Can Ethnographers Contribute to an Anti-Torture Movement in the Middle East? (original) (raw)
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Politics and Religion, 2014
down especially hard on women and religious and ethnic minority groups with gender and family being key battlegrounds in contests for group identity. Thus, Sezgin argues that "personal status laws are not just secular, socio-political constructions, but also andro-(and often ethno-) centric legalities built through selective interpretations of sacred text, traditions, and narratives that came to heavily influence the rights and freedoms of women and subaltern groups while denying them terms of equal membership in the political community" (49). Against the "monolithic and static" interpretations of religion and religious law that underlie some of these etatist renderings, Sezgin argues for a more "flexible and dynamic" paradigm, in which feminist hermeneutical communities can work toward new understandings that protect their human rights (51, 214-221). Sezgin's study is a masterful analysis of these possibilities, blending both social scientific method and normative concern that will be informative for readers in law and religion, human rights, feminist politics, and specialists in Israeli, Egyptian, and Indian affairs alike.
Engaging torture survivors in the global fight against torture
Torture : quarterly journal on rehabilitation of torture victims and prevention of torture, 2021
In front of the current ongoing debate on the need to actively engaging torture survivors in the global fight against torture, IRCT held a webinar at the request of IRCT member centres. The webinar examined torture survivor engagement in the rehabilitation process of rebuilding lives, seeking justice and torture prevention. Lived experience can be emancipating and also paralysing, but foremost, it is precious to combat what has been suffered in the first person (Henry, 2021). How to recognise that contribution and engage torture survivors in the global fight against torture? What role do survivors play in society? How to involve survivors in advocacy and policy-making processes? What are the existing power (in)balances at play? Who gets to decide whether a survivor should speak up or not? Acknowledging that it can prompt some organisational, therapeutic, and professional considerations, what are the limits? How do we ensure that the survivor's well-being is protected along the p...
Torture Writ Large: The Israeli Occupation
GLOBAL DIALOGUE, 2010
he Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories-now more than four decades old-represents a distortion of law and morality. It can be compared to torture, not in terms of specific acts, but in terms of what it means. The occupation represents a power relationship in which one side has absolute power over the other. The weaker side is characterised primarily as a receptacle for pain: although not completely powerless (as a torture victim is), the weaker side-here the entirety of the Palestinian population-is fundamentally without power and thus largely denied meaningful access to resistance in an effective way against the long-term brutality of the occupation. This understanding should inform any discussion of the occupation and, correspondingly, it should guide people in forming, towards the occupation, an ideological and political opposition that is absolute, much as torture is opposed absolutely.
Torture: A Sociology of Violence and Human Rights (Paperback) - Taylor & Francis
2012
Rights is part of Routledge's "Framing 21st Century Social Issues" series, which aims to provide undergraduates with brief, "studentfriendly" texts that "introduce basic concepts in the social sciences, cover key literature in the field, and offer original analyses and diagnoses." (x) When approaching Hajjar's latest contribution to the sociology of torture,
How to combat torture if perpetrators are supported by a religious "justification
Torture : quarterly journal on rehabilitation of torture victims and prevention of torture, 2011
While there are some examples of legal cases which have resulted in the prosecution of perpetrators and successful reparation for survivors, in countries such as Iran such due procedure is close to impossible since torture is practiced by state officials mostly based on religious codes, and the legal system is controlled by practices that makes it close to impossible to achieve justice. This article discusses the implications of such a situation that also include health care professionals in third party countries who have an obligation to document evidence using the Istanbul Protocol based on a case example of a survivor exposed to different forms of torture.
Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism, 2019
An encyclopedia entry on Torture, included in Springer's Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism, ed. Eran Shor and Stephen Hoadley
State of Human Rights, Torture and Ill-Treatment Prevention and Monitoring
Daria Kotova 360, 2021
This research article is an effort to explore the state of human rights from torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment prevention mechanisms perspective. Human rights are integral to the preservation and negotiation of human values enabling to sustainable universal humanity. Addressing the matters of torture and other cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment or punishment is fundamental to preservation of respect for human life. Torture and further ill-treatment are examined in contexts of general interest to implement Articles and prevent unacceptable behaviours, approaches to places of individuals’ deprivation of liberty, and matters pertaining to armed conflicts. Methodologically considerations are based on an examination of data accumulated out of opening and closing of the 42nd session of Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture, information made available by the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner’s Committee Against Torture, recordings with former inmates – David Honeywell and Liam Knights – produced by the University of Leeds, recordings on ethics of imprisonment – hearing from Dr. Emma Wincup (Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Leeds) and John Batchelor (Barrister) – produced by the University of Leeds, additional international humanitarian law and international human rights law materials, and further accompanied by a range of literary materials. Undertaken is a human rights centered anthropological holism with elements of cultural relativism and overtone of thick description.
Does Torture Work? A Sociolegal Assessment of the Practice in Historical and Global Perspective
Torture is absolutely prohibited and constitutes one of the core crimes under international law. There is a substantial body of sociolegal literature that addresses torture's illegality. But this article tackles the question "does torture work?" The analysis locates the practice of torture in historical and global perspective, accommodating but not constrained by post-9/11 scholarship on American torture. The titular question is treated more critically and comprehensively than a narrowly construed focus on the value and veracity of utterances produced as a result of pain and suffering. Drawing on scholarship from a variety of fields, the article addresses how torture works (i.e., why it has been used and its effects) in order to highlight the role of torture in the mutually constitutive histories of law-state-society relations. The final section uses the American case to offer conclusions about the efficacy and effects of torture. 311 Annu. Rev. Law. Soc. Sci. 2009.5:311-345. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org by Lisa Hajjar on 03/22/11. For personal use only.