Word: submarino
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...Chile, they called it submarino, a form of simulated drowning that has much the same effect as what we call waterboarding. During Augusto Pinochet's 17-year-long dictatorship, thousands of Chileans were detained by the military and subjected to torture. During the submarino, they were forcibly submerged in a tank of water, over and over again, until they were on the edge of drowning. (The Chilean military liked to foul the water with urine, feces or worse, something that-so far-hasn't been known to be a part of U.S. waterboarding of terrorism suspects.) Submarino became a popular...
...impact on the torture victim's mind was lasting. After Pinochet's fall in 1990, the new civilian government in Chile investigated incidents of alleged torture, and found deep scars. Years after they were tortured, submarino victims were still haunted. A 2007 study in the International Review of the Red Cross found that "the acute suffering produced during the immediate infliction of the submarino is superseded by the often unbearable fear of repeating the experience. In the aftermath, it may lead to horrific memories that persist in the form of recurrent 'drowning nightmares.'" As one Chilean who was tortured...
...methods amounted to torture. Defenders of waterboarding say that the procedure, while awful for the prisoner, is relatively safe and has few long-term effects. But doctors and psychologists who work with torture victims disagree strongly. They say that victims of American waterboarding-like the Chileans submitted to the submarino under Pinochet-are likely to be psychologically damaged for life...
...Amnesty, inflict not only routine beatings but also a gamut of abuses referred to in sardonic slang. El telefono (the telephone) consists of blows with the palms of the hands on both ears simultaneously; la parrilla (the metal grill) is an electrical shock administered to the genitals; el submarino or la banera (the submarine or the bath) is a treatment in which the victim's head is held under water almost to the point of suffocation. Says Grantham: "Torture does not occur simply because individual torturers are sadistic. They tend to be servants of a state carrying...
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