8 A practical guide to the Istanbul Protocol – for psychologists 3. ON THE COMMUNITY LEVEL “[…]By dehumanizing and breaking the will of their victims, torturers set horrific examples for those who later come in contact with the victim. In this way, torture can break or damage the will and coherence of entire communities [...]” (Istanbul Protocol, § 235). One of the aims of torture is to intimidate third parties, thereby ensuring responses of fear, inhibition, paralysis, impotence and conformity within society. In this sense, torture is not only a political, but also a social, ethical, psycho-social and mental health problem for the society (Lira Kornfeld, 1995). Investigating torture means looking at experiences that affect a whole population not only as individuals per se, but as social beings in a social context. Violations of human rights cannot be viewed exclusively from the perspective of isolated individual abuses. Their implications are extensive, for they describe not only a system’s response to conflict, but also a general environment of political threat, both of which lead to an atmosphere of chronic fear (Lira Kornfeld, 1995; Summerfield, 1995). Torture always explicitly or implicitly conveys a threat and attack to the whole community and the value system of the community. Torture can terrorize the entire population, create an atmosphere of pervasive threat, chronic fear, terror, and inhibition (Kira, 2002). It can create a repressive ecology, which is a state of generalized insecurity, lack of confidence, and rupture of the social fabric. Torture may have long-lasting effects on most forms of collective behaviour. The impacts of torture and persecution can also be transmitted cross-generationally.