Features

The true legacy of torture - stories of three survivors

Torturers would rather the voices of their victims remained unheard. Used as a weapon of oppression, fear and repressive control, torture claims the lives of thousands of people across the globe.

Recounting the personal testimonies of those who manage to survive is a vital step in countering the damage inflicted by torturing regimes that would prefer to remain unaccountable.

Here, to mark UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, on June 26 2008, we urge you to read the stories of three MF clients who escaped the brutality of their persecutors.

The Fallacy of the Ticking Time Bomb

The "ticking time bomb" argument excusing torture as a necessary means to an end was once the preserve of philosophers and theorists. The past few years have seen this theorising take a sinister turn. Policy makers and state leaders seeking to legitimise interrogation practices that are in fact torture, are pedalling the idea that it is a viable solution in combating global terrorism.

The Best Interests of the Child - Without Reservation

After many years of pressure from NGOs, international human rights monitors and Parliament itself, exhorting successive UK governments to remove the general reservation against the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a public consultation is now underway to consider that very possibility.

Waterboarding: the fact of torture cannot be denied

When the US government was first revealed to have used waterboarding as a means of interrogation, the argument offered in its defence was that it maintained the moral high ground because it did not constitute torture. A growing body of evidence is now emerging that points to a calculated strategy which openly recognised the technique as unlawful and yet side-stepped all other legal precedent by claiming the supremacy of governmental control in wartime.

Plight of torture survivors highlighted on International Human Rights Day

In conversation with...

Marcel, Armel and Serge-Eric all share similar experiences of detention, torture and organised violence in their respective countries. They met at the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture where they are part of a therapy group.

Marcel, Armel and Serge-Eric were interviewed for the 20th Anniversary of the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Listen to their accounts of the torture that forced them to flee to the United Kingdom:

International Day in Support of Victims of Torture

World Press Freedom Day

Torture victims treated by the MF include journalists, writers and artists who were persecuted because of their work. Here, to mark World Press Freedom Day on May 3, they speak out in defence of freedom of expression along with MF supporters in the media, entertainment and literary worlds.

The only thing that torture guarantees is pain; it never guarantees the truth

Torture has always been on the human rights agenda, yet never so explicitly as today, as some of the world's leading democracies spiral towards a brutal betrayal of human rights by openly defying the international ban on torture.

Torture in Europe - A Practice that Refuses to Die

The rule of law in Western Europe has, since World War Two, increasingly upheld the rights of the individual. Liberal sentiment in the respective judiciaries has gained such an ascendancy that those countries bathed in its light have become beacons to the persecuted and oppressed the world over.