Lately we’ve been hearing about the various interrogation methods used by the U.S… The term “stress positions” appears a lot. What does that mean exactly? Can anyone give some examples of stress positions?
I think that the stress position is just a position that is held for an extended length of time to…really piss someone off. See the examples:
IIRC, the Guiness Book of World Records has an entry for the guy who stood for the longest amount of time was done as a sort of torture. Others are mainting pushup position, standing on one leg, the infamous lie-on-your-back-with-your-hands-and-feet-out.
Try holding those for extended amounts of time. For some like the pushup position, you’ll really feel it after a few minutes, but after standing seven hours or so, you’ll hurt in all sorts of places that you wouldn’t normally (ankles, hips, lower back, neck).
The idea is that these aren’t “torture” in that you’re not leaving any physical marks, the pain isn’t too great or too little and it really works the psychological aspect by making people think, “this isn’t so tough” and then they can’t do it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the prison wardens didn’t threaten them with awful things if they failed the task.
Basically, many positions are hard on your body, if you are forced to remain in that exact same postion for a long time without moving. It causes pain, muscle aches & cramps, limited circulation (“deadening of nerves”), restriction of breathing, etc. And the pain continues (even intensifies) after you are allowed out of that position, and the body circulation, etc. tries to get back to normal. The “pins & needles” sensation in an arm after you’ve laid on it too long is a very minor example of this.
Some examples of such positions are:
- kneeling with hands clasped on the head, especially if you are forced to kneel upright (not resting your butt on your heels). And forcing you to sit looking down, with your chin on your chest, restricts your breathing somewhat, and will eventually become painful. Adding a hood over your head just increases the restriction on your airflow.
- standing rigidly at attention. Becomes very tiring after a while, as any soldier will recall.
- standing with your feet restricted to a small area. (Remember the picture of the prisoner with the hood over his head standing on a wooden box? Note that the box is very small, barely room for both feet to fit on it, and his toes appear to be hanging over with no support. Standing with your feet close together is eventually painful, compared to a normal stance with your feet spread a foot or so apart. And forcing him to keep his hands outstretched eventually becomes painful. After a while, it becomes very difficult to keep your balance in such a position and not fall over. Which probably got you shocked, beat up, etc.)
- sitting cross-legged (“indian style”) for long periods will cut off the circulation to your legs, eventually causing painful cramps, etc.
And for any of these, added stress can be induced by forcing people to do it outside in Middle East sunlight, by forcing them to wear dark, thick hoods while doing so, by forcing it for long periods with no bathroom breaks, nothing to drink, etc.
This is nothing new in history*, such things were common in torturing over the ages. There was a medieval torture called the “Little Ease” which was a metal cage or cell designed such that a person in it was unable to stand, or to sit, or to lie down – they were forced to assume a convoluted, hunched-over “stress position” for the hours or days that they were locked in it.
*Except maybe that we in the USA generally thought we were pretty much above such actions, and that since 1776 they had never been done by our soldiers with official permission. We can’t say that any more, alas.
TechTV aired the BBC series “Spy School”. One show on torture mentioned the “Striker” position;
Stand on tip-toe near a wall, and lean against the wall with fingers bent up against the wall.
Another one is the ‘search’ position - the person is made to stand with feet something like 18 inches apart and standing 3 feet away from a wall, leaning in with hands pressed against the wall above head height.
As a supplementary factual question, and not wishing to enjoin debate, I understand that human rights groups generally characterise the use of forced stress positions as torture. What happens to those who simply refuse, and lie down? Are they physically beaten, ie. indisputably tortured?
Many of the stress positions described above were routinely used on large numbers of soldiers during basic training. The dead cock roach and the front- lean and- rest positions were favorites of the drill sergeants. Any time one of us screwed up you could count on this kind of punishment. Some of it was imo, excessive. The very first day of basic we were forced to stand at parade rest for over four hours. I remember my shoulders being in absolute agony. This is not to diminish the suffering on the part of these prisoners. I am sure they were tortured more severely than soldiers in basic training. I can state for a fact, that this was considered routine when I was going through basic training.