
Ghost Stories - max_
http://harpers.org/blog/2016/12/ghost-stories/
======
Cyph0n
Interesting, but I was disappointed that there were no details of _how_ people
were tortured. I know it's ugly, but I believe that the details should be
explicitly described as a warning for future generations.

The proximity of the prison to the city reminds me of my home country Tunisia
prior to the 2011 revolution (the so-called Arab Spring). Some of the worst
torture of political dissidents took place under the building of the ministry
of interior on the busiest street in the capital. Thankfully, the death toll
never was as bad as Uganda.

One popular form of torture used in Tunisia involved hanging the prisoner
upside down and naked. The torturer would then proceed to use electrical
shocks, beating, cigarette butts, and sexual abuse. Torture was usually done
without reason - i.e., they were not looking for a confession. When they were
looking for a false confession, they usually threatened the prisoner with
imprisonment of family members and even rape of siblings and mothers. Once a
prisoner was released into society, they remained close and asked about every
movement the prisoner made and continually harassed them. On top of that,
there was the social stigma of being a prisoner, which was especially
difficult for women after release.

I'm proud that my country has recently been following South Africa's model by
setting up a truth commission [1]. During each session, victims of abuse and
torture and their relatives are given a platform to air their grievances on
live TV. There have been four sessions already, and it has been a huge
success, so there will be more to come.

[1]: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/17/tunisia-to-
bro...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/17/tunisia-to-broadcast-
victims-testimony-at-truth-commission-into-authoritarian-rule)

~~~
afandian
"Torture was usually done without reason"

That's an odd way to look at it. Torture is usually done with the purpose of
the torturer getting sadistic enjoyment from torturing.

It has happened consistently throughout history and continues to happen, and
probably always will. It seems clear to me that there's a predisposition in
certain proportion of humans to want to torture, and a predisposition in the
population at large to construct social structures to enable it (private
armies, state armies, colonial occupying forces, CIA etc).

~~~
hprotagonist
>Torture is usually done with the purpose of the torturer getting sadistic
enjoyment from torturing.

Much like rape, I'm pretty sure torture is done for power and control and
subjugation. It's a little worse to imagine an impartial or dispassionate
torturer, "just doing my job", but I am convinced they exist.

~~~
tbrownaw
_Much like rape, I 'm pretty sure torture is done for power and control and
subjugation._

If you're talking about organized systematic (rape|torture) tied to military
or political goals, sure. But if you're talking about the standard narrative
of... whatever you call the "ordinary" kind of rape that's supposed to be
reported to local police instead of the UN or war crimes tribunals, I thought
that was largely debunked?

~~~
Mz
A lot of people find the other explanation too upsetting to consider. So this
line of reasoning continues to get harped on.

------
afandian
It's good that these stories are brought to light. It's also important that,
every story about "look at how this third-world country went off the rails" is
accompanied, where relevant, with the story of how the first-world encouraged
and enabled it.

> The actions in Uganda “disgusted the entire civilized world,” said President
> Jimmy Carter during Amin’ s reign, without mentioning that the CIA had
> reportedly been showering Amin in aid and weapons throughout the 1970s, as
> Cold War blocs scrambled to control the Third World.

~~~
dom0
In the past I had to make lengthy explanations involving three-later agencies
and which always came across tinfoil-hatly (although I tended to understate,
not ex-aggregate).

However, I discovered this Wiki page:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation)
and this one in particular
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States)
which pretty much do the job for me, and since it's Wikipedia it's not
perceived as tinfoil (even though anyone could have looked up the stuff I
talked about as well, but as far as I know few people did).

------
happywolf
tl;dr version please...

