anoop ranganath

I read this article and immediately felt it was one of the truest hypotheses regarding torture I’ve ever seen… Why would a government torque up its accusations to the point where they were no longer plausible? Because forcing someone to admit to something he might have done does not send a strong signal of power. Forcing someone to confess to a crime that everyone knows he could not possibly have committed, on the other hand, is terrifying. Similarly, a regime that tortures its opponents and refuses to sign the Convention Against Torture shows that it fears international opprobrium. A regime that tortures its opponents and blithely signs the Convention Against Torture anyway shows that it fears nothing.