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Torture

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Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch peer review

I've listed this article for peer review because it just passed GA, thanks to insightful comments from Wretchskull and Aza24, and I'm hoping to get this important topic to FAC. My desire is to keep the article concise while making sure it is balanced in its coverage.

Thanks in advance, (t · c) buidhe 10:13, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • The lede doesn't summarize the "Public opinion" section.
    • Done
  • I'd move the last sentence of the lede higher up; it doesn't fit down there.
    • Done
  • Perhaps mention torture museum?
    • I don't think this would be WP:DUE. Other aspects of torture in popular culture have gotten a lot more coverage
      • I'm thinking more towards the history section, where it can be mentioned as a location where historical torture methods are stored and documented. And while we're at it, I am extremely surprised that torture chamber isn't mentioned.
        • Well, as the article states, torture can be carried out in different locations. It's no different in medieval times, where some societies/countries used dedicated rooms for torture and others did not. The use or non-use of dedicated torture chambers is not an aspect that's highlighted in the sources so I question the need to point it out more explicitly. Torture museums are varied and while some are medieval, others focus on contemporary forms of torture. I'm sure the sensationalism vs. accuracy also varies.
  • If emphasized in reliable sources, I'd consider adding another subsection to the "Purpose" section: something along the lines of "Other purposes", where motives such as revenge, sexual gratification, humiliation and sadism can be mentioned.
    • These are the four purposes mentioned by most sources. The ones you mention are probably more common in torture-like acts carried out by private individuals, but this generally would not fall under the legal definition of torture.
      • But shouldn't this article cover both of these perspectives? This article is simply called "Torture", so shouldn't it also mention torture outside legal definitions? You are of course far more knowledgeable about the topic and obviously very well-versed, but with an average joe like me reading the article, I get confused as to why it isn't even mentioned beyond one or two sentences.
        • The article topic is not defined by the name, in which everything called torture is covered in the article. Rather it follows the RS, which all either circumscribe their topic by legal definitions or at a minimum use these as a starting point. It is not about any topic called "torture" and shoehorning in aspects that are not covered in the RS would not be appropriate. Other uses are appropriately listed at Torture (disambiguation).
  • There is a lack of info on torture that focuses on public humiliation, or just humiliation in general.
    • Expanded on this a bit.
  • I see that you incorporated old torture methods in the history section, which I think is the best approach, but only flogging and lingchi are mentioned. What about including methods such as the rack by Europeans, humiliatory methods such as pillory, and torturous executions like scaphism by Persians, Hanged, drawn and quartered in England, etc.?
    • Added mention of the rack. As far as I recall, the sources that I consulted didn't describe the pillory as a form of torture. The sources I've looked at for historical periods typically deal with executions and corporal punishment separately from torture, raising issues of due weight and original research. A further issue is that high-quality RS generally don't emphasize the exact methods used. I have also added some info from Encyclopedia Iranica source.
      • Sounds good.
  • What makes this image a public domain image? The actual work is ancient, but the source showing it is from 2010.
    • Great catch, it was in the article before I edited it, now swapped with a different image.

@Buidhe: No one has commented yet, so I decided to re-read the article. I'd be more than happy to help you get it to FA. Wretchskull (talk) 08:37, 7 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Buidhe: Anything of interest here? Wretchskull (talk) 18:02, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I already cite what Nowak says about the international law aspects from a different source. (t · c) buidhe 19:09, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Note on Assyrian image: As the Commons PD-Art tag explains, simple/faithful photographic reproductions of PD art do not gain new copyright. — Goszei (talk) 09:15, 7 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but it's not 2-d (which is strictly interpreted), bas relief is a 3-d art form. (t · c) buidhe 09:40, 7 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Rublov

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Thought I'd leave some comments as I read through the article anyway for the copy-edit.

Lead
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  • Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person — This definition seems much broader than the conventional understanding of torture, as it doesn't exactly match what the "Definition" section says: "The treatment must be inflicted for a specific purpose". Also, can't animals be tortured?
    • Animals are excluded because none of the cited sources include them. It wouldn't be included in any of the legal definitions of torture, so it should be covered under animal abuse.
  • Torturers operate in a permissive organizational environment that facilitates and encourages their behavior — Suggest adding "often" as I presume this is not always true?
    • Done
  • The ultimate goal of torture is to destroy the victim's agency and personality — Is this always true? Isn't torture often used for more straightforward purposes like extracting information?
    • Rephrased slightly to match the body, which follows the cited sources.
History
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  • The use of torture in Europe increased — Need to specify a time frame here as I imagine the incidence of torture decreased in the second half of the twentieth century.
    • Done
  • I would focus more on the torture of detainees and Guantanamo and "black sites" rather than Abu Ghraib as the former was officially sanctioned and defended by the Bush administration while the latter was not.
    • Removed mention of Abu Ghraib. Although the US torture program has received disproportionate coverage, it is fairly small scale so I do not want to give undue weight in the article. States such as Egypt, Indonesia, India etc. have undoubtedly tortured more people than the Bush administration and don't get a mention in the article.
Prevalence
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  • Criminalization of homelessness, sex work, or working in the informal economy can provide an excuse for police violence against the poor — The conjunction in this sentence is confusing (it's meant to be understood as "criminalization of sex work") but I couldn't figure out how to make it better.
    • Reworded
  • Torture is perceived as an exceptional event, disregarding this routine state violence. — Perceived by whom? I would also hesitate to put "disregarding" in wiki-voice.
    • Reworded
Perpetration
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  • Since this is mostly about the people/institutions who commit torture, I would suggest renaming the section to "Perpetrators", which also more clearly distinguishes its topic from the "Methods" section.
    • Done
  • Torturers who inflict more suffering than necessary... are rejected by peers or relieved of duty. — Too general, needs qualification.
    • Done
  • A combination of dispositional and situational efforts lead a person to become a torturer. — This sentence is essentially meaningless to a non-specialist.
    • I'm not sure how to rephrase but what it means is that partly innate qualities and partly situation/context lead someone to become a torturer.
  • I changed Torture perpetrators would not be able to continue without the support of others who actively support its occurrence and many bystanders who ignore torture to Torture perpetrators rely on both active supporters and bystanders who ignore torture but "bystanders" seems to be the wrong word here as torture is usually done in secret.
    • That's true, but in societies where torture is commonly carried out it tends to be known. The source uses "bystanders".
Purpose
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  • In early modern Europe, public executions were a way of demonstrating state power, inspiring awe and obedience, and deterring others from doing the same. — This sentence seems to have little to do with torture, and the section overall focuses too heavily towards capital punishment, so I'd recommend removing it.
    • Removed
  • Torture was used to deter slaves from escaping or rebelling — When?
    • Source is dealing with the US slavery, clarified
Methods
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  • no-touch physical manipulation of the body — I am struggling to imagine what this means.
    • Stress positions would be an example. I'm not sure how to rephrase this to be clearer.
      • Is there a substantive difference between stress positions and "[being] suspended in painful positions" mentioned in the previous paragraph?
  • Might be worth mentioned the use of animals in torture. There's torture by elephant, the enhanced interrogation techniques memo mentioned "confinement with an insect", some of the torturers as Abu Ghraib used dogs for intimidation, and Cheka#Atrocities has a delightful description of a rat chewing through a victim's body.
    • Added
  • I would have thought that sexual abuse would merit more attention here. It was certainly a major component of the United States' war on terror torture program. Also unsure whether it belongs in the physical or psychological torture paragraphs. Some forms of rape are extremely violent.
    • Elaborated. Like most forms of torture, it has both physical and psychological elements but it tends to be put in the latter category.
Effects
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  • Torture is one of the most devastating experiences that a person can undergo. — I think this would be a great sentence to have in the lead, perhaps replacing all forms of torture can have severe physical or psychological effects on victims.
    • Redid the lead a bit.
  • Psychological interventions have shown a statistically significant but clinically minor decrease in PTSD symptoms which did not persist at follow-up. — I can't tell if this means that the symptoms did not persist or the decrease in symptoms did not persist.
    • The latter, clarified
Public opinion
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  • more people willing to authorize torture against someone described as a terrorist, Muslim, or culpable — I would imagine this is culture-specific?
    • Clarified that these studies were carried out in the United States
Prohibition
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  • In the contemporary world, torture is nearly universally regarded as abhorrent. — This is a much stronger claim than in the previous section.
    • Removed
Prevention
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  • A 2016 study commissioned by the Association for the Prevention of Torture found that the single strongest measure that correlated with rates of torture was practices of detention. — what practices?
    • Especially the ones discussed in the next sentence. I have deleted this sentence as mostly redundant.

Given that this article already passed GA, I tried to avoid changing the meaning of any sentence, but this was sometimes unavoidable; you may wish to review my changes to ensure that I did not inadvertently introduce any factual errors. I'm planning on doing a second round of copy-editing tomorrow; in the meantime feel free to ask me about any of the changes I have already made. Ruбlov (talk) 23:46, 19 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much for your copyedit and helpful suggestions for article improvement! (t · c) buidhe 22:54, 20 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Round two
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  • Lead
    • The primary victims of torture are poor and marginalized people suspected of ordinary crimes. — "ordinary" doesn't seem to be mentioned in the body of the article, and I'm not exactly sure what constitutes an "ordinary crime" or whether "ordinary" is meant to be synonymous with "minor".
      • Clarified
    • Hate to harp on this but why not have Torture is one of the most devastating experiences that a person can undergo verbatim? It's more direct than [Torture] causes a higher risk of traumatic sequelae than any other known human experience and avoids the use of "traumatic sequelae" which is a term I doubt the average reader would recognize (I didn't).
      • Done
  • Definitions
    • typically someone under the control of the perpetrator — Do the sources allow us to dispense with "typically" here?
      • Done
  • History
    • Torture was legally regulated with strict restrictions on the allowable methods — In what time period and place?
    • In China, judicial torture... was banned in 1905 ... Torture in China has continued throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. — Unless it's SYNTH, I would join these two sentences with "but" or "although".
      • Done
    • My impression from Torture during the Algerian War of Independence is that torture was employed by both sides so the phrasing here may be misleading. Do we know what % of the 300,000 were tortured by France?
      • I believe from Rejali that the vast majority were tortured by French forces.
    • an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 victims of torture by United States-backed regimes — Not sure whether the characterization of these regimes as "United States-backed" is WP:UNDUE or not. In the end, it was the South American regimes themselves doing the torturing, not the United States, and it's possible for the US to back a regime without specifically supporting everything the regime does.
    • Why put war on terror in quotes?
  • Prevalence
    • focus has recently shifted... — Whose focus?
    • ...to include other detention sites — Other than what? No detention sites have been mentioned in this section yet.
    • Do the sources report whether men are more likely to be tortured than women?
    • Torture is directed against certain segments of the population, who are denied the protection against torture that others enjoy. — Kind of wishy-washy.
  • Perpetrators
    • There are a number of sentences scattered throughout this section about "torture cultures". Perhaps these should be made into their own paragraph.
  • Effects
    • Current circumstances, such as housing insecurity, family separation, and the uncertainty of applying for asylum in a safe country, strongly impact survivors' well-being. — Don't "current circumstances" strongly impact everyone's well-being? The sentence is vague to the point of being practically meaningless.
    • Other outcomes, such as psychological distress or quality of life, showed no benefit or were not measured. — A treatment can show a benefit but I'm not sure that an "outcome" can. And it's a stretch to say that "quality of life" is an outcome of torture.
      • Reworded
  • Public opinion
    • with more Americans willing to authorize torture against someone described as a terrorist, Muslim, or culpable — I know it was me who suggested clarifying but the specific singling-out of Americans seems undue here. Introducing this as a new sentence starting with "For instance, a study found..." might help.
      • Done
  • Prohibition
    • The taboo against torture developed from the debates around its abolition. — Vague. Also "taboo" might be overstating it; it's hard to call something which is practiced in most countries a taboo.
      • Reworded
    • Because torture became a mark of distinction between civilization and barbarism, international norms required torture to be prevented and punished—even if committed against colonized people. — This seems to conflict with the earlier claim that Torture was widely used by colonial powers to subdue resistance.
    • Torture was prosecuted during the Nuremberg trials as a crime against humanity. — If the prosecution was based on the Lieber Code you could add "on this basis" to this sentence to more closely link it with the preceding one.
  • Prevention
    • Torture is a crime of opportunity — But Crime of opportunity says A crime of opportunity is a crime that is committed without planning when the perpetrator sees that they have the chance to commit the act at that moment and seizes it. and this seems very different from the description of torture in this article.
    • Safeguards against torture in detention can be evaded — But earlier it said The risk of torture can be effectively eliminated with the right safeguards.
  • Other
    • Given that we have an article on Torture in popular culture (that you wrote), it seems we should have a section summarizing the depiction of torture in popular culture, the controversy, etc.

Also note that I responded inline to one of your comments above. My overall comment is that this is a good, well-researched and balanced article but it is quite short (less than 5,000 words) considering its importance. I find that in many sections the information is very dense; almost every sentence is introducing a new idea or topic with little elaboration or connection, and facts are often stated in very general terms. The "History" section in particular could use significant expansion.

If you do decide to expand or change the article significantly, feel free to request a second copy-edit on my talk page to skip the GOCE queue. Ruбlov (talk) 02:16, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Ovinus

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Overall content considerations will probably be breadth (esp. non-Western examples, since those are probably often given insufficient light), NPOV wording, and focus. The first and last of those are hard to get together. From my skim of the lead my main concern is that the article is entirely about state-sponsored, or at least government-sponsored, torture. Seeing the "definitions" section cleared things up for me, and I'm assuming the article is taking torture to mean, strictly, torture carried out by the state. I think that deserves a sentence somewhere in the lead, because most people will be confused as to why the article only discusses a certain subset. At least that's me. Ovinus (talk) 05:52, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Done

Also, there are definitely some medical claims in here that would fall under MEDRS, so I'll note those as I read. Ovinus (talk) 05:54, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • "More Americans are willing to authorize torture against someone described as a terrorist, Muslim, or culpable" As horrible as this anti-Muslim sentiment is, it seems a bit US-centric? What makes this relevant? Is it because it's an example of how cultural biases affect people's perception of torture? This specific example is probably made quite complicated by Abu Ghraib and similar government wrongdoings, with people trying to justify them.... Are there any non-US examples that could be included for balance?
    • Unfortunately, most torture opinion polling research has been carried out in the US. (t · c) buidhe 06:20, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • Fair. What do you make of [1] and the source it cites? Ovinus (talk) 00:42, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        Other cross national surveys have found similar results. It's already covered in the public opinion section: "Studies have found that most people around the world oppose the use of torture in general, but a minority is willing to justify its use in specific cases". (t · c) buidhe 01:27, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
          • Then add something about some countries' citizens, like Americans, also having somewhat of an exception for terrorists? The rest of the article is excellently balanced in its coverage of nations. Also, should I be indenting with stars or colons, I can never figure that out.... Ovinus (talk) 01:39, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Image File:Torture_after_the_putsch.jpg: Is the uploader actually the creator of the image? Maybe it's PD
    • I'm willing to believe that this is own work based on what is known about this image, but it is a borderline case. (t · c) buidhe 06:34, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • The image appears to be duplicated by [2], the only other image that user uploaded. A reverse image search turned up nothing. But the bigger issue is that the caption is unverifiable. There are probably some images of fatal torture out there that are more verifiable, but perhaps not ones as high-fidelity.... I see you've already looked on Commons. The only graphic PD photograph that I can think of, besides those from Abu Ghraib, is the death of Jesse Washington (see [3]) Ovinus (talk) 00:42, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Maybe the history section deserves its own article, so that the content can be reasonably further developed while keeping this article manageable (which it certainly is at the moment)
Lead
  • but torture continued to be used By Western countries?
    • Clarified

Comments from Reidgreg

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On first reading the article, I felt that there wasn't enough coverage of torture by non-state actors (eg: organized crime, psychopaths). Then I checked the etymology and found that really isn't part of the formal definition. From Wiktionary: in Middle Latin “pain inflicted by judicial or ecclesiastical authority as a means of persuasion, torture”), from Latin tortus (whence also tort), past participle of torquere (“to twist”). (This may have been taken from The Century Dictionary which is in the public domain.) Would you consider adding something like this, to show that this definition was well established by the middle ages?

  • Well, to be honest I set the scope of the article based on the definitions used by reliable sources, which in turn is based on the legal definition to exclude private individuals. However, I think it's a great idea to include the etymology if that helps the reader understand the article scope better so I've followed your suggestion.

Suggested prose changes:

  • Torture had already became → Torture had become (or perhaps: It had become)
    • Done
  • In most cases where torture is used systematically Should this be systemically?
    • In this case "systematic" is more correct because it refers to torture as a deliberate government policy
  • Once a torture program is begun, it is difficult or impossible to prevent it from escalating to more severe techniques and larger groups of victims, beyond what is originally intended or desired by high-level decision-makers. → and expanding to larger groups of victims
    • Done
  • The prohibition of torture has motivated a shift to methods that do not leave marks to make torture more palatable for the torturer or the public → in order to make torture more palatable
    • Done

Reidgreg (talk) 21:32, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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