Identifying Torture

Lockdowns cause incredible suffering and infringe upon rights, but are they a crime against humanity? The founding treaty of International Criminal Court, the Rome Statute, is considered the most authoritative document on the subject. It lists three forms of ‘crimes against humanity’ relevant to lockdowns. 

Article 7

1. For the purpose of this Statute, “crime against humanity” means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:
2. e) Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;

(f) Torture; 

(k) Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.

7(e) needs no elaboration. The entire Lockdown Resistance website shows that the harms of lockdowns far outweigh any possible benefits. There is no legitimate basis for imprisoning people in their homes or derogation of human rights, so it is clear that lockdowns violate 7(e). It has also been proven by this website that lockdowns cause egregious harm to physical and mental health with the full awareness of the politicians responsible. That lockdowns are a crime against humanity according to Article 7(k), thus needs no further explanation.

But what about torture? Do lockdowns constitute torture, factoring in the public messaging that accompanies them? What criteria are appropriate to make this bold determination? In Part 1, we uncovered many ways in which a lockdown-based pandemic response borrows from intense detention camp interrogation and torture methods. Do the similarity of methods suffice for a torture indictment or should other aspects of the pandemic response be taken into consideration?

Interdisciplinary scholarship on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment offers a number of ways to identify torture. The traditional way torture has been recognized is through its various techniques. Torture techniques include both physical (eg. beatings, electric shocks) and psychological (eg. yelling, intimidation, solitary confinement) forms. Increasingly, experts are identifying instances of torture by other means, such as by its objectives or the human needs which are targeted. 

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948 is the most authoritative source on genocide. While other documents of international law mention genocide only in relation to war, this Convention applies to acts “whether committed in time of peace or in time of war” (Article I). Article II of the Convention mentions two acts of interest to us:

Article II 

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: 

(a) Killing members of the group; 

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; 

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; 

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; 

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. 

II (b) fully applies to social distancing laws. Social distancing causes serious mental harm to most people subject to them. Please see “Comparisons of Impacts” below, and the articles on Social Isolation and Identity Destruction for more information on the mental destruction of lockdowns. II (c) also applies to social distancing laws. Death rates for people with dementia, already a leading cause of death, have risen 20% since lockdowns began. These people are literally dying from the horrific isolation thrust onto them against their will. Hundreds of millions of people are suffering due to unnecessary refusal of healthcare, many of whom will die soon. Both (b) and (c) have clearly been committed by political rulers the world over under the ruse of fighting COVID-19. 

As defined by this Convention, which is the authoritative source for peacetime genocide in international law, genocide has been committed by all of the individuals responsible for imposing national social distancing laws. The qualifier that the victims must be identifiable by a ‘national, ethnical, racial or religious’ commonality means that a lockdown of a sub-national jurisdiction, like a city or state, would not meet the criteria for an act of genocide. National lockdowns, of which there have been many, meet the ‘group’ qualifier, however. Many scholars believe that the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide should be amended to exclude the group qualifier, but that has not been done as of 2021.

All of the definitions of torture in international conventions state psychological manipulation alone can qualify as torture. The UN Convention Against Torture only includes state actors as possible perpetrators of torture. According to other bodies, such as the European Court of Human Rights, governments are responsible if private organizations or individuals commit torture within their borders. In international humanitarian law, torture can be commited by anyone.

Article 1

For the purposes of this Convention, the term “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Article 2

For the purposes of this Convention, torture shall be understood to be any act intentionally performed whereby physical or mental pain or suffering is inflicted on a person for purposes of criminal investigation, as a means of intimidation, as personal punishment, as a preventive measure, as a penalty, or for any other purpose. Torture shall also be understood to be the use of methods upon a person intended to obliterate the personality of the victim or to diminish his physical or mental capacities, even if they do not cause physical pain or mental anguish.
The concept of torture shall not include physical or mental pain or suffering that is inherent in or solely the consequence of lawful measures, provided that they do not include the performance of the acts or use of the methods referred to in this article.

Torture has been defined by the European Court of Human Rights as “deliberate inhuman treatment causing very serious and cruel suffering”. The degree of suffering is the main difference between torture and inhuman treatment, but it also has to be deliberate, for example, to extract information or to intimidate. Examples of acts found by the Court to amount to torture include rape, threats of harm to family, being kept blindfolded and mock executions. The suffering can be mental as well as physical. The threshold for torture is evolving: what was not considered torture 30 years ago may be so now, as standards rise (Selmouni v. France, which concerned a suspect subjected to physical blows). The same is true of inhuman treatment.

In all three of the above legal definitions, psychological mistreatment alone, with no assault on the body, can qualify as torture. For example, solitary confinement, mock executions, and threats of attacking family, are common psychological methods of torture. As stated in the UN’s Manual on Effective Investigation and Documentation of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, usually referred to as the Istanbul Protocol, actual physical or psychological suffering or trauma is not necessary for acts to be considered torture. That would be unfair to individuals who are exceptionally psychologically resilient or who took drugs to minimize the pain of physical torture. A determination of torture is appropriate if actions can reasonably be expected to cause harm to the body or mind.

To determine if lockdowns and related messaging constitutes torture, it is most appropriate to examine the situation at the level of the individual. Picture this scenario: a young woman lives alone in a low income country in a house with no electricity. Her community is locked down by the government, forcing her to stay at home, except to buy food. She has no savings, cannot earn money, and is not offered financial assistance by her government. She hasn’t received accurate information about coronavirus. She has heard that it is very deadly and leaving the house means endangering her life. For this woman, a lockdown is unquestionably torture. She will go hungry since she cannot earn money to buy food. She has nothing to do and no one to talk to at home, making her unbearably bored, lonesome, and depressed. She doesn’t realize that there is no risk of someone her age dying from the virus and is paralyzed with a fear of dying.

Millions of people around the world are in a similar situation to the woman above. But what about a woman who lives in Germany and is able to get government assistance? She doesn’t endure the torture of hunger and has television and internet at home to keep her mind occupied. However, she also endures intense isolation since she doesn’t have close friends to talk to on the phone regularly. She has an unjustified, paralyzing fear of coronavirus due to the fear-mongering of the media and she is plagued by feelings of shame for wanting to have her life back. In contrast to the tortured woman in the low income country on lockdown, she has access to information on SARS-CoV-2 from the internet and television, so she should be aware that it poses no risk to her. However, it is these very forms of mass communication that have been instilling intense fear of the virus into all who listen and have waged an all-out war on the values and identity of billions of people over the course of a few months.

For the German woman, the lockdown is also torture. She has not endured an assault on bodily integrity that people usually associate with torture and yet, according to international law and modern social science, she is a victim of torture, nonetheless. In her case, the torture was not physical, but mental. Her wellbeing, and even her own personality, have been destroyed by the depraved actions of politicians and journalists.

The world’s leading expert in torture, Pau Perez-Sales, provides a number of definitions of torture based on the perspectives of different academic fields. He proposes the following definition of torture from a philosophical and relational standpoint:

Torture is a relationship between two human beings characterized by a violation of dignity understood as the lack of recognition and respect, and a violation of autonomy, expressed in the absolute power, control and imposing of will of the perpetrator and the absolute lack of control, powerlessness and suppression of free will of the victim. The victim is often forced to play an active role in his or her own suffering by not only being forced to act against his or her will, but also being forced to commit self-betrayal. The victim is absolutely helpless.

The above relational definition of torture by Dr. Perez-Sales appears to apply to lockdowns. In lockdown, people have no freedom and are completely at the mercy of their political captors. They are also forced to participate in their own torment by self-enforcing their house arrest. Perez-Sales also proposes a definition of torture based upon neurobiology:

The word ‘torture’ refers to an entire human and environmental context that induces helplessness, loss of control and fear. A particular stressor, or cumulative group of stressors, hyperactivates the circuits of fear and terror, maximizes helplessness and maximizes uncontrollability.

Perez-Sales’ neurobiological definition of torture emphasizes the fear aspect. Politicians and the media have certainly instilled fear to the best of their ability since the pandemic began, daily inciting as much panic as possible about contracting a harmless (for most people) cold virus and refusing to let people free. Another definition of torture by Perez-Sales comes from the perspective of identity destruction:

On an individual level, torture is any intentional process, regardless of the method or methods used, which aims to destroy the core beliefs and convictions of the victim or strip him or her of the constellation that constitutes identity and to deprive the victim of his or her human condition and sense of belonging to humankind. On a social level, torture is a social institution of power and dominance. The torturer or executioner is part of a torturing system that designs, orders, hides and guarantees immunity, and the victim is the representation of the whole society towards whom the message of torture is ultimately directed. Torture requires the existence of those who tacitly accept the status quo and passive bystanders in society.

Destruction of an individual’s identity, personality, and place in society is a grave commission. Part 3 of the Lockdown Resistance torture series is dedicated to this aspect of lockdowns. The definition of torture above is absolutely applicable to the pandemic response practiced around the world. Deprived of every opportunity to find or express who we are and conflicted between our past principles and our new lockdown cult values, citizens under lockdown have been reduced to nothing more than robots. Having lost our selves, we now look to the government and media to tell us what to think and how to feel.

Renowned international law professor and anti-torture activist, Nigel Rodley, collaborating with lawyer Daniel Crampton, have proposed four criteria with which to identify psychological torture. They performed a comprehensive analysis of sentences in international law to find factors which facilitate a verdict of torture. They put forth the following indicators of psychological torture:

1. Actions that prevent the detainee from maintaining stable mental health.
2. Significance of the psychological mistreatment.
3. Design and planning of the torture.
4. Using loved ones in the course of torture.

Lockdowns and related public messaging exhibits all four of these markers for psychological torture. They are an assault on mental wellbeing, stoking a mental health crisis in a large portion of people. The sophistication and coordination of government and media’s pandemic response signifies a brilliantly planned and executed operation. Finally, social distancing has torn apart families by keeping them separated, or by locking them in together in a time of intense stress for them to tear each other apart.

Dr. Perez-Sales has developed a comprehensive model for defining and identifying torture which encompasses the myriad of perspectives on the issue. His ‘layered integrative’ view of torture has three levels which identify the basic needs that are affected, the neurobiological impacts, and the mental health consequences of the acts in question.

Under Level 1, Perez-Sales includes physiological needs such as food and sleep, as well as higher order needs. The need for autonomy, personal identity, and emotional homeostasis are specified, as are the ways to destroy them — by instilling guilt, shame, and humiliation. Social needs are also noted in Level 1, including the need to be around one’s friends and family.

Level 2 of the layered integrative model examines the psychological impacts of the acts. The impacts include feelings towards others (eg. empathy) and feelings towards self (eg. shame). Impaired judgment or reasoning are also mentioned as effects of torture. Integrity of dignity and identity are further factors to be considered in the model.

The third and final level of Perez-Sales’ model analyzes long-term psychological damage. Anxiety, PTSD, and depression are listed as common long-term effects of torture. Changes to personality, values, worldview, along with deep-seated chronic feelings like apathy and guilt are offered as indicators that torture has occured.

Shining the layered integrative view of torture upon social distancing-based pandemic response is as illuminating as it is disturbing. The deeds of the media and government can be seen at each level of the model. They attack people’s basic emotional and social needs. They have caused serious mental problems including destruction of identity and greatly impaired judgment. You can verify the latter by observing how different people are these days including their blind allegiance to nonsensical pandemic restrictions. Social distancing has only been around for 9 months at this point, so we don’t yet know the long-term consequences. However, there is every reason to expect that the psychological toll will be long-lasting.

In Part 1, we discovered that lockdowns and their public relations use many of the same techniques commonly identified in research on torture in detainment facilities. Above, we have examined definitions of torture from the perspectives of international law and social science and found that they all applied to lockdowns. To continue our inquiry on whether lockdown-based pandemic response should be formally recognized as torture, we need to compare the effects of people in lockdown with that of torture survivors.

Much has been written on the psychological impact of torture. It should be noted that studies on torture survivors most often indicate that the mental impact on people who were tortured by purely psychological means is indistinguishable from those who were only tortured by physical means. The trauma and psychological sequelae are equally severe for both groups. In studies which asked torture survivors to rate the severity of specific methods of torture, mental techniques, such as being forced to act like an animal or mock executions, were rated to cause as much suffering as physical techniques.

The most common long-term effects of torture are anger, depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Other common psychological sequelae include dissociative disorders, irritability, sleep disturbances, diminished confidence, suicidality, somatic complaints, fear, feeling ashamed or humiliated, and reduced concentration or memory. Survivors of torture are also known to have paranoia, poor trust in others, and difficultly maintaining relationships or dealing with life in general. Development of phobias, including social phobia, and substance abuse are also common.

For people in lockdown, many of the above ailments are also common. Rates of depression and anxiety have soared. Sleep disturbances have been reported in almost half the population. A high prevalence of PTSD has been noted in numerous studies, including 28% of respondents to a survey in India. Thoughts of suicide, including serious contemplation, have skyrocketed, especially among youth. Problem drinking has risen. Anger, shame, and humiliation are rampant due to the government taking total control over people’s lives and the media’s vicious messaging. People no longer trust one another. They now see their own neighbors and friends as the enemy which can give them the virus of death (or report them for not distancing).

Fear has reached stratospheric levels. Fear of both contracting the virus and of having to continue to live through social and financial paralysis has people consumed. Somatic symptoms from lockdown stress, such as headaches and digestive problems, are common. Studies have captured difficulty in concentration for youth attempting education from home. The worst impact of all, however, could be the destruction of identity that has resulted from the lockdown. People are different now. They have changed in profound ways which may be long-lasting.

Torture literature is clear that all factors need to be considered to make a determination if torture has occured. One method of torture may not be severe enough to warrant a designation of torture on its own, but be considered torture in the larger context of all of the methods of torture used on an individual. In addition to methods used, deprivation of needs is equally important to examine. The needs for control over one’s life, adequate food and shelter, freedom of movement, freedom of association, emotional wellbeing, preservation of identity, and social interaction are all so essential that their drastic restriction can constitute torture.

Impacts upon victims are also critical to examine. Make no mistake — absence of physical or psychological trauma does not indicate that torture did not occur. This is clear throughout torture writings, including the Istanbul Protocol. Everyone processes situations differently and has their own coping mechanisms. However, there can be no doubt, from your own personal experience and observations, to the countless studies conducted on mental health around the world, that social distancing and related public messaging has caused extreme widespread psychological and social damage. Moreover, the powerlessness and helplessness of victims upon which a number of definitions of torture are based, is an universal feature of lockdowns.

Studies consistently indicate that at least a quarter of people have entered a mental health crisis since they entered lockdown. In a national Italian study by the prestigious Order of Psychologists, 80% of respondents indicated that the lockdown has caused stress beyond that which they are able to cope. In a CDC study, 11% of American adults, including 25% of young adults, stated that they seriously considered killing themselves.

The evidence that the lockdown and hysteria-perpetuating pandemic response has produced mass torture is overwhelming. Because the pandemic response affects everyone differently, it is important to give primary consideration to the people that have been the most impacted. Simply looking at averages, such as the average decrease in wellbeing or the average reduction of income, whitewashes the impact of lockdowns on the least fortunate. Any public policy that causes severe harm to a portion of the population is unethical, irrespective of any potential benefits.

Torture is banned unconditionally in international law. The organs of international human rights law universally state that there is no circumstance in which someone may be subjected to torture, not even a war or public health crisis. Article 7 of the Rome Statute states unequivocally that torture is a “crime against humanity” under any circumstance.

Torture as a legal construct cannot result from ‘lawful sanctions.’ However, a lockdown is not a lawful sanction because it violates the principles of necessity, proportionality, caution on the side of human rights, and obligation on the part of government to show a clear public benefit. All of these principles must be fulfilled for the lawful derogation of a human right in international law.

In truth, all pandemic restrictions exist solely to give status and power to politicians. They were never intended to provide any benefit to the public. We know this due to the predictability of the enormous harm caused by social distancing, the low mortality and morbidity of SARS-CoV-2, and the peer-reviewed comparative studies which show no correlation between lockdowns or mask mandates and mitigation of contagion.

The politicians and journalists responsible for promoting and implementing lockdowns have always known the harms they would cause, from mental breakdowns to shortened life expectancy, but decided that it was more important that they make the public dependent on them and have themselves recognized as heroes. They had the motivation and the intention to torture their entire society. After nearly a year, they refuse to let go of their dreams of absolute control.

Governments and news media agencies around the world have committed crimes against humanity in 2020. They have shown no concern for the wellbeing of the public and exploited the coronavirus pandemic to gain total control over innocent people’s lives and minds. These institutions have conspired to imprison the entire population in their homes and subject them to inhuman treatment and torture. Due to a lack of accountability, they continue these actions into 2021. Many politicians have stated that they plan on enforcing these cruel restrictions on liberty for at least two more years, even if the great majority of people get vaccinated against coronavirus. Impunity must end now to protect the public and prevent perpetual violations of dignity.