Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture [Paperback]

John Conroy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 3, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0520230396 | ISBN-13: 978-0520230392 | Edition: First Printing

Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People is a riveting book that exposes the potential in each of us for acting unspeakably. John Conroy sits down with torturers from several nations and comes to understand their motivations. His compelling narrative has the tension of a novel. He takes us into a Chicago police station, two villages in the West Bank, and a secret British interrogation center in Northern Ireland, and in the process we are exposed to the experience of the victim, the rationalizations of the torturer, and the seeming indifference of the bystander. The torture occurs in democracies that ostensibly value justice, due process, and human rights, and yet the perpetrators and their superiors escape without punishment, revealing much about the dynamics of torture.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

How is it that otherwise normal people can become part of the institutionalized practice of torture? That's the question driving this unusual, extremely well-reported book. At the Chicago Reader, Conroy spent years reporting on the kind of torture that happens not in exotic locales but in his own backyard--in Chicago's police precincts. Curious and troubled by what he found, he decided to explore the ordinariness of brutality through three separate incidents of torture--in Israel, Ireland and Chicago. He investigates the "five torture techniques" (hooding, noise bombardment, food deprivation, sleep deprivation and forced standing against a wall) inflicted on 12 Irish prisoners in 1971; a late 1980s round-up on the West Bank of Palestinians, who were bound, gagged and beaten; and Chicago's notorious John Burge case, in which police officers systematically beat and electrocuted (on the head, chest and genitals) a man suspected (and later convicted) of killing a police officer. In all three cases, although the torture was well documented, little or no punishment was handed down. Conroy does an excellent job reconstructing these events in a manner that reveals the presence of torture in everyday society. He's more a reporter than a critic, however; his brief attempt to theorize on why ordinary people become either torturers or silent witnesses to torture rehashes already well-known studies and fails to offer any new insights. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

In this exhaustively researched book, the author of Belfast Diary interviews torturers, torture victims, and government officials from such diverse locations as Israel, Northern Ireland, and a Chicago police interrogation room, focusing on how torture is performed and why. The descriptions of torture are brutal and hair-raising, but even its victims admit that the pain involved is a means to a psychological end. The long-standing hatred between the IRA and the British government in Northern Ireland is intensified through these tales; in Israel, a cruel torture ring is virtually exonerated by a high court; and in Chicago, outrage over apparently racially biased police brutality of suspects is short-lived, with much of the public "not aroused" by the injustices therein. Conroy's journalistic style meshes perfectly with the material, often cold-blooded and antiseptic with a hint of blood-curdling mayhem beneath the surface, and one of Conroy's main points--that the unspeakable evil that ordinary men do as torturers is simply a means to an end--is positively bone chilling. Joe Collins --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 313 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; First Printing edition (September 3, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520230396
• ISBN-13: 978-0520230392
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.9 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #522,608 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Very thought provoking book August 8, 2000

By Matthew Gunia VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

It is diffucult to write a book as broad as this, but I hope this review helps you to get a better understanding of what this book is about. To put it simply, Conroy examines the dynamics of torture: how it is done, what kind of person tortures others and why, and what is the affect of torture on the person actually tortured. Conway uses an excellent method of making his points in that he decides on an aspect of torture he wants to examine (e.g. the effect of torture on the tortured), gives details of three actual torture event (always Belfast IRAs tortured by British, Palastinians tortured by the Israeli army, and a black cop-killer tortured by Chicago police), then draws conclusions from them. This is not to say that he limits himself and his studies to these three events; far from it. Conroy interviews victims from these tortures and many others. One of the most intersting aspects of the book is when Conroy examines the question of who tortures. He interviews several persons who tortured (including members of South American armies, a U.S. soldier in Vietnam, a British agent in Africa, etc.) and determined that they have the remarkable ability to rationalize what they have done. Conroy even admits that the majority of the torturers are cordial, likable people. He then presents, through describing scientific experiments that all people have the ability to torture, because people have the ability to rationalize actions that they consider inconsistant with their general opininos of themselves. I could go on as Conroy draws several fascinating conclusions about various aspects of torture. However, one aspect of this book that this reader had problems with concerns Conroy's handling of the Chicago Police aspect of this book. While in other portions of this book, the author is surprisingly objective, in the Chicago case, Conroy's bias shines through. Conroy spent years researching this case for his newspaper and it seems as if his reputation as a journalist depends on coloring the judge as inept and the entire case as racist. I find this aspect of the book to be an unprofessional result of typical journistic arrogance. In all, an excellent, thought provoking, highly recommended book.

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Speaking About the Unspeakeable May 5, 2000

By Deaglán Ó Donghaile

Format:Hardcover

Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People by John Conroy

In 1975 the United Nations defined torture as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted by or at the instigation of a public official on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or confession, punishing him for an act he has committed, or intimidating him or other persons...Torture constitutes an aggravated and deliberate form of cruel , inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." However, as John Conroy points out in his important new study of torture, Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People, "the UN definition... has proved to be not so easily interpreted in court. When does pain or suffering become 'severe'?" he asks, and how do we define "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment?

This study of torture examines its practice in Ireland, Palestine and the United States, with reference to its history and to its continuing effects upon its victims and asks "what kind of person tortures another human being?" It answers this by examining the professionalisation of torture and its use as a political tool. "It became a function," he was told by a former Rhodesian torturer, "It became a part of the job. It became standard operating procedure." Conroy describes how the Greek secret police tortured recruits in order to make torturers out of them, making it easier for the torturers to dehumanize their own victims and to rationalize what they themselves were doing:

"The isolation of the recruits eliminated external points of view that might interfere with the indoctrination."

Therefore the normal limits of obedience were dissolved and serving authority became its own reality for one recruit: "Torturing became a job... If the officers ordered you to beat, you beat. If they ordered you to stop, you stopped. You never thought you could do otherwise." Conroy explains how the training of torturers is an exact science designed to project "a positive self-image" and points to a Yale study on the limits of obedience. The experiment illustrated how easily people could ignore responsibility and view themselves as a link in the chain of authority and concluded that "ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process." Conroy sees this conclusion as informative:

many people are unable to act on their values... even when it is patently clear that they are inflicting harm, relatively few people have the resources to resist authority... in view of the positive reinforcement engendered by a largely satisfied society, it is not difficult to understand how a torturer can hold on to a positive self-image... The British comforted themselves with the rationalization that their methods were nothing compared to the suffering created by the IRA. The Israelis regularly argue that their methods pale in comparison to the torture employed by the Arab states.

Conroy also points to the "infectious" nature of torture: the five techniques used against the hooded men in Ireland had been inflicted on people across the British empire, in Palestine, Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, British Cameroons, Brunei, British Guiana, Aden, Malaysia and the Persian Gulf. The Israeli Justice Moshe Landau, clearly impressed by the British techniques used in Ireland, established guidelines for the application of "moderate physical pressure" on Palestinian prisoners:

Landau cited the decision of the judges of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Ireland vs. the United Kingdom, the decision that determined that the five techniques were inhuman and degrading but not torture. In the years after the Landau Commission filed its report the GSS and the IDF (the Israeli secret police) had adapted the British methods wholesale

Thus the case of the hooded men, and the European Court's watered down definition of what was done to them by the British state, set an international precedent.

John Conroy met and interviewed the torturers of Palestinians at Beita and Hawara and reported on the trial that exposed the torturers of Andrew Wilson in Chicago. Ted Heath, who was British Prime Minister who during the torture of Irish internees in 1971, refused to be interviewed by the author. The hearings into their case were held in secret in the human rights building in Strasbourg. Crucially, Conroy points out that the 14 volume, 4,500 page transcript of that hearing today remains secret. The democratic government on whose behalf the torture was carried out in 1971 closed ranks in a repeated pattern that continues to this day.

John Conroy raises vital questions about the use of torture in the present and in the future. Importantly, the book acknowledges that torture still happens and it shows how it is still used by governments who have learned from its use in the past. Methods that have filtered down from Ireland and other British colonies have made their way to Palestine and the Palestinian authority's prisons: "The Soviet Union, China, and North Korea provided the inspiration for the British use of the five techniques. The British methods inspired the Israelis. Israeli methods have in turn inspired the Palestinians, who now have their own torturable class in the West Bank and Gaza." Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People is an important book because it shows that torture is not something that happens far away and that it can happen in western democracies. It provides vital information required by anyone who wants to understand the role of torture. As Conroy sums up, "(it) is always easier to see torture in another country than in one's own". As he concludes, there are no happy endings for the victims: "It seems a very small leap to argue that torture is the perfect crime. There are exceptions... but in the vast majority of cases, only the victim pays."

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful, but difficult read January 18, 2006

By Jonathan S.

Format:Paperback

Most of this book examines three case studies, from numerous different angles, unveiling the mentality of torturer and tortured alike. The breaking up of the three cases into non-sequential sections aids readability a bit, and the whole tone of the writing is very collected and non-sensational. It does a great job of pointing out not only the details of the individual cases, but the importance of those tortures as events for the societies involved.

It's refreshing that Conroy puts focus on first world torturers, and forces us to consider that so-called civilized societies can produce monsters just as starved, desperate nations can. And it suggest that a person can be a monster one day, and a normal, caring human being the next- it forces us to examine the importance of context, the universal susceptibility of humanity to cruelty, and the significance of governmental authority in converting individuals into torturers and back again.

Conroy also spends a few chapters explaining the history of torture, the trends that arise, and the elements where people are just unpredictable, and torture occurs in ways and places you wouldn't expect. Sadly, torture seems to be a major driving force in society, and in law, through most of mankind's history. Conroy also gives away the tricks torturers use to inflict maximum suffering with minimum risk to themselves, often using techniques that horribly scar the mind while making no changes to the body. This may lead you to evaluate current news stories differently.

I must say, though, I've read numerous books about war crimes, tyrants and acts of slaughter without difficulty, but this actually was difficult to read at times. Particularly the section about the 5 techniques awakened a disgust in me that I, as a hardened reader, rarely feel. This book is easily important enough to justify the disturbing details. But it's even more of a downer than the title would suggest, and sensitive readers may not be able to stomach it.