Never forget
Torture is deliberate and relentless - and so must be the fight against it. Dinyar Godrej hears one survivor's cautionary tale.

Shamal Salim's image of terror.

A day in the life of survival
Gloria fled from her memories, but couldn't escape. Gill Hinshelwood explains how she came to find her way through them.

Cruel, inhuman, degrading
Harold Pinter recounts routine treatment in US prisons.

Trading in shock
The commonest weapons used in torture had their origins in Europe and the US. Michael Crowley highlights the 'torture trail'.

Evil under the sun
A map of outrage.

Up for it
So who really are the torturers? John Conroy has met quite a few.

TORTURE - THE FACTS

Sins of permission
Yanette Bautista's struggle to bring her sister's killers to justice has cost her dearly. But, as David Ransom reports, hers is a struggle against impunity.

Thought reform
The Chinese authorities' stance in Tibet has hardened further. Yet Jane Caple finds them unable to change hearts and minds.

Disguise and deny
Why are torturers so hush-hush about what they do? It wasn't always so, says Tom Morris.

ACTION

An awful lot of reading usually goes into this job. Editors start burrowing, sometimes reluctant to re-emerge and get on with it. But with a subject like torture I found the going quite different - a day of reading about the horrors committed by ordinary people, often using everyday household objects with the most fiendish ingenuity, and my head would be fit to burst. Perhaps that old grouch TS Eliot was right and humankind really can't bear very much reality.

The reality of torture is certainly distressing and one that we don't like to be reminded of. Whereas we quite willingly suspend our disbelief when watching a gripping film, the painful truth of torture makes us want to suspend our belief. But behind every 'case' there is a real person whose suffering demands that we bear witness and whose life - though altered unimaginably - is much more than the fact of their torture.

This edition is not an atrocity exhibition and there's little in here for voyeurs (then again, they tend to read different kinds of publications). All the evidence suggests that the use of torture is on the rise. It's time to buck that trend.

Dinyar Godrej
for the New Internationalist
Co-operative
dinyarg@newint.org