By: Nasrin Parvaz

Are we all potential torturers?

On December 2^nd 2004, a programme was broadcasted by BBC World, regarding use of torture by US solders in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Susan Fiske, professor of psychology from Princeton University, Paul, a torturer from South Africa, Carlos, who was in prison during Pinochet’s regime in Chile, and I were in this programme. The purpose of the programme was to demonstrate Susan Fiske’s and her colleagues’ claim that everyone can be a torturer. I must mention here that half of my talk in the programme was censored by the BBC. I want to draw attention to Fiske’s argument which, by accusing everyone of having the potentiality of being a torturer, in effect white-washes the US government’s policies and its army all over the world.

By claiming that you and I and almost everyone can be a torturer, Fiske is justifying the act of torture by her government. However for me as a survivor of torture and eight years of imprisonment, Fiske’s argument has nothing to do with the real world. The reality that I witnessed contradicts Fiske’s view; although she calls her finding scientific, it is a laboratory experiment rather than people’s reaction in society. Out there in real life, where people struggle to improve their lives and are tortured to death, it is not a question of becoming or not becoming a torturer. People can save their lives from torture and execution by denouncing their belief, yet many do not do it and pay the price, which is losing their lives.

However I witnessed some people who became torturers to escape further torture themselves. But only one in a thousand would agree to torture their cell mate to escape the torture. What Fiske claims is quite different. She means people can become torturers without being under extraordinary pressure; or they can torture another person without the excuse of escaping torture; she doesn’t say some people may escape torture by becoming torturers but that everyone can torture when they find the power to do so; and this is an insult to millions of people. Only a psychologically sick person can enjoy torturing another creature, human being or any living creature. Otherwise people are chosen, brain washed, toughened and paid as solders, guards or interrogators to become torturers.

Because not everybody can be a torturer and it is not a morally acceptable job, most of them don’t even reveal their job to their families or friends. Though they justify themselves by claiming to have such a job to defend their beloved country or religion, they know how people in general and their families in particular would feel about a torturer.

Thousands of people were executed in Iran during the last 27 years because they fought for their rights, and once in captivity and under torture they didn’t agree to take the side of the regime to save their lives. Fiske’s remark is an insult to all these people and to me who did not make my imprisonment short by agreeing to the regime to do a public confession, which is less degrading than going to their side and becoming a torturer.

Here I don’t need to tell Fiske that instead of generalising human behaviour from some dummy experience, she should look at the real world to see that people not only do not become a torturer, but bear torture to preserve their dignity and humanity. You don’t need to go far to see the reality. Look around yourself, you’ll see many refugees that like me fled execution, torture and prison, who are silenced by labels such as bogus. Go and ask them how many people they have seen who would become a torturer to escape execution, torture, prison or hunger due to lack of a job.

Or perhaps you had better read human history to see that not only today, but in all times people preferred to die from hunger rather than live in wealth by being a torturer. Human history is the history of struggle, struggle against the torturer rather than history of torturers. You cannot re-write the history in the way that the US government wishes.

Those who are familiar with psychology know that Fiske’s argument is not new. As she herself says, there have been many claims/findings about the cruel nature of a human being. However one can see that all these findings are from laboratory experiments. The truth of the reality is quite different from all these claims. What Fiske and her colleagues do is like turning the light off and examining the elephant.

For me it is not only Fiske’s theory that shows me how psychology is in the service of politics. In prison I realised how politicians used psychology to secure their position. The way they lead some prisoners to madness and use them to put pressure on others, taught me how psychology and politics are close and are of use to each other. Though till now it was always politicians who used psychology, perhaps one day psychologists will recognise that the most important way to stop psychological problems is to interfere in the politics and change the social situation of people which drives them to madness.

Fiske’s argument is a good frame or even picture to hide the truth that the US government is using brutality in its ‘war on terror’. As one of the soldiers whose pictures were broadcasted told the media, the solders who were sent to Abu Ghriab prison were trained to do what they did. However it seems there were ‘a few bad apples’ among the soldiers, who took pictures of the rest of the team who were busy torturing. It would be interesting to know how come these ‘bad apples’, which Ms Fiske calls ‘whistle blowers’, did not conform to their group. After all they too were trained and toughened and paid to kill and torture.

It seems not only the claim that every one can be a torturer is false, but even some of those who were trained to be so failed to be a torturer! The use of Fiske’s theory to the US government lies in that she is trying to deny a fundamental fact which is: an army, any army, manufactures torturers. This is the necessity of today’s politics.

2005