Suffering with the Victims

“Remember those in prison as if you were there with them; and those who are being maltreated, for you like them are still in the world” (Hebrews 13:3).

Our lives are lived, for the most part, in physical, psychological, and spiritual insulation from suffering inflicted by the gross barbarities of humanity. Amidst all the decadence of contemporary North American life, there is a decency, a civility. Especially if we are white and privileged we may well have never encountered unbridled human brutality in our own experience, or that of anyone we know. And, as is so often the case, what lies not within our experience fails to touch our hearts.

Such suffering, if we know of it at all, is remote -- not our concern. We allow the environment of a privileged existence to set the boundaries of our compassion.

These thoughts kept running through my mind as I talked with Fred Morris, a former missionary to Brazil who had been tortured by authorities there two years ago. I had heard about torture; we’ve all seen it portrayed in movies and read of it in war stories. And it had even been one of those “issues” that has periodically entered political debate. But always it was something foreign; a topic useful in making a point, a curious and troubling human abnormality when one thinks about it (if one has the time).

We sat there in the living room of a suburban high rise, looking out upon tennis courts, swimming pools, expressways, leisure suits, and bikinis, and talked about Fred being tortured in a Brazilian jail cell. He was guilty of being a friend of the archbishop of Recife, Dom Helder Camara, a modern apostle to the poor. So they grabbed him on the street, hauled him into jail, stripped him, beat him, and tortured him in ways that made my stomach turn with nauseous horror as I listened. I had even heard of all the methods of torture Fred described. But this was different. A person I knew, a friend, was telling what happened to himself.

Torture was no longer a statistic. It became a gruesome personalized reality. So the thousands who are being barbarically tortured this very day are no longer quite the abstractions that they once were.

Today, throughout the world, repressive regimes of every ideological stripe are employing methods and are captured by rationalizations and beliefs that are deeply akin to those of the German Third Reich. Differences between various repressive governments, including imprisonment and trial on spurious charges, injection of dissidents with drugs, and the actual use of terrifying physical torture, represent only variations in style used for common purposes. Brutal torture, applied in so widespread a fashion that it is indiscriminate, holds entire populations in intimidation and fear.

It was said by many in the aftermath of Hitler’s atrocities that they never really knew what was going on. In our time, we must know of the chilling crimes against humanity which have been institutionalized as part of governmental normalcy in several countries.

A central purpose of this issue of Sojourners (published as a joint issue with The Other Side) is to bring these realities before us. They are horrifying, indecent, and shocking. Especially all the details. The pages that follow contain portions that are frequently offensive to human sensibilities. All of this, however, simply depicts and recounts the truth of what is presently happening to fellow human beings -- truth that we must allow to offend us.

Numbered among the most offensive nations around the globe in their practice of torture and repression are staunch allies of the United States. This is not to disregard the repression practiced by ideological foes of the West.

The Organization of American States has reported on the disregard for the rights of political prisoners in Cuba as well as the gruesome torture in Chile, while frightful rumors have been heard about Cambodia. And the notorious repression of dissidents in the Soviet Union, continuing in more psychologically and chemically sophisticated ways than elsewhere, stands out starkly when one reviews the status of human rights throughout the world. Nevertheless, the truly grim accounts emerge from Third World countries whose economies are dependent upon that of the United States and the West -- countries like Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, the Philippines, Iran, and South Korea -- and others as well.

I once talked with a State Department official about the repression of Christians which was occurring, before a subsequent coup, in Chad. “Frankly,” he admitted to me, “human rights are just not much of a priority around here, and there’s nothing I can do to change it.”

When put to the test, the United States regularly allows its political and economic interests to override any concern for how governments are treating their citizens. This was most graphically illustrated recently in Congress, as reported in this issue (see “Prose and Policy in Legislating Human Rights”). Despite the widespread and flagrant political repression which has turned South Korea into a virtual dictatorship, persecuting Christians who voiced opposition to the government and jailing political opponents, attempts to simply reduce -- not eliminate -- both military and “Food for Peace” assistance to Korea were handily voted down in Congress.

The “Food for Peace” issue was particularly clear. Rice growers, with other agricultural allies in the Congress and the intense lobbying of the Ford Administration, warned that not shipping rice to Korea -- which, incidentally, is done not to feed the hungry but to lessen the bill of Korea’s food imports so government revenues can be spent elsewhere, such as on arms -- could cause the price of rice to slightly drop. A surplus of rice for export had been created, in part because of the change of governments in Indochina who no longer want or receive U.S. “Food for Peace” rice. Thus the government was buying rice to use for “Food for Peace” exports in order to keep the price of rice from dipping. To U.S. policymakers human rights in Korea are simply not worth the price of rice.

These same countries are run on models of economic development that encourage the investment of multinational corporations and seek the development of capital in the hands of the few, with the elusive hope (which never seems to materialize) that it will trickle down to the many. Wealthy minorities find common cause with the military, leaving the masses of poor without hope.

The overriding interest of the U.S. in such cases is protecting these economic ties. It is not that people in the State Department would advocate that governments in Third World countries should routinely torture and intimidate their citizens. But given the choice between politically stable regimes with extensive economic and political ties to the West and either erratic governments threatened with active subversion or ones less inclined to welcome Western investment and its modes of economic development, the United States learns to live with a little fascism and torture by its allies.

Our whole economy, and our individual participation in its values and lifestyle, has become intertwined with the fabric of forces which give rise to and support states whose power is organized around torture and intimidation. I remember being told two years ago that Pierre Cardin jackets were now being assembled in Brazil because of the cheap labor there.

There is a connection, which is understood clearly in the Bible, between violence and wealth. Building and protecting wealth seems inevitably to involve violence in countless ways, even the torture of innocents in foreign lands. In some ways, that’s as close to us as our pocketbooks.

Faced with the scope of human atrocities, we struggle with how, as believers in Christ as Lord, we are to respond. The danger is being immobilized, depressed, paralyzed, and made almost numb. But Christ calls us, above all, to a fundamental response of compassion.

That may sound like fairly shallow rhetoric unless we explore what the full meaning of compassion is.

Henri Nouwen has helped me here. Literally, the word compassion means “to suffer with.” Having compassion toward others means recognizing our solidarity with them. That solidarity comes at the foot of Christ’s cross, who was tortured for those who today are tortured. If we have his love, we will feel spiritually the suffering others are enduring physically.

Their plight, after all, could well be our own. Following Christ means for any believer, as it has through the ages, a readiness to suffer for the sake of the gospel, and for the sake of Christ’s love. We of all people should know a solidarity with those who suffer. That is why the writer to the Hebrews tells us to remember “ ... those being maltreated, for you like them are still in the world.”

Compassion, Nouwen says, also means consolation. Again we must understand that word’s root meaning. To console is not to offer sweet platitudes but to stand with the lonely other who suffers. It doesn’t alleviate pain but tries to overcome its loneliness. “Remember those in prison as if you were there with them.”

From such solidarity with and consolation to those who suffer, comfort may come, as loneliness gives way to a sense of community. That is the fruit of embodying Christ’s compassion for those undergoing brutalities of torture.

With this, we can know with clarity the utter sin of allowing a nation’s economic or political interests to justify any tolerance for the defilement of human life by the intimidation, repression, and torture that so degrades. It is the demonic which rationalizes, excuses, or ignores such brutality.

This is the central issue to be confronted in any legislative actions on this question. Congress has the technical power to terminate direct U.S. aid to any nation, but only rarely has it overcome political and economic pressures to even limit such aid on the basis of human rights violations.

Further, the intent of laws designed to prohibit the previous training of foreign police by U.S. advisers have been circumvented, according to an investigation and report by the U.S. Comptroller General. Last year, for instance, 346 Chilean personnel received training at the U.S. School of the Americas (in the Panama Canal Zone) in the operation of police in internal defense, the use of aviation in urban counter-insurgency, crowd and mob behavior, and the application of “force.” Similar training for others can continue, since the Pentagon claims that the law does not restrict the training of military police -- a rather large loophole, considering that eight out of ten major Latin American nations are now under military governments. The legislative agenda, therefore, seems nearly endless.

Then, torture in poor nations has roots in the economic monopoly held over resources and labor by the rich. Thus, it confronts us and the church directly at the point of our economic lifestyle. “Toward a Church of the Beatitudes,” a pledge appearing on page 33 of this issue, points us in the direction of a biblical response. Continuing with economics as usual for ourselves, our churches, and our consumer society can contribute to torture as routine for others.

We all can assist in the raising of these realities to our brothers and sisters in Christ, as well as to society at large. The basic response we wish to nurture is not a program or a statement but true compassion. That is what the victims of torture most need and what the church of Jesus Christ can uniquely give. Liberty to the Captives (see Seeds) is one group of biblical people -- and trusted personal friends -- committed to seeing that others will not be able to say, years hence, “We didn’t know what was happening.”

There is one final irony. When people in rich countries talk about human rights, what they have in mind are usually political and religious freedoms. Yet millions throughout the world face far more fundamental struggles to simply survive. For them the concern over political rights is an irrelevant luxury; their human rights agenda begins with the right to food, to shelter, to life itself. It is a perversion, then, to conceive of the human rights questions solely in terms of fostering democratic liberties. Concern for human rights must encompass and must frequently begin with the fundamental economic and social rights of peoples.

In countries like Chile, we see today efforts to convince the world that the documented barbarity following the coup against Allende has been curtailed. In large measure this represents a merely cosmetic response. But what has not been curtailed are economic policies which are squeezing the poor. The right-wing junta simply calls this a “social cost,” but even former President Eduardo Frei, a Christian Democrat previously supported by the United States, has said, “Chile is going backwards ... no one can deny it’s true.”

Thus, to frame the issue of human rights solely in terms of the torture of political prisoners is ultimately short sighted, ignoring the less dramatic but equally costly human suffering inflicted by economic and social structures which continue oppression rather than giving a priority to the needs of the poor.

The torture endured by others calls us to new depths of faith. Biblically speaking, there is no other way torture and suffering is truly overcome. There we hear the strange yet simple word that suffering is to be accepted and even expected. “It gives you a share in Christ’s sufferings,” we read in 1 Peter, “and that is cause for joy.”

Such faith nurtured by suffering seems foreign to most of us; but if faith has cost so little, we must ask how faithfully we have followed. Only then will we be able to offer true compassion to those who are victimized by torture and offer the hope known by our Lord who said to us, “Do not fear those who kill the body and after that have nothing more they can do.”

Wes Michaelson was on the editorial staff at Sojourners when this article appeared.