Uniting against Torture
Marie-Louise Dyrlund
Hansen*
I dream to empower people
everywhere to stand up against torture: To have the courage, the freedom and
the knowledge to stop the use of it. From the very start, my biggest motivation
as an activist has been activists from MENA: You risk your life to stand up for
your rights and I cannot think of anything more honourable than that. I hope
that I will be able to use my own freedom to help you secure yours. I dream
that we all unite in the fight against torture and that together, we can face
the controversy of torture all over the world.
I come from Denmark, a
country in Scandinavia, where the biggest threat to human rights activists is
being yelled at in the street. Denmark does not use systematic torture, which
is different from many countries in MENA. For me it has been immensely valuable
to learn of the parallels behind the attitudes and obstacles that activists
face in different parts of the world. Personally, I see security policy and
mobilization as the most important parallels.
The growing emphasis on
security policy seems to be a great challenge to advocating against torture
everywhere: Torture is often used by authoritarian leaders to keep down
domestic disturbances, thereby maintaining control and “security” of their
nations. The use- and acceptance of torture from democratic leaders, in the
other hand, has increased steadily in correlation to the rise in the threat of
terrorism.
Since 9/11 torture has
become increasingly accepted in the West, as we have limited the debate and
perceive torture as a tool to save our loved ones from bad people in
hypothetical scenarios. Everyone seems to have forgotten that torture is most
commonly used to suppress populations. Authoritarian leaders are known to
notoriously try to avoid the international critique of using torture. However,
the growing acceptance of torture by leaders everywhere, has made the critique
less credible. This is a huge obstacle in the fight against torture everywhere.
The Human Rights Group has
created the Human Rights Education Guide for the Global Amnesty International
Campaign “Stop Torture,” to empower the youth, activists and Amnesty
International Sections of the Stop Torture campaign. The group consists of
youth activists from 17 different countries, our facilitator, Jane Houston, the
International Human Rights Education Centre and their staff: Annette Schneider and Michel Banz. We also
collaborated closely with Danny Vannucchi from the Global Stop Torture Campaign
Team.
We all met up at the
International Human Rights Education Centre in Oslo, Norway, on the 9th
of May this year. We knew that the ultimate objective of the guide, was to
empower youth to act as multipliers through a learning process and that we, the
youth, would design and create the resources. Danny joined us in Oslo, for our
workshop, to discuss the campaign and ways to use the guide to enable young
people, activists and Amnesty International Sections to take action against
torture as part of Amnesty International’s campaign. Our goal with the workshop
was to create a team bond and to have the structure of the guide done, as well
as a time plan for the work after. From the 9th to the 12th
we discussed how to approach the guide with the help of Annette, Michel, Jane
and Danny, who all challenged our views and thoughts of the campaign. We
decided to start the blog, “Multicultural Education Against Torture” so that
everyone could follow the incredible process of the guide.
You
can visit out blog at the link below:
http://meeteducation.wordpress.com/
During the weekend we
established, that in order to be able to encourage people to participate in the
fight against torture, we needed to make the guide relevant for everyone;
creating a mutual standpoint was therefore one of our biggest concerns when
writing the guide.
The guide taught me how to
face the growing acceptance- and use of torture: My colleagues taught me to
focus on humanizing torture victims and focus on the real facts of torture;
that it is a matter of faulty investigation and legal process and not whether
or not the individual “deserves” torture. Through this context, I learnt how to
create workshops that would enable others to learn the same and realize the
importance of educating people on the true facts of torture. No matter what
kind of government we are challenging, we can all benefit from learning how to
address the controversy of security versus rights. Our guide features the workshop “Explore
Safeguards through Drama”, which aims at provoking thoughts on conditions of
police interrogations as well as exploring the right to freedom from torture as
universal and absolute. If we want to be successful in the Stop Torture
campaign, we need to know how to face this controversy. I believe our guide can
do this.
The workshop proceedings
can be found on the guide link below: www.empoweragainsttorture.net.
The Human Rights Education
Guide for Stop Torture is aimed at educating and engaging young activists in
this particular campaign. This makes mobilization an immensely important issue
to approach. My colleagues from MENA put emphasis on the safety of participants
as their biggest concern, when mobilizing, while others, such as me, sought a
guide that would make torture relatable. I learnt that we need to focus on the
consequences of torture for the survivors and their family to motivate people
to mobilize against torture everywhere. We need to follow through with the
humanization of the torture victim: Not just during the torture but also
afterwards. Because security policy overshadows the torture issue, we tend to
stop the debate at the action and not the consequences. The problem with this
is, that the consequences help us to humanize the victims. If we can create
empathy with those who have been tortured, we can ensure the support of the
campaign through mobilization. This is why we created the workshop “The
Consequences of Torture,” which aims at engaging participants’ emotions to the
potential effect of torture.
If I am honest, I did not
know a lot about the realities of torture before I became a part of the Human
Rights Group against torture. When I worked on the guide I learnt so much about
campaigning against the use of torture, not just in my part of the world but
also in yours, and why we need everyone to succeed in this campaign. I hope
that our guide can provoke your attitudes of torture and inspire you to fight
against it. We must never forget to support each other and that while
systematic torture has become more common in our world, we can challenge it if
we do it together. I dream to empower people everywhere to stand up against
torture. Will you help me?
* Human rights youth activist from Denmark