ORCID Profile
0000-0002-5184-6589
Current Organisations
Københavns Universitet
,
Danish Institute Against Torture (DIGNITY)
,
University of Melbourne
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Publisher: Det Kgl. Bibliotek/Royal Danish Library
Date: 30-10-2019
DOI: 10.7146/TORTURE.V29I2.109620
Abstract: Background: Sleep deprivation is a prevalent method of psychological torture. However, difficulties in documentation have meant that it is not adequately appreciated by courts and other quasijudicial institutions such as UN treaty bodies. Method: This paper aims to review the legal literature on deprivation of sleep, the definition, and prohibition of torture and ill-treatment, and its health impacts. A number of texts were identified and analyzed based on contextual relevance: criminal justice processes as well as medical literature on health impacts. The texts were identified via a search of key legal and health databases using the search terms “sleep deprivation,” “sleep adjustment,” and “sleep regulation.” These texts were limited to English-language journal articles, NGO reports, court-cases and UN documents since 1950. They were then analyzed for their approaches to conceptualizing sleep deprivation from the perspective of assessing “severe pain and suffering” and the “diminishment of mental capacity”. Results/Discussion: Sleep deprivation is an ill-defined and, in turn, poorly documented method of torture, particularly when prolonged or inflicted in combination with othermethods (e.g., threats) and conditions (e.g., disruptive environment or time of day). More nuanced legal principles, informed by medical evidence, are lacking. Applying these principles would sharpen its conceptualization.
Publisher: Brill
Date: 16-12-2020
DOI: 10.1163/15718115-02701004
Abstract: State accommodation of plural identity has remained very much subject to the contestations of a majority/minority paradigm, through which autonomy and tolerance are still negotiated and filtered. These social reconfigurations, including those oriented towards internal self-determination and minority rights regimes, reveal glimpses of a dark neo-colonial underbelly to state rule. A comparison between the Ottoman millet system and the Israeli control system illustrates that imperial modes of ‘ ide and rule’, or ‘segmented pluralism’, continue to operate, and are sometimes even enhanced, through the deployment of minority rights. Using a selective Marxist reading, this paper will initially explore the parallels between imperial and modern state rule in the face of pluralism before discussing the methods used for hegemony-maintenance, including: segmentation dependence and cooptation. Finally, a socio-legal discussion on the ways in which the forces of hegemony are heavily guised and sustained will follow.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 19-02-2021
Publisher: Brill
Date: 09-05-2022
DOI: 10.1163/15718107-91020003
Abstract: The element of severity remains core to the definition and interpretation of torture under international law. It has long represented a source of confusion and obfuscation for the legally-oriented anti-torture professional, whether academic, advocate or adjudicator. Its character as decisive differentiator, setting torture apart from cruelty, inhumanity and degradation, remains problematically entrenched and contested. It is a legal construct not finding its origins in the scholarship on pain, and evades precise measurement – as pain is socio-culturally constructed, relative and subjective. Accepting the prevailing complexity and addressing the perennial ambiguity, this article aims to offer some clarifications towards conceptualising and contextualising, and thereby better specifying and applying, torture’s core.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 23-02-2023
DOI: 10.1017/S1744552323000010
Abstract: That international law progressively recognises and prohibits emergent forms of torture and related ill-treatment has become widely accepted in the anti-torture discourse. The premise that torture's techniques and contexts change is taken to shape juridical recognition, representation and response. Authoritative international treaties, such as the UN Convention Against Torture , the European Convention on Human Rights and the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture , are therefore deemed ‘living instruments’ – influenced by social and scientific change as channelled through the doctrine of dynamic interpretation. This article argues, however, that these premises are not sufficiently empirically grounded and, far from faithfully reflecting social and scientific changes, invoke critiques around the ideological and epistemological registers of advocates and adjudicators. Taking scholarship on dynamic interpretation and forms of state violence which do not leave overt physical marks as paradigmatic entry points, this article problematises torture's juridical conceptualisation and contextualisation through a critical theoretical lens.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 29-08-2021
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 13-07-2021
Publisher: Det Kgl. Bibliotek/Royal Danish Library
Date: 08-2018
DOI: 10.7146/TORTURE.V28I2.106908
Abstract: Background: Psychological torture is deployed to break and obliterate human resistance, spirit and personality, but it is rarely afforded sufficient attention. Deficiencies in conceptualising, documenting and adjudicating non-physical torture mean that it is frequently left undetected and uncontested by the public, media and the courts, bolstering impunity for its perpetrators. A review of the current literature to map conceptual and evidentiary shortcomings from an inter-disciplinary perspective is therefore warranted. Method: The relevant texts were identified through a systematic full-text search of databases, namely HeinOnline, HUDOC, UNODS and DIGNITY´s Documentation Centre, with the keywords `psychological torture´, `mental pain and suffering´, `severity´, `humiliation´, `interrogation techniques´, and `torture methods´. The identified texts, limited to English-language journal articles, NGO reports, court-cases and UN documents from 1950 to date, were then selected for relevance pertaining to conceptual, evidentiary, technological and ethical critique provided therein. Results/Discussion: Evidential invisibility, subjectivity of the suffering, and perceived technological control are the primary ways in which psychological torture methods are designed, and how they manage to evade prosecution and consequently be perpetuated. Cognisant of the need for further research, pertinent questions highlighting the need to develop approaches, sharpen standards and use a medical sychological/legal interdisciplinary approach are suggested.
Publisher: Brill
Date: 29-08-2023
DOI: 10.1163/18719732-BJA10096
Abstract: Legal scholars have historically studied and shaped attitudes and approaches to torture – in its infliction, identification, and inhibition. The role of law in the contemporary anti-torture movement has been no less important – with the law, its logics and lawyers positing and animating the prevailing international anti-torture framework. This article reviews the contemporary ‘law and torture’ scholarship published in the last forty years in the English language – examining and charting its assumptions, preponderances, and orientations. In so doing, the article situates the cares and concerns of scholars (and their texts) along a doctrinal-critical continuum. The article aims to illustrate areas in which research is advanced and others which remain understudied – concluding with several connections and directions for future research.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 26-05-2021
DOI: 10.1177/17438721211018764
Abstract: “Torture” is one of law’s most charged categories—burdened with distinguishing the legitimate from the illegitimate, the permitted from the prohibited forms of state violence. Embedding it in its broader discursive production, I ask: how are forms of state violence configured, controlled, and contested in, through, and by legal articulations? How are anti-torture practitioners to understand the relation between law and violence and how law legitimates some forms of violence whilst not others? How does human suffering at the hands of the state even enter the “hearing” of its law? Taking psychological torture as paradigmatic, I diagrammatically discuss how such violence is “invisibilized” and falls below definitional thresholds, due to discursive processes of active occlusion as well as epistemic limitations.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 08-06-2023
DOI: 10.1177/09646639231180301
Abstract: How does time feature and function in juridical understandings of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment? With a view to international human rights adjudication, this article offers a kaleidoscopic reading of temporal logics (registers and reasoning) operating in the contemporary anti-torture cause and jurisprudence. Time, it is found, plays an important albeit at times implicit role in how judges imagine and evidence torturous harms brought before them. This article explicates and singles out time as a factor. It finds that, whilst indeterminacies and ambiguities persist, singular (and spectacular) or plural (and prolonged) harmful acts and impacts operate to serve adjudicators’ reasoning, variably (and intuitively) to find violations or to ert from doing so. Time thus works as a device of inclusion and exclusion.
Publisher: Det Kgl. Bibliotek/Royal Danish Library
Date: 14-09-2022
DOI: 10.7146/TORTURE.V32I3.128479
Abstract: Background: Deprivation of prisoner food, in terms of its quality and quantity, has generally been accepted as violating the prohibition as torture and ill-treatment, particularly when combined with other factors (ie. harmful conditions and methods). Aspects relevant to assessing when and how food provision is considered inadequate, however, remain complex and confusing. This article presents a doctrinal review which consolidates normative understandings of adequate prisoner food. Method: A systematic full-text search was made of international and regional normative standards, case-law and commentary using the keywords. These were then selected based on their relevance for regulatory and explanatory specificity and pertinence to detention contexts. Findings: International and regional bodies directly connect the adequacy of food to respect for dignity, freedom from torture and ill-treatment as well as the right to health – and particularly as depending on duration, quality, quantity and variety. What constitutes inadequate food remains complex as it is contingent on both material and non-material considerations, including its quality (content, nutritiousness, edibility, variety, wholesomeness), its quantity (calorie, substantiveness, balance), its preparation (hygiene, respect to the in idual and community), its provision and consumption (when, how and where it is to be eaten, regularity, accessibility, warmth/cold), its socio-cultural suitability (to religious and cultural values) and its developmental suitability (for pregnant or breast-feeding mothers and children).
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 07-2022
Abstract: Torture has a complex relationship with technology. Technology variably facilitates or hinders modes of inflicting and investigating torture. Torture itself remains a technology for producing proof, simultaneously primitive and sophisticated. Torture techniques and practices evolve and travel, are prevalent in both democratic and autocratic states, and are often accompanied by a pseudo-scientific rhetoric of ‘controlled’ pain. Conversely, juridical processes pursuing accountability for torture also focus their evaluative gaze on the tortured body and to scientific expertise. To this end, sustained transnational efforts have culminated in the crafting of evidentiary technologies to document torture as grounded in state-of-the-art medical and psychological knowledge. What is more, despite this demand and supply, the utility of this ‘technology of knowledge’ remains unfulfilled in practice for different reasons. I start with the dialectic interplay between infliction and investigation produced by these practices—with prevalent methods informing documentation practices, and with those responsible for infliction adjusting their practices accordingly to evade accountability. With the long-anticipated revised version of the UN Istanbul Protocol now at hand, I revisit the origins and promises undergirding these efforts and their implications for anti-torture practice. I conclude with a critical reflection on the contested dynamics of knowledge imbued in these practices—asking how we (and the law) can ever adequately know about the tortured body.
Publisher: Project MUSE
Date: 2021
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 18-05-2022
Publisher: Pluto Journals
Date: 2021
DOI: 10.13169/STATECRIME.9.2.0152
Abstract: Purpose is a constitutive element of torture under article 1 of the UN Convention Against Torture (UNCAT). It is increasingly and widely accepted as being the determinative aggravating factor differentiating between torture and forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment (hereafter “CIDTP” or “ill-treatment”). Compared to the depth of discussion on other constitutive elements such as severity of pain and suffering and official capacity , the dimensions of purpose have remained relatively and unduly overlooked in scholarship on torture. As the significance of purpose as differentiator becomes increasingly established, there is a corresponding need to better understand its dimensions—particularly to question the rationale for having it mark an aggravation of state violence. This paper will draw and build upon the literature and jurisprudence pertaining to a functionality-oriented, teleological construction of torture, before situating the discussion in torture's broader ecology in order to critically examine and expand understandings of its purpose, bottom-up, situationally and institutionally.
Publisher: Det Kgl. Bibliotek/Royal Danish Library
Date: 11-05-2021
DOI: 10.7146/TORTURE.V31I1.118633
Abstract: Background: Fear is a central dimension of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment (hereafter ‘other ill-treatment’), particularly as a part of verbal or non-verbal threats. Adjudicators and policy-makers have grappled, arguably at a greater depth than with other methods of psychological torture, with the circumstances in which fear-based methods amount to torture or other ill-treatment. The pursuit of non-coercive standards of police interrogation has further underscored the need to better distinguish the prohibited from the permitted. Upon this background, this article reviews the existing jurisprudential and social scientific literature in formulating a lens through which fear-inducing methods could be better functionally conceptualised. Method: This article has identified, through systematic full-text search of databases, texts with keywords ‘threat’, ‘fear’, ‘coercion’, ‘intimidation’, ‘distress’, ‘anguish’ and ‘psychological pressure’. The identified texts, limited to English-language journal articles, NGO reports, court-cases and UN documents from 1950 to date, were then selected for relevance pertaining to conceptual, evidentiary and legal critique provided therein. Discussion: Whilst it is broadly recognized that the deployment of fear to inflict violence can amount to torture, methods of threats or coercion are not adequately conceptualized particularly at the lower end, i.e. routine interrogational torture. Here, principles pertaining to the legitimate use of force and minimum level of severity are used as functional guidelines to distinguish the prohibited from the permitted. The power, practice and proximity of state authorities to harm necessarily qualify threats as real, immediate and credible and therefore torturous.
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 11-2023
DOI: 10.1093/LRIL/LRAC019
Abstract: Emotion and imagination are central to recognising another’s suffering—aiding in evaluating what is seen, heard, and registered. Tending to torture’s adjudication, this article connects the ‘law and torture’ jurisprudence to two areas of ‘law and emotion’ scholarship, namely common-sense and compassion (and, with the latter, empathy).
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 29-03-2023
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 27-05-2023
DOI: 10.1177/1037969X231179862
Abstract: Solitary confinement of children is increasingly being challenged in Australian courts, with rulings recently handed down in Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia. Recent international jurisprudence on the harmful practice, and on torture more broadly, stands poised to advance the local cause. This article warns that some international perspectives are outdated, with faulty or politically charged logics, and that, while appearing measured at first sight, reliance on older jurisprudence may ultimately impede progress. Comparative reasoning thus warrants careful consideration, given the complex political (hierarchical, state-deferential), definitional and evidential dynamics (conceiving and substantiating harm, purpose, intention) at play in adjudicating torture and inhuman or degrading treatment.
Publisher: Brill
Date: 09-06-2019
DOI: 10.1163/18781527-01001002
Abstract: The line that refugee status is of a purely ‘civilian and humanitarian’ character cannot be strictly maintained. It has become commonplace to point out the dangers posed to the general refugee population due to the presence of combatants in or within the proximity of a refugee c , where a separation of civilian and non-civilian elements may indeed be deemed necessary. Forgoing the scholarship pertaining to the context of the refugee c , which has absorbed most of the attention in this area, this paper will focus on the de jure legitimacy of a combatant seeking asylum, particularly away from the conflict zone. In light of this, there is a firm need to redraw the distinctions in this area and to account for the lack of dependence to and deference of international refugee law towards humanitarian law. There remain definitional and interpretative complexities that prevent a clear implementation of rules, particularly in non-international armed conflict. While the concern in not tarnishing asylum regimes is a legitimate one, it must be admitted that losing sight of the in iduality and ersity of combatants and their motive, as occurs in the current discourse, is also erosive of protection needs and political rights, primarily the right to self-determination.
Publisher: Det Kgl. Bibliotek/Royal Danish Library
Date: 30-10-2019
DOI: 10.7146/TORTURE.V29I2.116320
Abstract: This Protocol originates from a joint project regarding documentation of psychological torture initiated by the Public Committee against Torture in Israel (PCATI), REDRESS and DIGNITY - Danish Institute Against Torture (DIGNITY) in 2015 after the Copenhagen Conference on Psychological Torture. The project is a vehicle to establish a common understanding between health and legal professions as to how to best ensure the most accurate documentation of torture. Historically, sleep deprivation has been used for different objectives but, primarily, to cause stress and duress for the purpose of extracting information and confessions. Detention centers with poor conditions is another context in which sleep deprivation, as a consequence of sleep disruption, takes place. This is often due to overcrowding, insufficient or no mattresses, and poor conditions of transportation between the courts and detention facilities. The aim of the Protocol is to improve documentation of sleep deprivation used in such settings (most often during interrogation) and therefore to clarify the facts of the case so that stronger legal claims can subsequently be submitted to local and international complaints mechanisms. The Protocol has been developed based on a methodology involving: compilation and review of legal and health knowledge on sleep deprivation, also in non-torture contexts drafting by first author discussion in the group of international experts pilot- testing by PCATI and evaluation by the three organizations and the group of experts. Despite generic elements of sleep deprivation, the context in a specific country will determine many aspects of the factual situation. Each context differs and as such this Protocol could serve as a guideline or a checklist of elements to be considered in a specific context. We hope that this Protocol will assist in the discussions between the various stakeholders and provide guidance on what can be documented and how to document sleep deprivation.
No related grants have been discovered for Ergun Cakal.