TORTURE is rife in Jamaica. Oh yes, though it’s difficult for us to associate such a heinous act with a beautiful little island floating in the Caribbean sea populated by God-fearing people, torture is a daily occurrence right under our noses and sometimes under our very eyes. To appreciate the validity of this charge, one must first agree on a definition of torture.

Torture, according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, is any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person may have committed or is suspected to have committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in a public capacity.

It’s impossible to say just when torture became a standard practice for meting out justice to suspected or condemned criminals, or in some cases to persons who posed a threat to the status quo. The crucifixion, widely practised by the Romans around the time of Jesus, was one of the most dastardly torturous acts. The victim was flogged until his back was a mass of bloody tissue and bone. Barely able to walk, he was forced to carry the crossbar, sometimes weighing up to 100 pounds, to the place of execution, then nailed through the wrist and feet to the upright cross. Death came slowly from suffocation, bleeding and pain.

The practice known as “hanged, drawn and quartered” was no less cruel. Practised in mediaeval England, this form of torture involved dragging the victim through the streets; hanging him to within seconds of his death; then tying his hands and feet to four stallions who on command galloped in different directions, sectioning the victim in the area of the bowels.

In the latter half of the 18th century, the practice called “walking the plank” became popular. Usually practised at sea, a plank was placed over the side of the ship. The victim, blindfolded, was forced to walk the plank not knowing which of his steps would land him into the treacherous water and eventual drowning or into the jaws of sharks.

Between 1933 and 1945, nearly 20,000 concentration camps were established by the Nazis. The German Third Reich used these camps primarily as extermination camps for mass murder. At camps such as Auschwitz, thousands of prisoners were subjected to forced labour; made to suffer exhaustion, starvation and exposure to the elements; eventually dying the cruellest of deaths.

Extreme forms of torture are still with us. In January 2009 President Barack Obama banned the use of water-boarding by the Central Intelligence Agency and the US armed services. In this form of torture the victim is made to lie flat on his back on a piece of board. The board is inclined so that the head is lower than the feet; water is then poured over the face so it enters the nostrils, causing the sensation of drowning.

Back to Jamaica: the most common form of torture is beating. In garrison communities, men are regularly tried for offences ranging from petty larceny to rape, and sentenced to be beaten usually with a pick-axe stick. Blows are inflicted to the head, to the knee, to the ankle and all over the body, with a crowd looking on, until the victim is immobilised. One may surmise that such acts fall outside the strict definition of what constitutes torture since no public official or the state is involved. That would be a mistake. The Report of the National Committee on Political Tribalism, July 23, 1997, reads thus: “The hard-core garrison communities exhibit an element of autonomy, in that they are states within a state.”

The recently released report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Manfred Nowak, condemned the overcrowding, insanitary conditions and cruel treatment by warders in Jamaica’s lock-ups, saying it reflects a total disregard for human dignity. With specific reference to the recent prisoner uprising at the Horizon Remand Centre, Nowak supported by Forensic Specialist Dr Derrick Pounder, pointed out that defenceless prisoners were severely beaten. Many of the injuries appeared to be of a defensive nature, confirming an observation made by Public Defender Earl Witter.

As if that is not enough to condemn us all to hell, the report of Retired Court of Appeal President Justice Paul Harrison, looking into the death of seven girls detained at the Armadale Juvenile Correctional Centre, has at last made it into the glaring light of public scrutiny, and it isn’t pretty. To find the equal, one must go back to the overcrowded slaver, plying the Middle Passage between the West Coast of Africa and the so-called New World where, like a serpent, it disgorged the remnants of its human cargo. Reading the report and listening to the stories of the girls themselves, one must consider whether the deprivations and forms of punishment meted out to wards of the state held in these hellholes euphemistically called places of safety, is not torture.

Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Rights to Physical Integrity, prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. Jamaica’s consistent violation of the covenant to which it is a signatory has caused the international watchdog group, Amnesty International, to liken it to a rogue state. How did the treatment of people in the state’s care get this bad? The answer is painfully simple. It got this way because we allowed it to. The state is merely a reflection of what we have become: callous, uncaring and unfeeling towards anything and anyone outside the law that does not touch us personally.

Torture is rife in Jamaica and our government seems ill-prepared or unwilling to do anything about it.

hmorgan@cwjamaica.com