Malath’s Stance on Torture

 There are events that cannot be treated as mere news to follow, because they force us to revisit a fundamental question about the value of human life and dignity.
The recent death of an individual due to torture while in detention in Syria has reignited the conversation about torture, bringing back into focus the long memory of abuses that the country has known.

At Malath, we do not view torture as a political issue belonging to one party rather than another, nor as a crime that can be justified by accusations, affiliation, or security circumstances.
Torture is unacceptable—regardless of the perpetrator, and regardless of the victim’s identity.
A safe society cannot be built on fear. Justice cannot begin with the violation of the body.
We also reject the use of torture cases as tools for political bidding; our rejection of torture does not change with a change in power, authority, or victim.

Protecting People Does Not End with Rejecting the Crime
At Malath, we believe that protecting people begins with rejecting torture, but it does not end there.
When a person dies inside an institution that is supposed to be responsible for their detention and safety, the question is not limited to the direct perpetrator. It extends to the environment that allowed the violation to occur, and to the ability of institutions to protect, investigate, and hold accountable.
It also extends to the ability of the media and society to access the truth, and to keep the violation visible, open to discussion and accountability.
Accurate information is not a media detail. It is part of society’s capacity to protect people.

We Do Not Want to Reduce Silence to "the People"»
We do not want to reduce the matter to the question:
Why did society stay silent?
Nor do we want, on the other hand, to absolve society of its responsibility.
Between the crime and the public lies a whole system comprising:
institutions, law, media, sources of information, social networks, political discourse, collective memory, and fear.
That is why we want to understand the conditions that make a society respond to one form of violence while another passes by in silence.

The issue is not simply: Did people know what happened?
It is also:
How did they know?
Who conveyed the information to them?
Did they trust it?
Could the media follow it up?
Did people feel safe enough to speak about it?
And how does knowledge of pain translate into collective response?

When a Single Event Breaks the Silence
We do not want to ask only:
 Why does torture happen?
We also want to ask:
What happens to a society when torture becomes known and then silenced? And what happens when a single event breaks that silence?
Some acts of violence become public issues, generating waves of outrage, debate, and demands for accountability, while others pass by in relative silence.
This difference in response does not necessarily mean that one set of victims is more valuable than another. Rather, it pushes us to examine the social, media, and institutional conditions that make some pain visible and some less visible.
This is where the research question begins.

Media as a Space for Oversight
Independent media is not merely a means of conveying news.
It is one of the spaces that make violence visible, enable society to know what is happening, and give the public the ability to hold power to account.
When this function weakens, the crime does not necessarily disappear—but it may become less visible, less open to discussion, and less subject to accountability.

From here, we raise a question we wish to explore more deeply:
To what extent can the emerging media and institutional environment perform the function of independent oversight of power, given legal constraints, the ambiguity of the boundaries of criticism, and the pressures that may drive journalists toward self-censorship?
This question does not presuppose a ready-made answer. It is not intended to absolve or condemn the media, but rather to understand its position within a broader system of information production, trust, fear, and public response.

Responsibility Is Distributed Across Multiple Levels
We believe that responsibility in confronting torture cannot be reduced to a single level.
There is the responsibility of institutions to prevent violations, investigate them, hold perpetrators accountable, and ensure the safety of detainees.
There is the responsibility of the media to access information, verify it, convey it, and monitor power.
There is the responsibility of society to reject violence, resist its normalization, and transform knowledge of pain into accountability.
And there is the responsibility of every individual to refuse to allow the violation of human beings to become normal simply because it is repeated.

We are not looking for a single party on which to place all the blame.
We seek to understand the system that makes violence possible, silence possible, and response possible as well.

Our Stance
At Malath, we reject torture—regardless of the perpetrator and regardless of the victim’s identity.
We believe that human dignity is not a value that changes with a change in power, affiliation, or context.
Accusation cannot justify torture.
Identity cannot justify torture.
Politics, security, or any intellectual project cannot justify the violation of the body.

No to torture.
No to the violation of the body.
No immunity for any authority before the dignity of the human being.

From Stance to Inquiry
This stance is not a completed study, nor does it offer definitive answers about the behavior of society, the media, or institutions.
It is a starting point for a research question we wish to return to with more time, data, testimonies, and analysis.

In the coming phase, we will work to explore the relationship between:
violence, media, public opinion, trust in institutions, collective memory, mechanisms of silence, and public response.
We will attempt to approach these issues from more than one angle, rather than reducing them to a single political or ethical interpretation.
Because understanding silence does not mean justifying it, and understanding response does not mean glorifying it, and studying the public does not mean placing the responsibility for what happens on them alone.
We want to see the full picture.

The stance is firm. The inquiry requires time.

Malath’s Stances is a space where we collect our ethical and human rights positions on issues that affect people and their dignity—grounded in constant principles, not temporary reactions.

 This is Malath’s stance.
As for the questions it opens, they will be the subject of our inquiry.

Read the inquiry when published →