TORTURE survives not because societies openly accept it, but because they learn to live with the conditions that make it possible.
Every year on June 26, the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture reminds us of the suffering endured by survivors across the world. It is a day that rightly focuses on rehabilitation, justice, and the restoration of dignity.
Yet an uncomfortable question remains: if torture is universally condemned, prohibited under international law, and recognised as one of the gravest violations of human rights, why does it continue to occur across societies and generations?
Too often, torture is treated as the result of individual cruelty or isolated misconduct. While individual responsibility matters, this explanation alone cannot account for the persistence of torture. Torture rarely survives because of perpetrators alone. It survives because it is embedded within a wider ecosystem of social norms, political incentives, institutional arrangements, and unresolved historical grievances.
In other words, torture is not merely an act. It is a system of relationships, practices, and incentives that allows violence to be normalised, justified, tolerated, and reproduced.
This distinction matters because it shapes how we respond. Rehabilitation, psychosocial support, medical care, legal assistance, and justice are all essential for survivors. But if we focus only on the consequences of torture without confronting the conditions that produce it, we risk treating the symptoms while leaving the disease intact.
The Bangladeshi experience illustrates this challenge vividly. Debates surrounding torture cannot be separated from broader concerns regarding enforced disappearances, custodial abuse, arbitrary detention, and allegations of excessive use of force that have emerged repeatedly over the years. The events surrounding the July Uprising further intensified public scrutiny of how state power is exercised and renewed demands for accountability, transparency, and institutional reform. For many citizens, the question is no longer whether torture and abuse are problems, but why they continue to recur despite widespread condemnation.
If we are serious about ending torture, we must therefore look beyond detention cells and interrogation rooms. We must examine the wider ecosystem that enables torture to persist—from the social spaces where humiliation and coercion are normalised, to the institutions that reward abuse, to the political and historical dynamics that make violence appear acceptable, necessary, or inevitable.
Social roots of torture
TO UNDERSTAND why torture persists, we must first examine the social environments where coercion, humiliation, and domination are normalised long before they appear in detention centres, police stations, or interrogation rooms.
In many societies, including Bangladesh, practices of humiliation, coercion, and domination are frequently normalised in everyday life. Whether in families, educational institutions, political organisations, or workplaces, the exercise of power through fear and degradation is often tolerated, justified, or even institutionalised. The so-called ‘guestroom culture’ that existed in many university halls offers one example. Although distinct from torture in a legal sense, such practices normalised humiliation, obedience through fear, and the stripping away of dignity.
What makes this phenomenon particularly concerning is not only the suffering experienced by those subjected to it, but also the culture it reproduces. A student who enters the system as a victim often finds himself in a position of authority a year or two later, expected to enforce the same practices on a new generation of students. In this way, coercion becomes self-perpetuating. The victim is gradually transformed into the perpetrator, allowing the cycle to continue without requiring anyone consciously to defend it. Violence becomes embedded in institutional culture and reproduced across generations.
The location of this process is equally significant. Universities are institutions where young people are expected to learn critical thinking, empathy, mutual respect, tolerance, and democratic values. Yet when practices of humiliation and domination become normalised within these spaces, they risk teaching the opposite lesson: that power is exercised through fear, obedience is secured through coercion, and dignity can be subordinated to hierarchy. Rather than challenging abusive forms of authority, such environments can inadvertently socialise individuals into accepting them as normal.
For decades, these practices have also served a political function. In many instances, systems of control within residential halls were not only about discipline or hierarchy; they were intertwined with the maintenance of political dominance on campus. Students were often pressured, directly or indirectly, to demonstrate loyalty to the student wing associated with the ruling political force of the time. Access to accommodation, security, opportunities, and social acceptance could become linked to political conformity. For many students, particularly newcomers, meaningful choice was often limited. Through this process, coercion became a mechanism for producing loyal political cadres, disciplining dissent, and maintaining control over university spaces.
Socio-economic realities frequently reinforced these dynamics. For example, in the context of the University of Dhaka, many students—particularly those from outside Dhaka or from less affluent backgrounds—depended on university halls because they lacked the financial means to secure alternative accommodation. Their dependence on institutional housing reduced their ability to resist abusive practices or political pressure. Structural inequalities therefore made some students more vulnerable to coercion than others, not because they accepted it, but because they had fewer alternatives.
The guestroom culture is only one example. Similar patterns can emerge whenever authority operates without meaningful accountability and where obedience is rewarded more than dignity. The broader point is that torture does not emerge in isolation. It is sustained by social environments that normalise the use of power through humiliation, reward conformity over autonomy, and reproduce cycles of coercion across generations.
When societies become accustomed to such practices, torture ceases to appear as an extraordinary violation. It becomes an extension of existing patterns of behaviour. By the time torture appears in a police station, detention facility, or interrogation room, many of the assumptions that make it possible may already have been learned, normalised, and reproduced elsewhere in society.
Institutional incentives and legacy of control
THE problem deepens when these social attitudes intersect with institutional practices and are reinforced by institutional incentives.
For decades, allegations of torture, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, and other forms of ill-treatment by law enforcement agencies have repeatedly emerged in Bangladesh. Yet accountability has often remained inconsistent. In many instances, institutional cultures have rewarded responsiveness to authority more than accountability to citizens. This is where political interference in policing becomes a critical concern.
The Bangladeshi experience over the past decade and a half illustrates this challenge. Repeated allegations of custodial torture, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, and excessive use of force have generated growing public concern about how state power is exercised and supervised. The events surrounding the July Uprising further intensified these debates and renewed demands for accountability, transparency, and institutional reform. For many citizens, the question is no longer whether reform is necessary, but why patterns of abuse continue to recur despite repeated promises of change.
The debate is not simply about the conduct of individual officers. It is about the incentives that shape institutional behaviour. During periods of authoritarian rule, allegations frequently emerged that political loyalty, obedience to powerful actors, and a willingness to carry out repressive measures were rewarded more consistently than professionalism, restraint, or respect for human rights. Recruitment, promotion, postings, awards, and institutional protection were often perceived through this lens. Whether every such perception is accurate is less important than the fact that these perceptions influence behaviour, shape organisational culture, and affect the relationship between police, citizens, and the state.
When promotions, postings, recognition, and institutional protection are perceived to depend primarily on political loyalty or obedience rather than professional conduct, coercive practices can become normalised within institutions. Under such circumstances, torture is not simply the result of individual failure. It becomes embedded within a broader incentive structure that rewards conformity to power while weakening accountability to citizens.
This dynamic also helps explain why debates about torture cannot be separated from questions of political governance. When police accountability remains directed primarily towards political authorities rather than the public, the risk increases that law enforcement will serve the interests of power rather than the rights of citizens. In such contexts, torture and other forms of abuse become not only human rights concerns but also symptoms of deeper institutional distortions.
This also reveals the persistence of a deeper historical legacy. Many of the institutions responsible for law enforcement continue to operate within frameworks inherited from colonial systems that prioritised control over service and order over rights. Colonial policing was designed to govern and discipline populations rather than protect citizens as rights-bearing individuals. While laws, governments, and political contexts have changed, many underlying assumptions about authority, discipline, and state power remain remarkably resilient.
The result is a policing culture that often appears more accountable upwards to political authorities than outwards to the public it is meant to serve. This does not mean that individual officers are solely responsible for the problem. Many operate under significant institutional and political pressures. Nevertheless, institutions shape behaviour, and institutional incentives ultimately influence what is rewarded, tolerated, or punished.
This is why torture cannot be separated from discussions about police reform, accountability, and oversight. If institutions reward coercion and fail to punish abuse, they create environments in which torture can persist. Torture therefore cannot be understood only as a contemporary policy failure. It is also connected to historical and institutional patterns that continue to influence how power is exercised and justified.
The ecosystem of torture is therefore sustained not only by social norms but also by institutions that, intentionally or otherwise, fail to align authority with accountability. As long as coercion remains politically useful, institutionally tolerated, or historically embedded, efforts to eliminate torture will continue to face significant obstacles.
Civil society, collective trauma and politics of memory
YET institutions alone cannot explain why torture persists. Addressing the ecosystem of torture also requires honest self-reflection from civil society itself.
Too often, condemnation of torture is inconsistent. Public outrage frequently depends on the identity of the victim, the political affiliation of the perpetrator, or the ideological preferences of observers. Human rights principles are strongest when applied universally, yet societies emerging from deep polarisation often struggle to maintain such consistency. The problem becomes particularly concerning when civil society actors themselves remain trapped within competing political camps and selective moral frameworks.
In such circumstances, torture risks becoming a partisan issue rather than a principled one. Abuse committed by opponents is condemned, while similar abuses committed by allies are minimised, justified, or ignored. The result is not the elimination of torture but the normalisation of double standards. Human rights cease to function as universal principles and instead become instruments of political contestation.
This selective response weakens the moral credibility of civil society and undermines its ability to advocate consistently for victims and survivors. More importantly, it contributes to an environment in which torture is judged not by what was done, but by who suffered and who benefited. Such a framework ultimately erodes the very foundations of human rights protection.
Yet these dynamics do not emerge in a vacuum. They are often rooted in deeper and unresolved historical wounds. Years of political violence, repression, exclusion, and injustice leave behind collective trauma. Communities carry memories of victimisation, while competing narratives of suffering emerge, each seeking recognition and validation. As a result, historical grievances become intertwined with contemporary political identities.
In such contexts, violence is often rationalised in the language of necessity, revenge, historical correction, or even deserved justice. Past suffering becomes a justification for present abuses. The language may change, but the underlying logic remains the same: certain forms of violence become acceptable when directed against the ‘right’ targets.
This is precisely why torture cannot be addressed solely through legal reform or institutional change. Societies must also confront the narratives, memories, and grievances that continue to shape how violence is understood and justified. Recognition of suffering cannot be selective. Nor can empathy be confined to those who share our political identities.
Without meaningful recognition, truth-telling, and healing that engage with longer histories of suffering—not only the most recent wounds and traumas—these unresolved grievances will continue to reproduce cycles of violence. A society that remembers only its latest victims while ignoring earlier injustices risks perpetuating an endless competition of grievances rather than building a shared commitment to human dignity.
Torture persists not only because institutions fail to prevent it, but also because societies struggle to confront the historical, political, and psychological conditions that make it appear acceptable, justified, or inevitable. Breaking that cycle requires more than accountability alone. It requires the difficult work of building a culture in which human dignity is defended consistently, regardless of politics, identity, or historical affiliation.
Towards prevention and accountability
REHABILITATION remains one of the most important pillars of the global response to torture. Survivors deserve access to comprehensive medical treatment, legal assistance, social reintegration, and mental health and psychosocial support services. Yet access to quality rehabilitation remains limited and often unaffordable for many survivors, particularly those from marginalised communities. Mental health care should not be treated as a privilege. It should be recognised as a fundamental right and made accessible to all survivors.
Supporting survivors is both a moral obligation and a human rights imperative. At the same time, if torture is sustained by a wider ecosystem of social norms, institutional incentives, political interests, and unresolved historical grievances, then preventing torture requires addressing those conditions as well.
This requires meaningful institutional reform. Institutions must be designed to serve citizens rather than political interests, and accountability must be directed towards the public rather than those who temporarily hold power. Strengthening the professionalism, independence, and accountability of law enforcement institutions is therefore not simply a governance issue; it is an essential component of torture prevention.
It also requires strengthening independent institutions capable of ensuring oversight and accountability. Advancing meaningful police reform, establishing effective complaint and oversight mechanisms, creating independent structures capable of insulating recruitment, promotion, transfers, and disciplinary processes from undue political influence, and empowering a genuinely independent National Human Rights Commission are all critical steps. Strong and independent institutions protect individuals regardless of their identity, political affiliation, or social status. In the long run, such institutions benefit everyone because political fortunes change, but institutional protections endure.
Equally important is the need to create spaces for truth, recognition, and healing. Without confronting unresolved historical grievances, societies risk carrying old wounds into new political conflicts. Accountability and healing should not be viewed as competing objectives. Both are necessary to reduce cycles of violence and strengthen a shared commitment to human dignity.
The fight against torture cannot end at rehabilitation centres, courtrooms, or memorial events. It must also take place in classrooms, political parties, public institutions, media platforms, and everyday social interactions. Torture is not sustained by perpetrators alone. It is sustained by the ecosystem around them.
Rehabilitation helps survivors rebuild their lives. Accountability helps restore justice. Prevention seeks to ensure that fewer people are subjected to torture in the future. These are not competing priorities; they are complementary responsibilities.
Ultimately, the true measure of our commitment to victims of torture will not be how effectively we respond after abuse has occurred, but how seriously we address the social norms, institutional incentives, political practices, and historical grievances that allow torture to persist. Only by confronting these deeper foundations can societies move towards a future in which human dignity is protected not only through rehabilitation and justice, but through the prevention of abuse itself.
Md Zarif Rahman is a researcher, columnist and activist. He currently serves as the Research Director at Sapran — Safeguarding All Lives, a rights-based think tank. He previously served as a member and student representative on the Police Reform Commission of Bangladesh.
