Human Rights and Torture

According to WordNet, human right is any basic right or freedom to which all human beings are entitled and in whose exercise a government may not interfere (including rights to life and liberty as well as freedom of thought and expression and equality before the law).  Human rights has been an issue throughout history dating back to the treatment of the Jewish in Egypt.  Today, the problems dealing with Human Rights deals with religion shown by the World Trade Center Attacks on 9/11 and any terrorist attacks there after to cultural indifferences that could lead to a genocide of a certain culture and race or even labor laws such as the right age to work.  In the criminal justice system,  human rights have always led to problems such as racial profiling while dealing with police discretion of arrests, convictions and sentencing.  Others are the torturing of prisoners since the War on Terrorism. The same could be said about equal employment in law enforcement where Affirmative Action comes into play with both Human and Civil Rights. 

With these problems in the present and the past, Civil Rights, child labor laws, racial profiling, and religious tolerance comes into play with laws and policies such as Affirmative Actions, if the people born in the U.S. then they are citizens (14th Amendment), slavery is illegal (13th Amendment), the right to vote (19th Amendment) and etc. Everyone is affected by human rights in one way or another through these laws and policies.  So my question is whether or not human rights are still on the road to equal treatment of people?

Sharon Cohen writes on civil rights and other human rights articles for the Associated Press.  On Sunday, January 30, 2011, she wrote an article on police torture in Chicago to extract confession from innocent people for crimes that they did not commit.  The article could apply to police brutality and corruption. She cites a letter from 1989 and an attorney who represented a man that was behind bars.  The letter was talking how there were some Chicago police officers that were torturing known criminals to extract confessions for petty thefts to murder. The letter and the attorney stated that “the torture was not necessary.”  The article states that over 100 minorities were tortured from police officers for confessions and claimed about it.  The author’s bias is the torturing of innocent people for confessions of crimes that they did not commit.  Torturing people can go both ways.  One is being unethical and improper police procedures such as those that have nothing to do with a certain crime and are tortured or arrested for that crime.  The other way is that torture should only be used when law enforcement needs to prevent crimes from happening such as preventing another terrorist attack.  However, I have to agree with those that argue that torture is unethical and part of improper police procedures to gain unsuited confessions.

The article was decent and the author made sure that people were aware that there was inmate torture prior to 9/11 as well to inform people that the War on Drugs led police to commit acts that were unethical at that time and the public opinion was fine with that.  The pertinent facts were not omitted in the article due to the author's example of the type of torture that was performed with one of the people.  The author values equal treatment.  According to Critical Issues in Crime and Justice, “some argue that the public has no choice but to accept a certain level of police corruption and abuse in the interests of public safety and in serving the noble cause” (Maguire 7).

There are arguments for torture and human rights.  A couple arguments,  according to Dr. Sam Vaknin, are “suspects - innocent until proven guilty - indeed should not be subject to penalty. But torture is merely an interrogation technique.” Ethically, it is no different to any other pre-trial process: shackling, detention, questioning, or bad press.  According to Diana Ayton-Shenker, an argument against Human Rights is that universal human rights can be intrusive and disruptive to traditional protection of human life, liberty and security.  The better treatment of humans may lead the world to a better place; however, there will be people that may treat others with disrespect as well as unfairly due to how people are raised and trained.  This is because of public opinion and history of man.  Human rights and the road to better treatment of minorities have been improving in America since the 1960’s with the Civil Rights Movement.

Ayton-Shenker, Diana. "The Challenge of Human Rights and Cultural Diversity." Welcome to the United Nations: It's Your World. Web. 05 Feb. 2011. http://www.un.org/rights/dpi1627e.htm.

Cohen, S. (2011). How tables were turned on a police torture squad. The Sacramento Bee, A(12).

Maguire, Mary and Dan Okada. Critical Issues in Crime and Justice: Thought, Policy, and Practice. Los Angeles, CA: Sage. 2011

Vaknin, Sam. "The Argument for Torture." Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD),

Self-love, Narcissism,Narcissists, Psychopaths, and Relationships with Abusers, Stalkers, and Bullies- Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Re-Visited. Web. 05 Feb.   2011.  <http://samvak.tripod.com/torture.html>.

WordNet. "Human Right." Online Dictionary: Definitions by WordNet, Webster's, Etc. Web. 05 Feb. 2011. <http://dictionary.die.net/>.