The capacity to commit acts of torture when thrust into extraordinary situations exists within all of us, and this type of behavior is more pervasive than most people would like to believe, two speakers argued at discussion Tuesday night at Parkes Hall.
The event, sponsored by a local chapter of Amnesty International, brought together author John Conroy and Iraq specialist Beth Ann Toupin.
Both spoke at length to a crowd of about 30 people about the psychology of torture and its prevalence in the world today.
To begin the presentation, Conroy, author of “Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture,” played a chilling tape of an interview he conducted with a Vietnam veteran who, with no history of sadistic behavior, had interrogated and subsequently participated in the repeated electrical shocking of a Vietnamese prisoner.
“Many of us are hard-wired for obedience,” said Conroy, citing famed psychologist Stanley Milgram’s experiments on authority and obedience conducted in the 1960s. “Milgram concluded that many people aren’t able to act on their values, that even when it’s very clear that they’re inflicting harm relatively few people have the resources to resist authority.”
“This human tendency to obey has the capacity to make us all torturers,” he said.
Toupin, an Iraq specialist for Amnesty International USA and a member of the board of directors, applied Conroy’s points about the psychology of torture to the current situation in Iraq.
Citing recent allegations of abuse and torture of prisoners at the hands of American guards in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, Toupin said there is widespread and ongoing misconduct in the country.
“In the wake of (Saddam Hussein’s) removal, there isn’t liberation and freedom from human rights violations,” she said. “Instead at the hands of the people who claim to be their liberators what the Iraqi people are facing is arbitrary arrest and detention, lack of judicial process, incommunicado detention, lack of access to lawyers and family members.”
Recounting one of the “numerous” stories collected by Amnesty International delegates in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Toupin told the crowd about a Saudi Arabian national who was arrested en route to Baghdad by coalition forces under suspicion of being a terrorist.
After being forced to walk three hours to an unknown site, the man was subjected to beatings, electrical shock and sleep deprivation. He was blindfolded for four days, interrogated, tortured numerous times and then left on the street without his passport, Toupin said.
The crowd of mainly Chicago and Evanston-area adults said the discussion focused on an important issue.
Elyne Handler, 75, of Chicago said she came to the discussion to become more informed.
“I mean it’s criminal, absolutely criminal,” Handler said, referring to an article she read in The Nation magazine about high-level government involvement in torture.
Mario Venegas, 57, a Chilean-born Evanston resident who said he was arrested and tortured as a student by the Augusto Pinochet regime during the 1970s, left the panel with renewed determination to put a stop to torture.
When one individual suffers, he said, the whole society suffers.
“As a whole, as a society, as a community, we have to overcome.”
Reach Evan Hill at [email protected].
