Myths about torture revealed

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) hosted a discussion on ‘Torture, Justice and Democracy: Myths and Misconceptions.’ Alice Verghese, a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow and program coordinator for Asia and the Pacific at the International Rehabilitation Council for Victims of Torture, was invited to share her findings on torture particularly in Sri Lanka and the Philippines.

Verghese defined the paradigms of torture as pain and suffering, physical or mental, which is intentionally inflicted by public officials for purposes such as coercion or obtaining information. She attributed the difficulties in obtaining reliable reports on torture to the lack of consistent data collection methods, fragmented responses from those in the field and the secretive nature of torture itself.

Victor Madrigal-Borloz, a human rights specialist at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, said that international justice systems are not international criminal bodies and that strengthening democracy at the local level was vital. Madrigal-Boloz also said that making the public aware of torture was ‘an element of healing’ to victims of torture. Dr. Allen Keller, associate professor of medicine at New York University, pointed out that the psychological impact of torture should not be underestimated and that it had much longer lasting effects compared to physical torture.