February 29, 2008

Genocideand Torture

To the Editor:

Darius Rejali's "A Painful History" (The Chronicle Review, January 25) forcefully counters the popular, ahistoric representation of torture as exclusively the domain of authoritarian regimes and the particular legacy of Nazi and Stalinist state machinery. In fact, both genocide and torture occur around the world and throughout history. Rejali's findings on torture parallel a number of recent studies about genocide — not surprisingly, since genocidal regimes