The Journal

Issue date: 2/23/06 Section: News

Media Credit: Jennifer Wenger Professor Darius Rejali of Reed College describes the history of torture and the methods that are still used today. Rejali spoke Feb. 16 in Sverdrup room 101.

The causes, consequences and implementation of torture in the modern world were the focus of a discussion Feb. 16 headed by Darius Rejali, an Iranian-American and nationally-recognized expert on government torture and interrogation.

Rejali, a professor of political science at Reed College in Portland, Ore., began extensively researching the topic in 1994 and recently compiled his findings in a book titled "Torture and Democracy."

"What we know (about torture) is a lot, but it tends to be spread out across a lot of different disciplines and it takes a lot of energy to put it in one place, so one of the goals of 'Torture and Democracy' is to be a source book," Rejali said.

Rejali said his motivation for studying torture stemmed from his own personal history.

"Almost exactly 100 years ago, my Iranian great-grandfather was engaged in a battle in which he was trying to defend his way of life," Rejali said. "He was a very powerful man and he had absolutely no problem turning cannons on protesters or torturing people he considered to be terrorists. Having lived through that experience, partially what I'm here to tell you as Americans living in a democratic society is don't make the same mistake as my great-grandfather."

While Rejali defined torture as "painful physical techniques done by public agents for public purposes," he stressed that not all torture techniques leave visible scars.

"I'm really interested in the techniques that don't leave marks, what I'm going to call 'clean torture,'" Rejali said.

One of these techniques Rejali discussed in detail was sleep deprivation.

"From what we know experimentally about sleep deprivation, it isn't that you're just deprived of sleep," Rejali said. "Sleep deprivation reduces the body's tolerance for muscular/skeletal pain. Moreover, animal tests with sleep deprivation suggest an increase of sensitivity to mechanical, thermal and noxious electrical stimuli and that's what makes sleep deprivation an ideal supplement to virtually every other painful technique in torture."

Continued...

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