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Water torture encompasses a variety of techniques using water to inflict physical or psychological harm on a victim as a form of torture or execution.

Forced ingestion

In this form of water torture, water is forced down the throat and into the stomach. It was used as a legal torture and execution method by the courts in France in the 17th and 18th centuries. At the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century it was used against Filipinos by American Forces during the Philippine–American War and was employed against British Commonwealth, American and Chinese prisoners of war during World War II by the Japanese.^[1] The Human Rights Watch organization reports that in the 2000s, security forces in Uganda sometimes forced a detainee to lie face up under an open water spigot.^[2]

Water intoxication can result from drinking too much water. This has caused some fatalities over the years in fraternities in North America during initiation week. For example, a person was hazed to death by Chi Tau (local) of Chico State (California) in 2005 via the forcing of pushups and the drinking of water from a bottle.^[3]

Waterboarding

Waterboarding is a form of torture in which water is poured over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages of an immobilized captive, causing the person to experience the sensation of drowning. In the most common method of waterboarding, the captive's face is covered with cloth or some other thin material and immobilized on their back at an incline of 10 to 20 degrees.^[4]^[5] Torturers pour water onto the face over the breathing passages, causing an almost immediate gag reflex and creating a drowning sensation for the captive.^[6]^[7]^[8] Normally, water is poured intermittently to prevent death; however, if the water is poured uninterruptedly it will lead to death by asphyxia. Waterboarding can cause extreme pain, damage to lungs, brain damage from oxygen deprivation, other physical injuries including broken bones due to struggling against restraints, and lasting psychological damage.^[9] Adverse physical effects can last for months, and psychological effects for years.^[10] The term "water board torture" appeared in press reports as early as 1976.^[11]

Waterboarding has been used in diverse places and at various points in history, including the Spanish and Flemish Inquisitions, by the United States military during the Philippine–American War, by Japanese and German officials during World War II,^[12] by the French in the Algerian War, by the U.S. during the Vietnam War and the war on terror,^[12] by the Pinochet regime in Chile,^[13] by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, by British security forces during the Troubles,^[14] and by South African police during the Apartheid era.^[15] Historically, waterboarding has been viewed as an especially severe form of torture.^[16] The first known waterboarding has been attested to have taken place in 1516 in Graz, Austria.

Chinese water torture

Chinese water torture, or use of a dripping machine,^[17] is a mentally painful process in which cold water is slowly dripped onto the scalp, forehead or face for a prolonged period of time.^[17] The process causes fear and mental deterioration of the subject. The pattern of the drops is often irregular, and the cold sensation is jarring, which causes anxiety as a person tries to anticipate the next drip.^[18]

Despite the name, it is not a Chinese invention and it is not traditional anywhere in Asia. Its earliest known version was first documented by Hippolytus de Marsiliis in Bologna (now in Italy) in the late 15th or early 16th century, and it was widely used in Western countries before being popularized by Harry Houdini in the early 20th century.^[17]^[19]^[20]

Dunking

Ducking stools or cucking stools were chairs formerly used for punishment of disorderly women, scolds, and dishonest tradesmen in medieval Europe^[21] and elsewhere at later times.^[22] The ducking-stool was a form of wymen pine, or "women's punishment", as referred to in Langland's Piers Plowman (1378). They were instruments of public humiliation and censure both primarily for the offense of scolding or backbiting and less often for sexual offences like bearing an illegitimate child or prostitution.

The stools were technical devices which formed part of the wider method of law enforcement through social humiliation. A common alternative was a court order to recite one's crimes or sins after Mass or in the market place on market day or informal action such as a Skimmington ride. They were usually of local manufacture with no standard design. Most were simply chairs into which the offender could be tied and exposed at her door or the site of her offence. Some were on wheels like a tumbrel that could be dragged around the parish. Some were put on poles so that they could be plunged into water, hence "ducking" stool. Stocks or pillories were similarly used for the punishment of men or women by humiliation.

The term "cucking-stool" is older, with written records dating back to the 13th and 14th centuries. Written records for the name "ducking stool" appear from 1597, and a statement in 1769 relates that "ducking-stool" is a corruption of the term "cucking-stool".^[23] Whereas a cucking-stool could be and was used for humiliation with or without dunking the person in water, the name "ducking-stool" came to be used more specifically for those cucking-stools on an oscillating plank which were used to duck the person into water.^[24]

Other forms

Supposedly, the Rasphuis in Amsterdam, a 17th-century institution that attempted to rehabilitate young male criminals through labor, contained a "water dungeon", the so-called Waterhuis.^[25] If prisoners refused to work, they were placed in a cellar that quickly filled with water after a sluice was opened and were handed a pump that enabled them to keep from drowning. Geert Mak and other authors, however, point out that there is no evidence for the existence of this room.^[26]
In the 1970s at Bautzen Prison in the German Democratic Republic there was a punishment cell that filled up with water up to a red light which a large prisoner described as at nose level if he is on tip toes. ^[27]
In the 20th century, various U.S. newspapers published details of "water torture" (or the "torture of thirst") in Japan which involved subjecting the victim to a high salt diet for several days, without rice or water, and then offering them water in exchange for a confession: "it is difficult to imagine a more cruel device."^[28]

References

^ The Knights of Bushido: A Short History of Japanese War Crimes by Edward Frederick Langley Russell, Baron Russell of Liverpool (1958)
^ Human Rights Watch, Human Rights News: Torture Worldwide
^ Korry, Elaine (November 14, 2005). "A Fraternity Hazing Gone Wrong". NPR. Retrieved 2009-01-18.
^ "Waterboarding". Quaker Initiative to End Torture. Archived from the original on 10 December 2014. Retrieved 26 June 2018.
^ Mark Benjamin (9 March 2010). "Waterboarding for dummies". Salon. After immobilizing a prisoner by strapping him down, interrogators then tilted the gurney to a 10-15 degree downward angle, with the detainee's head at the lower end. They put a black cloth over his face and poured water, or saline, from a height of 6 to 18 inches, documents show. The slant of the gurney helped drive the water more directly into the prisoner's nose and mouth.
^ Safire, William (2008). Safire's Political Dictionary. Oxford University Press. p. 795. ISBN 978-0-19-534334-2. Waterboarding. A form of torture in which the captive is made to believe he is suffocating to death under water
^ Davis, Benjamin (8 October 2007). "Endgame on Torture: Time to Call the Bluff". Archived from the original on 20 December 2007. Retrieved 11 February 2010.
^ Ross, Brian; Richard Esposito (18 November 2007). "CIA's Harsh Interrogation Techniques Described". ABC News. Retrieved 17 April 2009.
^ "Open Letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales". Human Rights Watch. 5 April 2006. Retrieved 17 April 2009.
^ Mayer, Jane (14 February 2008). "Outsourcing Torture". The New Yorker. Retrieved 17 April 2009.
^ Safire, William (9 March 2008). "On Language: Waterboarding". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 April 2009.
^ ^a ^b Pincus, Walter (5 October 2006). "Waterboarding Historically Controversial". The Washington Post. p. A17. Retrieved 20 April 2009.
^ Solis, Gary D. (15 February 2010). The Law of Armed Conflict: International Humanitarian Law in War. ISBN 9781139487115.
^ McClements, Freya (26 June 2017). "Papers alleging British Army waterboarding in NI uncovered". Irish Times.
^ Frank, John (18 December 2007). "History supports McCain's stance on waterboarding". PolitiFact.
^ Cox 2018, p. 488.
^ ^a ^b ^c Dripping Machine de Young, Mary (2015). Encyclopedia of Asylum Therapeutics, 1750-1950s. ISBN 9780786468973.
^ Samuel, Eugenie. "Water torture". New Scientist. Archived from the original on 2021-07-23. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
^ Paraskovich, Jack (2016). The Wrong View of History. ISBN 978-1-4771-2395-9.
^ Margaritoff, Marco; Anglis, Jaclyn (November 14, 2022). "The Disturbing History Of Chinese Water Torture — And How It Drove Victims Insane". All That's Interesting. Retrieved October 14, 2024.
^ Underdown, David (1985). "The Taming of the Scold: Enforcement of Patriarchal Authority in Early Modern England". In Fletcher, A.; Stephenson, J. (eds.). Order and Disorder in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 116–136. ISBN 0-521-25294-6. OCLC 17289313. Archived from the original on 2024-01-30. Retrieved 2018-05-31.
^ Oxford English Dictionary includes dishonest tradesmen as well as disorderly women and scolds as people for whom the cucking-stool was used and cites its use in Vienna and that "The punishment of the ducking stool cannot be inflicted in Pennsylvania." which by implication suggests that it could be used in some other parts of the USA. http://oed.com/view/Entry/58195?redirectedFrom=ducking+stool Archived 2023-06-08 at the Wayback Machine accessed 27 Nov 2012.
^ Oxford English Dictionary. "Cucking-stool" has references in 1215-70 and c.1308, including the use of the cucking-stool for immersion in water (c1308, 1534, 1633). http://oed.com/view/Entry/45498?redirectedFrom=cucking-stool#eid Archived 2018-10-27 at the Wayback Machine and ...ducking-stool accessed 27 Nov 2012.
^ Oxford English Dictionary. http://oed.com/view/Entry/58195?redirectedFrom=ducking+stool Archived 2023-06-08 at the Wayback Machine accessed 27 Nov 2012.
^ Pol, Lotte van der (1996). Het Amsterdams hoerdom: prostitutie in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw. Wereldbibliotheek. p. 192. Het rasphuis had opvallend genoeg ook een hardnekkige mythe. In dit tuchthuis voor mannen zou een 'waterhuis' of verdrinkingscel zijn waarin gevangenen werden gezet die niet wilden werken.
^ Mak, Geert (1994). Een kleine geschiedenis van Amsterdam. Atlas. p. 180. ISBN 978-90-254-0416-1. Jacob Bicker Raye en enkele anderen melden zelfs het - overigens onbevestigde - bestaan van een 'waterhuis'.
^ Inside the World's Toughest Prisons "Germany: The Therapy Prison"
^ "31 May 1879, Page 4 - The Newton Enterprise at Newspapers.com". Newspapers.com. Retrieved 2018-05-10.

Sources

Cox, Rory (2018). "Historicizing waterboarding as a severe torture norm". International Relations. 32 (4): 488–512. doi:10.1177/0047117818774396. hdl:10023/16068. S2CID 150350366.

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