Rebecca Evans The Ethics Of Torture

Those who have been tortured are most certain to agree with keeping the ban. The victims of torture will never forget their experience and will continue to suffer for the rest of their lives. The mental and physical cost of torture can’t be disregarded. Not only is it physically and emotionally painful, it is also physically and emotionally traumatizing. For critics of the punishment and interrogation method, gaining information through the use of pain is incredibly barbaric and heinous. In the middle ages, torture was used as both a form of punishment and humiliation as well as a way of obtaining confessions. There are those who see torture as a means to an end. The scenario most often put forth by those who support torture is always the “ticking …show more content…
But Rebecca Evans in her book, The Ethics of Torture argues that, “Torture is morally unjustified.” In other words, there can be no reason imaginable that excuses torture. She sees torture as a way of manipulating people through their pain and points out that several universal conventions laid out the “absolute moral imperative” against torture including The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “which stipulates, in unqualified terms, that ‘no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’ ”(Evans). The Geneva Conventions of 1949 also had provisions which addressed torture and the treatment of enemy combatants insisting that “no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability of any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture” (Evans). On the issue of the lasting effects of torture, there is no greater authority to speak to the issue of torture than Arizona Senator, John McCain. McCain is, of course, considered a war hero for his service during World War II. Captured and held as prisoner of war for five years, McCain was also the victim of frequent