So this week I’ve been learning about International, European, and Irish Human Rights law: In particular the European Court of Human Rights. Established under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), in 1950, to monitor respect of human rights by the states in Europe.Learning and reading of the cases the courts hear, and have ruled on (did you know that over 50% of the cases heard are brought against the Russian Federation) has had me thinking about the concept of justice, and fair and open trails.
After all the legal system exists because mankind created it. It continues to exist because we continue to see it as the ‘best’ form of ‘justice’.
Traditionally, to us in the west, the image of Lady Justice sits as a mascot to the judiciary. Justice is depicted as a goddess equipped with three symbols of the rule of law: a sword symbolising the court's coercive power; scales representing the weighing of competing claims; and a blindfold indicating impartiality. And it is the last one, which is most universally known: justice is blind.
You do not have to prove innocence; you simply have to prove reasonable doubt.
As Amnesty, are all too aware, the death penalty, is a ‘punishment’, often handed down by courts in certain countries. Amnesty International is whole-heartedly, and one hundred percent, against the death penalty.
To me this is a black and white issue. The death penalty should never be used. It doesn’t prevent crimes and it essentially, in my view, contradicts what we most believe in. What if an innocent person is executed? How can you ever be 100% certain?
And in my learning, and through discussions with others, I discovered that when it comes to certain issues, such as torture, the group, if not each individual, is completely divided.
Yes torture is wrong. Of course it is. Debate over. Never to be discussed again. However then you read cases where torture has been used to extradite a confession, with the resulting effect that the lives of 10s, or maybe even 100s of people are saved? And someone says the inevitable: Well if it was your child in danger, you wouldn’t just ‘condone’ the torture; you’d probably do the torturing yourself.
So that’s my question today! Where do we draw the line with things like torture? Who gets to decide? And is one life just as important, or even more so, than 2 or 4 or 10 or 100 or 1,000,000.
We may know, or we strongly suspect, that a lot, if not all, of the world’s security services have used torture as a means of eliciting confessions.
We can never be sure, but we can be fairly sure they have, do, and probably will in the future. We are also aware that the information has been used to prevent terrorist atrocities, and further loss of life.
The European Court have heard cases like this, and in many cases they have ruled that the treatment endured was torturous, or cruel, or deliberate, and have on occasion ruled in the plaintiff’s favour.
In December 1977, there was a landmark case that marked the first time a government had taken another government to the European Court. And it was our very own government who took a case against the United Kingdom. The Court ruled that the government of the UK was guilty of "inhuman and degrading treatment", of men interned without trial, during the Northern Irish troubles. The Court found that while their internment was an interference of the convention rights, it was justifiable in the circumstances; it however ruled that the practice of beating prisoners, and the techniques used, constituted inhumane and degrading punishment in violation of the convention, although not torture.
Yes torture is wrong, and yes the torturers should be held accountable for what they have done, but where I reach my sticking point is: the life saving results of the torture. If one life is saved then that is two parents, numerous siblings, a whole family and a whole gaggle of friends who are saved from suffering. If it were your parent, sibling, friend, child or lover, would you consent to someone being tortured to save his or her life? Because it is a question I just can’t answer.
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1 comment:
The ‘ticking-time bomb’ scenario - whereby an individual tortures someone under extreme duress in order to extract vital information necessary to save innocent lives – has long been used as a justification for the ‘concept’ of torture. The logic for many is inductive, if an instance of torture can be successfully justified then it must logically follow that the practise itself is legitimate.
This logic appears to be not only flawed, but also dangerous. States and individuals are qualatively different entities, with resources, power, and information that simply cannot be compared. Also, in Ireland anyway, an individual who commits an illegal act in the hope of serving ‘the greater good’ will still face a trial. It will then be up to 12 of their peers (the jury) to decide whether or not they were in fact serving the greater good. If the jury wishes it can issue a ‘perverse acquittal’, acknowledging an individuals guilt, but refusing to punish them for it. Unfortunately, there is no similar check on legitimacy if a state is acting rather than an individual. I, for one, am suspicious of large states and their intentions, and so the only option that makes sense to me is that torture, and indeed the death penalty, should remain beyond states at all times, even if there are instances where individuals commit illegal acts to serve ‘the greater good’.
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