War is organized murder
and torture against our brothers.
-- Alfred Adler
| |
"This
is a day on which we pay our respects to those who have endured the unimaginable.
This is an occasion for the world to speak up against the unspeakable. It is long
overdue that a day be dedicated to remembering and supporting the many victims
and survivors of torture around the world."
Kofi Annan
|
The
sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to
be either good or evil. -- Hannah
Arendt | 
|
 | The
point of nonviolence is to build a floor, a strong new floor, beneath which we
can no longer sink. A platform which stands a few feet above napalm, torture,
exploitation, poison gas, A and H bombs, the works. Give man a decent place to
stand. --Joan
Baez |
| |
The civilized
have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to
change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain
down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their
'vital interests' are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death:
these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the 'sanctity' of
human life, or the 'conscience' of the civilized world. -- James
Baldwin |
 |
"Torture is banned but in
two-thirds of the world's countries it is still being committed in secret. Too
many governments still allow wrongful imprisonment, murder or "disappearance"
to be carried out by their officials with impunity." -- Peter
Benenson |
"Those who today still feel a sense of impotence can do something: they can
support Amnesty International. They can help it to stand up for freedom and justice."
-- Peter Benenson
"It's
the publicity function of Amnesty that I think has made its name so widely known,
not only to readers in the world, but to governments - and that's what matters."
-- Peter Benenson
"Open your newspaper
- any day of the week - and you will find a report from somewhere in the world
of someone being imprisoned, tortured or executed because his opinions or religion
are unacceptable to his government."
-- Peter
Benenson
"The
candle burns not for us, but for all those whom we failed to rescue from prison,
who were shot on the way to prison, who were tortured, who were kidnapped, who
"disappeared". That's what the candle is for."
-- Peter
Benenson
"Once
the concentration camps and the hell-holes of the world were in darkness. Now
they are lit by the light of the Amnesty candle; the candle in barbed wire. When
I first lit the Amnesty candle, I had in mind the old Chinese proverb: 'Better
light a candle than curse the darkness.'"
-- Peter
Benenson
| |
"The
line that connects the bombing of civilian populations to the mountain removed
by strip mining ... to the tortured prisoner seems to run pretty straight. We're
living, it seems, in the culmination of a long warfare -- warfare against human
beings, other creatures and the Earth itself." ~ Wendell
Berry |
 |
"The most potent weapon
in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." -- Stephen
Biko |
They are torturing people.
They are torturing people on Guantanamo Bay. They are engaging in acts which amount
to torture in the medieval sense of the phrase. They are engaging in good old-fashioned
torture, as people would have understood it in the Dark Ages.
-- Richard
Bourke
“We are unalterably
opposed to the presentation of the female body being stripped, bound, raped, tortured,
mutilated, and murdered in the name of commercial entertainment and free speech”
-- Susan Brownmiller
| 
|
If nations are allowed
to commit genocide with impunity, to hide their guilt in a camouflage of lies
and denials, there is a real danger that other brutal regimes will be encouraged
to attempt genocides.
--Caroline, Baroness Cox, House of Lords
| 
|
In considering
how human rights might serve as a 'guiding value' in American foreign policy,
one should not dismiss the historical record, which is ample. There is indeed
a close relationship between human rights and American foreign policy. There is
substantial evidence that American aid and diplomatic support increase as human
rights violations increase, at least in the Third World. Extensive violations
of human rights (torture, forced reduction of living standards for much of the
population, police-sponsored death squads, destruction of representative institutions
or of independent unions, etc.) are directly correlated with US government support.
The linkage is not accidental; rather it is systematic. The reason is obvious
enough. Client fascism often improves the business climate for American corporations,
quite generally the guiding factor in foreign policy. It would be naïve indeed
to think that this will change materially, given the realities of American social
structure and the grip of the state ideological system. -- Noam
Chomsky |
End
Torture Quotes
Page
1 | Page 2 |
Page 3 | Page 4 | Page
5
END
TORTURE
HERO PIX

Kofi
Annan | Peter Benenson | Susan
Brownmiller |
Dalai Lama | Inge
Genefke
End
Torture Day
- June 26
See
also HUMAN RIGHTS Quotes
Quotes
for a Culture of Peace |

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