By Doug Wingeier • Columnist

Based on actual events, the movie “The Railway Man” tells the story of how British soldiers captured by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore in 1942 were taken in boxcars four days north through Malaya and Thailand and forced to work under inhuman conditions on a railway line along the River Kwai in Burma. The film contains graphic scenes of beatings and torture, including the infamous technique of waterboarding. Although the film ends with a moving scene of forgiveness and reconciliation between the British lieutenant and his erstwhile Japanese torturer, it still leaves the viewer pondering the question, “What possesses human beings to dehumanize and torture one another in such brutal ways?”

The sad fact is that throughout human history torture has been an all-too-common practice in war, criminal justice and relations between ethnic and even religious groups. It is practiced as a means of demonstrating power, vengeance, intimidation or coercion. It is used to break the spirit in order to extract submission, confession and information — even though these are often false and unreliable, uttered simply to stop the excruciating suffering.