Tag: torture
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Are we torturing more people than ever before?
Electric shocks, rape, simulated drowning, mock executions and beatings. We associate torture with medieval dungeons and brutal dictatorships, yet it remains part of the modern world. Scientific progress has given humanity extraordinary powers without ensuring that those who exercise power treat others humanely. Could more people be suffering torture today than at any previous point…
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Don’t want to die from a drug overdose? Pay for it in Latin American jails
Latin America suffers from some of the world’s most serious problems with homicide, organized crime, extortion and drug trafficking. Governments therefore face a legitimate and exceptionally difficult obligation: protecting ordinary citizens from violent offenders while maintaining institutions capable of investigating crimes, conducting fair trials and administering punishment. Yet punishment itself has become part of the…
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Whipping, cutting fingers and worse: What Russians and Ukrainians do to their own people
Wars are usually narrated horizontally. Russians kill Ukrainians, Ukrainians kill Russians, missiles cross borders, armies capture territory, and prisoners fall into enemy hands. Yet violence also moves in another direction: downward, inside the armies and societies fighting the war. Russian commanders have allegedly beaten, tortured and even killed their own soldiers. Ukrainian authorities have investigated…
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Israel tortures and kills people and it isn’t even trying to hide it
The vast majority of people live in countries where torture is prevalent. And I always knew Israel is no real democracy with a good human rights record. I knew torture and deaths in Israeli prisons were widespread. We also know a lot of people are missing (likely thousands). But what strikes me most is that…
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Sorrry, the future for LGBTQII+ isn’t bright
At first, the global picture appears optimistic. Pride events expand. Courts issue rulings. Governments speak the language of inclusion. However, this surface stability collapses the moment one looks beyond a few countries. In reality, progress distributes unevenly. Moreover, it reverses easily. Therefore, the central problem is not ignorance. Instead, it is fragmentation. Some LGBTQII+ people…
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Russia tortures POWs. India and China don’t care
Ukrainian prisoners freed from Russian camps describe cruelty that no country can ignore. Their accounts come from penal colonies deep inside Russia, especially one in Mordovia. The place does not function as a prison. It functions as a torture site. These men describe beatings, humiliation, electric shocks, and deliberate neglect. Their stories force a hard…
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USA and its relationship to torture
The United States presents itself as the global defender of democracy and human rights. It celebrates its constitution, its freedoms, and its rule of law. Yet beneath this image lies a darker tradition. Torture has accompanied American power since its birth. It took different forms in different eras, but the pattern remained. Cruelty was used…
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Countries having brutal prisons fail as states
Brutal prisons are not a show of order, discipline, or state power. They are symptoms of state failure. Whenever a prison is run through violence, extortion, and gang dominance, it signals that the government has lost its basic monopoly on force. Prisons are not separate worlds. They are mirrors of the wider society. If the…
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We should be thankful we are ruled by the elites
Elites provoke resentment. They hoard influence, they protect their own circles, and they rarely face the same consequences as the rest of society. Yet without them, things would collapse far quicker. For all their corruption and arrogance, elites impose restraint. They keep crowds from turning fear into brutality, they delay rash decisions. They write rules…
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Why we don’t want Russian values
Russia constantly claims to offer an alternative to the Western world. It speaks of “traditional values”—order, faith, patriotism, and family. To many disillusioned by Western politics, this sounds appealing. However, Russian values are not spiritual or moral. Rather, they are hierarchical, brutal, and enforced through fear. What the Kremlin markets as stability is, in reality,…