Last night’s Rose Café focused on torture in South East Asia. It was difficult to hear about the prevalence of torture in some countries. The speakers talked about police torturing people during the investigation of a crime to get a confession. Even though the real perpetrator might go free, the police want to create the impression that they quickly solve crime. Of course, this approach does not solve crime, but is itself a crime. I could not imagine the horror of being an innocent person, or a guilty person, tortured and forced to confess.
The issue of torture is clearly important; however, I would imagine that researching the topic as a profession, as the speakers do, would take a mental toll. I would imagine that researching terrible stories of torture for years would be extremely difficult. However, shedding light on the issue is an important means of helping reduce torture so perhaps that positive benefit helps the researchers push forward.
During this semester of Rose Cafes, I have been fascinated at the topics that academics devote their careers too. A past speaker was an expert in the history of fats and oils. Without the Rose Café, I never would have appreciated the range of unique and niche topics that are researched in academia.
I hope that the research into torture and the awareness brought by this research will help eliminate the terrible human rights abuses discussed in the session.
This commentary is really interesting to me. It reminds me of a talk I recently attended held by a North Korean defector. As I listened to him explaining his life story about how immensely people are suffering and dying every day under harsh rule made me realize that too often I worry more about being “politically correct” when talking about other countries government styles. Instead, it is more important to realize that all human suffering is wrong , and that more should be said and done to stop it from continuing.