Oh, The Horrors!

It does evoke dreadful images and one
shudders at the very word, torture defined
as the deliberate infliction of pain on any
unfortunate enough to come into the hands
of those who wish to extract useful data
from their victims, or to convince them of
another way of believing, or for any reason 
whatever that suits the purpose of regimes 
or of individuals dedicated to an ideology 
or in defense of one for whom its use appeals 
as a method of control and occasionally of 
discipline or vengeance ... sometimes all of 
that and more. So it is obviously abhorrent 
when a state decides to take a million of its 
ethnic-religious minorities out of circulation 
while they are admitted to certain re-education 
academies there to be lectured and deprived 
of choices of their very own, released only 
when indoctrination is complete, left with 
the memory of distinct psychic harm. And 
it is deplorable when a free democracy reeling 
from a massive and deadly attack on its symbols 
and its citizens apprehends those they deem 
responsible and then submits them to the gross 
indignity and helplessness of physical harm 
known in practise as torture of a horrendous
nature such that among its own citizens there 
emits an anguished outcry of denial. Even yet 
from among others bitter indifference tinged
with satisfaction at the plight of arraigned jihad.