The History of Torture During Wartime
In the history of humankind, whenever and wherever there is war, torture seems to follow. With the advent of the Geneva Conventions in 1949, however, torture was explicitly deemed a war crime. Nonetheless, the practice has continued to rear its head in numerous conflicts since then.
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In Antiquity
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In the Greek and Roman civilizations, the use of torture was widespread as a means of both punishment and extracting confessions. In Rome, standard practice sent captured soldiers--along with criminals, escaped slaves and heretics--to the Colosseum, where they were forced into combat with one another or animals, or tortured for entertainment. Others were doomed to slavery, in which torture by flagellation, starvation, branding and various creative methods for compelling work was commonplace.
From the Middle Ages to the Modern Era
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After the Roman Empire adopted Christianity in the fourth century, the use of torture for treason and heresy accusations continued. While this eventually resulted in its widespread use during the numerous inquisitions of the Middle Ages, torture also remained a hallmark of armed conflicts during the era. For instance, the Wallachian prince Vlad the Impaler earned his nickname by impaling tens of thousands of Ottoman invaders, while alive and conscious, during the 15th century.
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In the Early 20th Century
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When Austro-Hungarian troops invaded Serbia at the outbreak of World War I in 1914, thousands of enemy soldiers and local civilians suffered prolonged bouts of dismemberment, castration and rape. During Russia's Bolshevik Revolution of 1918, the corpses of opposing Czech soldiers were discovered with no eyes, tongues or genitals--wounds inflicted before death. The Irish separatists of the 1920s often employed such tactics against British forces.
Across the world in China, during the Communist revolution of 1927, torture and indiscriminate killing occurred on both sides of the conflict. The Japanese also would practice torture on both civilians and troops during their invasion of the Chinese capital of Nanking in 1937. Along with the Nazi atrocities of World War II, this remains one of the most notorious instances of pervasive torture during the 20th century.
The Geneva Conventions
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Ratified in the wake of World War II, the Geneva Conventions of 1949 outlined rules of war to ensure the protection of all those--civilian and military alike--in the custody of an opposing army. The document's first Additional Protocol specifically prohibits torture and humiliation of prisoners taken during international conflicts, while Common Article 3 does the same for domestic civil wars. Similar resolutions by the Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment and Punishment and the International Committee of the Red Cross later affirmed the Geneva Conventions' place in international law.
Despite this, acts of torture continued to be employed in domestic and international wars over the next 50 years in locales such as Turkey, Iran, Uganda, Rwanda and the Balkans, to name just a few.
Questions of Legality After 9/11
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In early 2004, photos of abused detainees under U.S. protection at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison surfaced. Soon after, the CIA also came under fire for employing so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques," including waterboarding, on suspected terrorists to whom the Geneva Conventions, according to the Departments of Defense and Justice, did not apply. Though investigations into the latter are still pending, the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual--the United States' official handbook for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq--plainly states, "Soldiers and Marines do not kill or torture enemy prisoners of war."
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