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49 Santa Clara L. Rev. 893 (2009)
Defining Torture: Bridging the Gap between Rhetoric and Reality

handle is hein.journals/saclr49 and id is 905 raw text is: DEFINING TORTURE: BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN RHETORIC AND REALITY Julianne Harper* In extreme situations when human lives and dignity are at stake, neutrality is a sin. It helps the killers, not the victims. -Elie Wiesel1 I. TORTURE: A TOOL OF TERROR Gabriel Shumba was a lawyer and activist for the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum. On January 14, 2003, Zimbabwean officials arrested Gabriel; at the time, he was defending an opposition Member of Parliament.' The officials detained Gabriel and four others for three days.4 In an underground torture chamber, more than twenty members of the secret police and army personnel interrogated Gabriel.' His torturers subjected him to electric shocks on his feet, tongue, and genitals.6 The torturers urinated upon him and * Senior Comments Editor, Santa Clara Law Review, Volume 49; J.D. Candidate, Santa Clara University School of Law; B.A., Political Science and Spanish, University of San Diego. I would like to thank Santa Clara University Professor Beth Van Schaack for her invaluable contribution to this Comment and my mother, Cynthia Harper, for passing to me an ever-idealistic worldview. 1. Elie Wiesel, Nobel Prize Winner, Address upon Receiving the Congressional Gold Medal (Apr. 19, 1985) (transcript available at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/RR4_19-85.html). 2. Press Release, Amnesty Int'l, Stories of Torture in the 21st Century (June 26, 2003), available at http://asiapacific.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENG POL300052003?open&of=ENG-EGY. 3. Press Release, Zimb. Exiles Forum, Gabriel Shumba Versus the Government of Zimbabwe/Tortured Lawyer Argues Case at African Commission (Dec. 2, 2005), available at http://platform.blogs.com/passionofthepresent/2005/ 12/gabrielshumba_.html. 4. Id. 5. Id. 6. Press Release, Amnesty Int'l, supra note 2. 893

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