Beyond its physical effects, the practice of torture leaves serious psychological impacts upon its victims, members of a panel on torture and human rights said yesterday.
The panel, "Torture, an Affront to Human Dignity," was held as a part of the College's Martin Luther King, Jr. Week celebration.
Sowore Oyomele, one of the featured speakers, fled Nigeria in 1999, after he had been repeatedly imprisoned for leading nonviolent student protests for civil rights. While in police custody, Oyomele suffered from torture and the denial of his basic human rights, he said. He sought asylum in the United States, and now attends Columbia University and works for international human rights.
When Oyomele was 10 years old, police visited his home looking for his father, who had previously worked as an activist. The police took Oyomele and his siblings and beat them to coerce them into disclosing the location of their father. But physical violence was not the only suffering inflicted by the officials. The children suffered humiliation at the hands of the local government, and Oyomele made the decision that he would fight what he saw as injustice.
As a student in one of Nigeria's top universities, he led a protest against the closing of five-sixths of the country's universities -- a condition attached to a World Bank loan. The police shot at students to disperse the crown and arrested the leaders of the protest.
After being tear-gassed in jail, Oyomele and his fellow student-activists were told to sign a form admitting to being part of a dissident group trying to overthrow the government. He was subsequently jailed eight more times before fleeing his country.
"The greatest excuse for torture is national security," he said. Oyomele said he might that he might be tortured in the future because of his campaign for human rights.
Oyomele said that the United States can be accused of torture of its citizens, and recounted a beating of a friend by New York police. He asked how most people would respond if someone was accused of being a terrorist. Would they advocate the use of extreme means during interrogation?
Over 100 countries currently use methods that are considered torture by the United Nations Human Rights Commission, said Dr. Allen Keller, founder of a program that cares for refugees and asylum seekers.
Keller explained to a surprised audience that many seekers of asylum are detained for extended periods of time while their requests are being processed, if they do not have the proper paperwork upon entering the United States.
"These facilities are really maximum-security prisons," he said. "They're treated as criminals."
Keller said that the welcome refugees receive in the United States often adds to the psychological trauma that they have already experienced at the hands of their oppressors.
Dr. Kathleen Allden, the Medical Director of the International Survivors Center, spoke on the psychological attributes of torture, such as cognitive damage, nightmares and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Allden said that psychological damages are often much more severe than physical ones, because the goal of torture is not to incapacitate the victim, but to demoralize or shame them, to break hope and trust, and to "damage the coherence of community."
