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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (80839)	3/10/2003 5:12:27 AM
From: unclewest	Respond to of 281500

You are watching too much TV. The reports on TV are wrong. Over 130 countries including America have signed an international covenant against torture. Sanford Levinson (Princeton) explained it this way after 9/11... Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights explicitly state that “no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” but Article 4.2 of the Covenant also, and just as explicitly, states that “[n]o derogation” from Article 7 is permitted. Article 4.2 explicitly refers to Article 4.1, which generally allows States who are parties to the Covenant, during a “time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation and the existence of which is officially proclaimed” to “take measures derogating from their obligations under the present Covenant”; this does not extend, however, to “take measures” that include torture or “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” Moreover, states operating through a United Nations conference concluded in 1984 the drafting of a “Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, In ratifying the Convention, the Senate stipulated that its “advice and consent is subject to the following reservations: (1) That the United States considers itself bound by the obligation under article 16 to prevent `cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment', only insofar as the term `cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment' means the cruel, unusual and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and-or Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. . . . . II. The Senate's advice and consent is subject to the following understandings, which shall apply to the obligations of the United States under this Convention: (1) (a) That with reference to article 1, the United States understands that, in order to constitute torture, an act must be specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering and that mental pain or suffering refers to prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from (1) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering; (2) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality; (3) the threat of imminent death; or (4) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality. (b) That the United States understands that the definition of torture in article 1 is intended to apply only to acts directed against persons in the offender's custody or physical control.