Why we don't talk about humanity's ugly side

Rym Ghazal considers the role that torture plays in modern society

Instruments of torture at the Fort Breendonk museum, Belgium. Arterra / Getty Images

‘You have no other choice: you must continue.” If that line sounds familiar, then at some point, someone in authority has pushed you to do something you weren't comfortable with. Sometimes it is a teacher, sometimes it is a doctor, sometimes it is even a parent. As several famous psychological experiments have shown, we have tendencies not to question those in authority when we are put under pressure.

There are also certain topics we don’t like to discuss, even if, tragically, they may be common practice in war zones, jails and some homes in this region and beyond. We skim over stories in which there are mentions of “torture” without really pausing to absorb its meaning.

To counter that, an Egyptian historian made a brave move a few years ago when he opened his own “torture museum” in Cairo. His aim was to force visitors to have a hard look at this ugly reality. A video about this facility is doing the rounds on social media.

In it, Mohammad Abdul Wahab says that he hopes his museum will deter would-be oppressors from resorting to torture. The first of its kind in the Middle East, it will be open only on June 26, which is the UN's international day in support of torture victims.

Looking at some of the tools and tactics of torture, it is beyond shocking, yet it has been going on for centuries. There have been extremist groups for hundreds of years, and war criminals existed then and do so today.

We have a tendency to believe that we would never hurt another nor allow any form of violence if we were in power. That is why the 1961 electric-shock studies by Stanley Milgram continue to intrigue us so many years later.

Under the watch of an expert, the volunteer (dubbed “the teacher”) would read out strings of words to his partner (“the learner”) who was hooked up to an electric-shock machine in the other room.

Each time the learner made a mistake in repeating the words, the teacher was to deliver a shock of increasing intensity, and even when they expressed doubt and discomfort, they continued to obey orders. While these experiments have been highly debated, they still revealed an interesting side of human nature.

Milgram concluded that people obey either out of fear or out of a desire to appear cooperative, even when acting against their own better judgment.

In Lebanon, many years ago, I met and interviewed a former prisoner who had spent a decade in a Syrian jail. The first thing he said to me was that he was “not normal anymore. Even the sound of flies buzzing near my ears make me scream.”

Besides being a victim of unspeakable forms of torture, he was forced to torture others he was sharing a cell with. “They said, ‘You have no choice, you do it, or we will make him do it, and torture you more’,” he said. Some journalists questioned the authenticity of his claims, perhaps because some of the torture tactics were too horrible to believe. A psychologist said his mannerism of shifting the blame on officials was a survival tactic, so that he could live with himself after committing torture against another inmate. Whatever the case, this man of 30 looked much older.

His own family found him majnoun (crazy) and difficult. He would wander about in dirty clothes, talking to himself, and ran away whenever someone called out his name. As the wars in this region continue, we must do something to help the victims of torture through special programmes as well as kindness and patience. This man had no one to help him.

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