Torturers "eat people's hearts and guts"! The atrocities of Dai Kasa's agents that destroyed humanity

Li

The basic psychological method of torture is to divide the world into "us" and "them." Finding scapegoats and belittling others are important means to this end. Torturers must believe that their world is just in order to commit madness to their victims. One of the results of this belief is that the interrogators see the victims as self-inflicted, and that the torture of these victims is in fact deserved. In the eyes of the torturer, the more painful the torturer, the more justified he is to go to prison. This way of thinking is not uncommon and generally does not cause cruelty to people. However, a state of mind is a prerequisite for abuse of others, so it becomes a psychological condition for the dehumanization of those who perceive the victim as a threat to the social order or cause racial pollution impurity.

Most torturers are made, not born to be. They are gradually pushed into this perverted mental condition. Amnesty International reported that the transition from guard to executioner often began as a guard outside the interrogation room and the sound of beatings coming from inside. After being transferred to the detention cell, they witnessed how the victims were humiliated. Eventually, if they are competent, they will "suddenly and actively participate" and beat up the prisoners themselves.

Just as the torturer "loses his humanity," they make the torturer feel that he has lost his mental strength and that he is losing the integrity of his body. Dai used two punishments to achieve this goal: "tiger stool" and "stepping on the bar", both of which crippled the victim. The interrogators of the military command specifically used this to deal with suspect communists and make them disabled for life. "Agents, in order to force revolutionaries to confess new clues, always try to torture the bodies of revolutionaries. They have both the desire to trample and destroy the human body, and the pursuit of scientific efficiency. Secret police officers like Shen Drunk, who teach novices "mobile techniques," are always keen to develop more effective punishments; within a day or two of the invention of new instruments of torture, they test them on prisoners in Shanghai's cells to perfect their techniques and then add them to the military training program. Psychologically, this "professional" and seemingly "detached" interest in "engaging in the penal business" is part of what Robert Lefton called "duplicity": these people "develop a whole set of feelings and habits" that fit into their evil roles and enable them to return to their everyday selves after work. Duality is the key to everyday evil, and it explains how people can get caught up in activities that are so contrary to the rest of their lives.

But duplicity is not a completely mysterious process. With the breaking of the forbidden areas in the torture chamber, the torturers became increasingly cruel and animalistic. For example, the torturers of the military command also ate human flesh. Dai Kasa's agents would use the excuse that some people were "timid" to dig out the hearts and livers of the victims and eat them, saying: "Eating people's hearts can strengthen their courage." With Dai's connivance, they also often raped young women, especially suspected Communist Party members. Dai Kasa thought this was a reward or encouragement to the agents to do a good job.

The range of types of torturers clearly extends beyond the usual people with sexual perversions or sexual fanaticism. However, representatives of Amnesty International, who had attended the trial of Greek ESA officials, commented:

While the sexual perversion of the torturer is often highly publicized and deserves to be condemned by the good people who oppose torture, it is important to see that the perversion of these individuals is not the cause of a penal system. Instead, once a penal system is created for the political needs of those in power, the ruler's subordinates will exhibit patterns of behavior that they would not normally be able to do. Social jealousy and sexual assault are two of these.

In short, in the eyes of a military commander, the secret interrogation of female prisoners, especially stubborn and radical young female students, is an opportunity to "vent animal lust" by creating pain and humiliation in the sexual organs.

The military agents used the most insane and cruel acts on the female prisoners they guarded: needles into their nipples, bamboo sticks into their nails, rattans to whip their genitals. These tortures were eventually approved by Dai Kasa, who himself used the same cruel methods against Choi Zhengyao (her husband attempted to assassinate Chiang Kai-shek in November 1935 and injured Wang Jingwei).

Sexual humiliation is almost commonplace. Young women of good families were forced to strip naked, while agents watched for fun. However, in extremely rare cases, a woman can occasionally in turn humiliate the person who tortured her. Shen Drunken told a story about Xu Yuanju's interrogation of female Communist Party member Jiang Zhujun in Chongqing. After she contemptuously refused to answer Xu's question, he resorted to his usual tactics (he claimed that nine out of ten female prisoners would confess under this law): he ordered his men to rip off Jiang's clothes, but she was not intimidated, but loudly reprimanded:

Do you think that by such a despicable means of stripping me of my clothes and humiliating me will make me afraid? Let me tell you, don't forget that you were born to women. Aren't your mothers, your wives, your daughters and sisters women? By humiliating me in this way, you are humiliating all the women on earth, and you are humiliating your own mothers! If you don't even care about your own mothers and sisters, let me be stripped naked!"

At this time, Shen Drunk, who was observing from the sidelines, "gently touched Xu's foot, 'Can you use other methods to deal with her?' At this time, Xu Cai stopped and ordered the tried and tested punishment of nailing bamboo sticks in her nails, but even the severe pain did not make Jiang confess in the end.

——Excerpt from "The Spy King: Dai Kasa and the Chinese Agent (Revised Edition)", by Wei Feide, translated by Liang He, published by Nova Publishing House

Author: Wei Feide

Edit: Jin Jiuchao

Editor-in-Charge: Zhang Yu

*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.