An article
from the New York Times describes how to Afghan government has begun to come
clean about the torture of their detainees. In the past in Afghanistan, there
have been no repercussions for allowing torture or taking part in the
act. Now, government officials are beginning to realize how much a problem it
is and are taking responsibility for their actions.
A common topic of human rights is torture. The
Geneva Convention ruled torture unlawful, but to be honest, there is torture of
prisoners occurring all over the world. There are many countries guilty of
torturing detainees for information, for punishment, or just because. I am
confident that our own United States takes part in torture, just because they
deem it necessary for the safety of others. I personally have no opinion on the
matter. Obviously it is not right to mutilate or torture another human being,
but I feel like there are much worse things in war. I think that one way
that human rights activists see torture as an awful and unethical thing is the
fact that the prisoner is defenseless. It takes a dark person to torture
another human being and we can only imagine the types of things that go on in
an Afgan prison.
A serious problem with
torture is the fact that it is hard to know if it actually happened. The only
witnesses are the victims and the criminals themselves, so there are never
really any outside witnesses that can attest to what happened. The only way
that one can know if torture occurred or not is through the victims or if the
government comes clean about their act. The Afghan government is taking big
steps by admitting there is a problem with torturing detainees, because
otherwise we may have never known.
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