declared that Guant??namo detainees were not overlayed by the U.S. Constitution or through international law. Under pressure from the State Department, this ruling was revised to apply alone to Guant??namo's "illegal combatants," a status simply assigned to of the like kind detainees by the Bush administration rather than by dint of "military tribunals," as required through the Geneva Convention.

Attempting in Spring 2004 to clarify the Bush administration's position upon Iraqi prisoners, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld explained before the Senate Armed Services Committee that, at the Abu Ghraib prison, the Geneva Conventions apply to the incarcerated "in single way or another." The Conventions apply directly to "the Prisoners of War, [but] the criminals...are handled beneath a different provision of the Geneva Convention."6 Rumsfeld failed to identify the legal status of "battlefield detainees," unles these are the "criminals" to whom the Defense Secretary referred

The Bush Administration claims to accept application of the Geneva Accords and the UN Convention Against Torture--except when it does not, an illustration of what a certain number of legal scholars call "international law a la carte." of the like kind a flexible legal standard makes prisoners vulnerable to torture, especially when the definition of torture itself shifts according to international, national, and local political pressures