Sleep Deprivation Kills

It was close to midnight when we decided to hit the sack as a full day schedule was ahead. But the chairman with us at the Shanghai Sheraton bar said he will stay on  a bit longer, as sleep at his age is more difficult to come by. Either that, or the lithesome beauties in high slit cheongsams were better company than any found in dreamland.

A recently released report by the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence revealed that sleep deprivation was among the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used in CIA’s detention and interrogation program. Psychology Today is saying sleep deprivation is torture.

Although less overtly violent than slicing off someone’s anatomical part, sleep deprivation can cause problems with reading and speaking clearly, poor judgment, lower body temperature, and a considerable increase in appetite. If deprivation continues, the effects escalate to disorientation, visual misperceptions, apathy, severe lethargy, and social withdrawal. Researchers have used animals for ethical reasons to study the extreme limits of sleep deprivation, and the end result is always widespread physiological breakdown leading to death.

During sleep the immune system performs a host of vital regenerative functions, good reason why doctors always advise their patients to rest in bed. When a person is deprived of sleep, the immune system is unable to effect the healing process, necessary for recovery from sickness, injury, or trauma. Forcibly depriving a person of sleep is a direct assault on the entire biological system at the foundation of that person’s mind and body.

The instrument of choice at Whitley Road Detention was air-conditioning set at freezing temperatures, as survivors of the Marxist conspiracy trumped-up charges of 1987 will attest to. Maybe the tormentors are starting to feel guilty about contributing to the carbon footprint, and resorting to more energy conservation measures. As of 30-6-2015, Singapore is not listed among the states which have Ratified the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

According to Amnesty International, Singapore also did not sign the following international agreements relating to human rights:

• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)
• Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty
• International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)
• International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
• Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951)
• Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1967)
• Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (1954)
• Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (1961)
• Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court