Summary
WATERBOARDING: doesn't sound too bad, does it? A bit like surfing or bumming around on sun-kissed beaches. But for our knowledge that it's the name used by the CIA to torture al-Qaeda suspects, it might have remained a bland description of a jolly activity. The reality is different, and anyone who has read Eric Lomax's intensely moving memoir The Railway Man knows exactly what it entails. Lomax was a prisoner of the Japanese in Burma during the second world war and he was given the so-called "water cure" when his captors suspected that he was in possession of a secret radio.
This is what they did to him. His torturer tied him to a bench and produced a hose which was turned on in the direction of his face. "Water poured down my windpipe and throat and filled my lungs and stomach. The torrent was unimaginably choking. This is the sensation of drowning, on dry land, on a hot dry afternoon.See the full content of this document
Extract
Any Moral Victory Is Sunk by Torture Realpolitik
Your humanity bursts from within you as you gag and choke. I tried very hard to will unconsciousness but no relief came."
Lomax lived to tell the tale As for the perpetrators, aroun...See the full content of this document
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