A former CSUN student from Sudan, who asked to remain anonymous, anxiously awoke on a Monday morning because he had an interview in court to regularize his migratory status in the United States.

He went to the interview not knowing he’d break down after a few questions in regard to his experiences in the civil war that devastated his country for more than 20 years.

The tactless persistence of the interviewer in repeating details caused the former CSUN student to experience personality dissociation and hide underneath a desk. After running from the guards who tried to control him, the former CSUN student left the building and sought refuge on a treetop. Hours later, pumped with tranquilizers in a hospital room, he said he couldn’t remember what happened.

He is one of the thousands of torture victims who struggle to live a normal life, but is unable to escape from the inclement ghosts of their memories. Although cases of torture are believed to be rare and isolated events, they’re more common than we think.

“The most disturbing consequence are the memories they have of when they were tortured, which overwhelm and mortify the person a lot because they appear in nightmares or associated with anything,” said CSUN alumna Ana Deutsch, an Argentinian psychologist who co-founded in 1980 the first organization in the country providing assistance to these victims: The Program for Torture Victims (PTV).

“A young woman was telling me yesterday that she doesn’t leave her home at all because seeing a police officer or hearing a siren reminds her of when she was imprisoned, and she can’t handle it,” Deutsch said.

Despite that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was approved unanimously in the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948, after the atrocities committed by the Nazi Germany, Amnesty International estimates that 70 percent of all countries today practice torture systematically.

Cases of alleged terrorists being tortured, which created an intense debate in the United States about its accepted interrogatory methods, and the cases of people tortured by police or in penitentiary facilities make up the bulk of this figure.

After the previous attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, resigned because of accusations of committing perjury while speaking to members of Congress, criticism for the dismissal of eight federal prosecutors, the government’s warrantless eavesdropping program and his unique interpretation of the Geneva Convention, his proposed replacement was scrutinized.

The presidential designation of Michael Mukasey was problematic when he refused to recognize the practice of waterboarding as torture during a Senate Confirmation Hearing on Oct. 18.

“If waterboarding amounts to torture, it is not constitutional,” Mukasey said, though he didn’t admit that the interrogation method constitutes torture.

The fact the highest legal position in the nation was unable to give a clear answer on human rights violations is a bad omen to some. The actual stand of the government on various interrogatory techniques, such as waterboarding, has not been clear since Gonzales authored a memo in 2002 to President George W. Bush in which he states that protections outlined by the Geneva Convention do not apply to enemy combatants.

Alicia Estrada, a Central American studies professor, said, “By not applying (the Geneva Convention), an ambiguous space is created, which at the same time creates a problematic contradiction.

“When a state signs a treaty, it is their responsibility to adhere to them because they go beyond national laws and protect the entire humanity,” Estrada said.

Jos’eacute; Quiroga, a 75-year-old Chilean who co-founded PTV in Los Angeles, said any argument differentiating psychological and physical torture is erroneous because they produce the same effects in the end: post traumatic stress, restlessness, anxiety and depression.

“Any interpretation of the law that says it’s only psychological torture has no validity from the point of view of the effects because any [type of abuse] produces the same effect. It only depends on the magnitude and the cumulative effect,” said Quiroga, who has been helping torture victims for 30 of his 50 years as doctor. “What happens is that American law only punishes torture? The problem is that there is a continuum between inhumane or cruel treatment and torture, and we can’t draw a line that says ‘from here to here is torture and from here to there only mistreatment’.

Quiroga said the argument of the “ticking bomb,” which justifies torture if the information obtained benefits the majority, is a fallacy because the victim of torture will say anything the interrogator wants to hear to end the interrogation.

“Based on information provided by the government, we know 90 percent of all detainees at Abu Ghraib have nothing to do with a terrorist faction,” Quiroga said. “From the moment you arrest a person, make him disappear and torture him, you cannot present any evidence related to his confession in court because it is unacceptable under international law. That’s a big problem the U.S. has right now.”

Founders of PTV indicate the organization has provided assistance to victims from every continent, the majority oh whom were abused in prison or by police.

“Look at countries that truly practice torture systematically, at least from what I know:

Ecuador and Mexico,” said Quiroga, Salvador Allende’s personal physician and one of the few present when Allende shot himself in 1973 during the military coup led by Augusto Pinochet.

“In Ecuador, 70 percent of the people who went to a detention center were tortured, Quiroga said. “In Mexico, wherever the indigenous population has taken a political stand and is asking for improvements, like in Oaxaca or Chiapas, the police and the army have repressed them.”

The Office of Immigration Statistics indicates that more than 41,100 people were admitted to the United States as refugees in 2006 and more than 26,110 people were granted asylum. The 24 percent of affirmative asylees who chose California as their home in 2006 made the state the second most popular destination, after Florida, for many of these individuals.

Quiroga said many were motivated by the country’s economic power and partially because it’s easier to assimilate into another society when there are immigrants already established in a diverse country such as the U.S. Nonetheless, they face many difficulties in their new lives away from home.

Shoshana Martinez, a case manager at PTV since 2004, said, “Our clients are in the process of applying for asylum. They are legally in the country during that period, but often don’t have work permits and/or are not candidates for any public benefit, like welfare. They are in a very difficult position because they are not allowed to work, so we help them find ways around it.”

While torture was an accepted interrogatory method in the past, its illegality since 1948 evidences progress. Quiroga said humanity has made significant progress because torture is now something repudiated that needs to occur in secret.

“In order to see the progress, you have to look at it historically because otherwise you’ll get depressed,” Martinez said. “Evidently, there are periods of regression and one of those periods is happening right now.”

“After six years of war in Iraq and against terrorism, people will realize we are not safer and there isn’t less terrorism. That means the instruments utilized to control that situation have been inefficient,” Martinez said. “There have to be other ways but they have to be political or educational. Torture is evidently not the solution.”