GEORGE HUNSINGER
Religious leaders gather to awaken concern on torture
By Paul Haist
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“Torture is what establishes the line that separates constitutional government from tyranny,” according to George Hunsinger, who had cited the events recorded at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Hunsinger believes that there is “an interconnection throughout the Bible between lies and violence” and that deliberate misinformation creates circumstances in which torture can occur and the line between constitutional government and tyranny can be crossed.
Dr. Hunsinger is the Hazel Thompson McCord Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. A Presbyterian minister and founder of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, Hunsinger is the author of “Torture Is a Moral Issue: Christians, Jews, Muslims and People of Conscience Speak.”
Hunsinger was the keynote speaker July 23 at An Interfaith Forum on the Ethics of Torture and Human Rights hosted at Portland’s Westminster Presbyterian Church. The Jewish Federation of Greater Portland Community Relations Committee and the Oregon Area Jewish Committee were among several sponsors of the event, including Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon.
Stories of alleged torture and prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib appeared in the New Yorker magazine and on CBS’s 60 Minutes II in 2004.
“I couldn’t bear it that one year after the Abu Ghraib photos had been published that there wasn’t more of an outcry from the religious community,” said Hunsinger.
“I knew that the Abu Ghraib photos implied something more than the American people were told,” he said. “I knew I would try to do something.”
That “something” was the formation in 2006 of NRCAT (www.nrcat.org), a membership group committed to ending U.S.-sponsored torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. The group includes representatives from the Roman Catholic, evangelical Christian, mainline Protestant, Orthodox Christians, Unitarian, Quaker, Orthodox Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh communities.
Hunsinger believes progress has been made in awakening concern over the use of torture.
“I think people are more open now to realize the threat to democracy, our moral values and to the society in which our children and grandchildren will grow up,” he said.
Fostering public awareness of torture is among the central features of his group’s campaign.
“I believe that we can do this and will do this through religious institutions,” he said. “We will follow the Wilberforce tradition.”
He was referring to the 18th-century British parliamentarian and abolitionist credited with perfecting the use of shame and blame as an important tool against atrocities such as torture and slavery.
“We will be able to prevail the way Wilberforce did in the 18th century, but it will take people like you speaking out,” said Hunsinger.
Hunsinger pointed to President Bush’s statement that the United States does not torture.
“Is he simply lying?” Hunsinger asked.
He explained that the answer is more subtle.
“Torture does not stand alone,” said Hunsinger. It stands also “with cruel and inhuman and degrading treatment. Torture is the most extreme form of cruel and inhuman treatment. What they have done is snap that connection,” he said.
“They have defined torture so narrowly that it makes everything else seem permissible.”
But “everything else” that falls outside the narrow definition is, in Hunsinger’s view, no less an atrocity.
“Not all torture takes place by the infliction of unbearable pain,” he said. “We’re looking at torture that leaves no mark…but that drives people to madness in a short period of time. The Abu Ghraib photo shows this.” He was referring to the now iconic photograph of the hooded, wired man standing on a box.
“What we are witnessing in the photo is extreme abuse,” said Hunsinger.
“These forms of abuse (sensory deprivation, prolonged standing) are as harmful as the blowtorch,” he said. “It destroys that person for life.”
He said that what he believes America has done has legitimized similar techniques elsewhere.
“All the torturing governments of the world use what our government has been doing to justify what they are doing,” said Hunsinger.
The precedent of Abu Ghraib has implications with our own society, he added.
“Torture once adopted is soon preferred and it is very difficult to curb. … It has corrupted our interrogation system,” he said, “with an almost indelible effect on those who inflict the torture.”
“Torture always comes home, back to the police stations, prisons and households,” Hunsinger warned.
In conclusion he turned to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Martin Luther King was right,” said Hunsinger. “A time comes when silence is betrayal.”
Rabbi Maurice Harris, assistant rabbi at Temple Beth Israel in Eugene, also attended the interfaith forum and took part in an afternoon discussion panel.
Harris focused on core Jewish values that argue against the use of torture.
He also took up the so-called ticking-bomb scenario that has been proposed as a justification for the use of torture.
He pointed to the Israel Supreme Court’s decision in ruling broadly against the use of torture.
Harris said, “Basically, the Israeli Supreme Court said, ‘no torture, it’s illegal, and if you do it under extremely extraordinary circumstances, you’re going to have to defend yourself if you’re charged with a crime.’”
