US psychologists to take stand on military torture tactics
AFP
Sat August 18, 2007
Area: San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose
SAN FRANCISCO - The American Psychological Association will decide Sunday whether to condemn torture tactics and place a moratorium on members' involvement in interrogations at US military detention sites.
The decision, if taken, would move the world's largest professional organization of psychologists in line with similar resolutions by the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association and boost pressure on the US government's alleged torture of "war on terror" detainees.
"We have no business in places where detainees are being held indefinitely, in isolation, in violation of international human rights," said APA member Steve Reisner of the International Trauma Studies Program at Columbia University.
APA council representatives at their annual meeting in San Francisco will vote on a pair of resolutions, one a condemnation of torture and another branding specific interrogation techniques unethical.
The list of unacceptable practices includes water boarding, use of dogs, and cultural degradation. By defining specific forms of torture, critics warn, the resolution leaves open loopholes like use of isolation and sleep deprivation.
In July, US president George W. Bush signed an executive order effectively permitting coercive interrogations of "high value detainees."
While the order forbade the CIA to torture suspected terrorists, the vague language appeared to permit what administration officials often describe as "enhanced interrogation techniques," but which rights activists brand as torture.
The methods of extracting information from prisoners had been on official hold by a 2006 Military Commission Act outlawing the use of harsh techniques.
Some within the professional psychology community believe they should be present in interrogation facilities to provide oversight and prevent abuses.
"You need to have a clinical psychologist on staff to maintain standards of ethics and behavior," Colonel Steve Kleinman, an Air Force interrogator during three military campaigns, told AFP.
"There must be someone present playing a mental health role and assessing the situation. A moratorium is not appropriate."
Katherine Sherwood, a civilian interrogator with the Department of Defense, agreed.
"Psychologists have an important role to play in rapport-based relational interrogation," she said.
"Of the 38,931 interrogations performed to date in Guantanamo, much of what is done is sitting down, having a cup of tea and a talk, not coercive tactics."
APA members James Mitchell and Bruce Jensen, both of whom have worked with the CIA, were recently identified as torture trainers and are under investigation by the Senate Armed Services Commission.
In light of this discovery, some psychologists are calling for a complete industry withdrawal from interrogation facilities.
"The US military, with the help of APA psychologists, has reconfigured the trainings used to give personnel a taste of torture to use the same techniques on detainees," said Reisner.
At the heart of the debate is the imperative of the medical profession's Hippocratic Oath to "do no harm" and the ethical code of psychologists, which currently does not categorically bar involvement in coercive interrogations.
"The military requires psychologists to be licensed and for that they must be in good standing with the APA," said Reisner. "So a modified ethical code could be pretty powerful."
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