Instead of listing cruelties under the names of countries, rebel or terrorist groups, it is revealing to identify patterns of values, attitudes and behaviour, beginning with the age-old stigmatizing of victims. Such negative labelling is implemented in policies of national inclusiveness: whom to regard as normal and worthy, as compared to policies of exclusiveness which designate whom to see as abnormal and unworthy.

Under various jurisdictions and in different periods of history, the stigmatized have included people with a disability, those suffering mental illness, Indigenous peoples, Indian untouchables, Hazaras in Afghanistan, Tamils in Sri Lanka, homosexuals, Jews, Christians, gypsies, non-believers, apostates, asylums seekers, refugees, mixedblood Aboriginals and unmarried mothers.

In many countries and cultures, cruelties are sustained by an automatic acceptance of religious and moral justification for the manner of conducting relationships. Under the rule of inflexible monarchies and theocracies, as in Saudi Arabia and Iran, stigmatizing also seems motivated by efforts to appear masculine and to degrade women. Such practices have persisted for centuries but have achieved new support under the influence of conservative Islam, or by extremist beliefs and intolerance fuelled by any religion. With the imposition of religious rules comes a ghoulish pleasure in observing pain being inflicted on others.

Sadism is not practised only by religious extremists. Military regimes display a dependence on violence as though they can think of no other way to exercise control. Addiction to violence is aided by the international arms trade and by the availability of the latest weapons as well as by cinema, video games and the media.

These patterns overlap. Reference to terrorism has become the cue to justify torture and other forms of cruelty, and to say that such behaviour is permitted by law. The terrorism labelling overlaps with the demonization of individuals, with sexual motives for violence and with religious justification for such practices, even if such conduct is denied.

Policy can refer to a plan to achieve a particular objective. This simple statement suggests that policy goals would not be cluttered by considerations other than to achieve a specific task.

Beyond a policy statement, if it is ever explicit, implementation occurs that is often messy at best and sinister at worst. Into the mix of messiness comes a politics of contest and ambition, of denial and hubris, of shortage of resources and reinterpretation of goals. The number of policy players could increase astronomically, from politicians and bureaucrats to military and non-military operatives, from the intended beneficiaries of policies to the losers and victims, from state publicity machines to the partisan attitudes of diverse branches of media.

Even without the complex numbers of policy players, even if state representatives claim to have good intentions, their different objectives can lead to confusion and conflict. For example, the erosion of civil liberties has become a consequence of policies allegedly intended to achieve greater security for citizens. Efforts to deter criminality by increasing prison sentences have hindered policies to encourage the rehabilitation of prisoners. Under the influence of free market economic policies, the promotion of private business interests has eroded the resources of public institutions. In times of war and peace, countries’ foreign policies have been ambiguous, as in statements by an Australian Foreign Minister about her country wanting to shape an external environment and increase influence in a region, whatever that was supposed to mean.

On 26 February 2018, the UN demanded a resolution for a 30-day ceasefire across Syria and the allowance of humanitarian convoys for the 400,000 people besieged in the Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta. The following day Iran said it did not care about UN resolutions. Turkey declared that its operations in northern Syria would not be affected. Russia said a ceasefire could last for five hours not 30 days. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres pleaded for an end to wartime activities. The Syrian government and their Russian allies continued the slaughter. Humanitarian law and UN resolutions were of no consequence.

The Syrian civil war bred cruelties. The siege of Ghouta had been under way since 2013. Hundreds of thousands of people lived underground, beneath bombs, under gunfire, with little food or water and no medical supplies. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that by mid-March 2018, 1,000 people had been killed in pulverized buildings, described by UN spokespersons as a ‘hell on earth’.

Disbelief about Syria raises questions whether a worldwide malignancy of cruelties will end. If the leaders of states, if powerful people in institutions, if key members of extremist groups think that their actions should be influenced only by what they can get away with, the idea of policies governed by ethics and laws looks absurd.

Slaughter in Ghouta highlights conditions which have nurtured cruelties: indifference to human rights and non-violence, plus derision about humanitarian law and other ethical considerations. In reaction to threats of terrorism, and as the product of an economics-based encouragement of selfishness and inequality, cruelties seem bound to increase. If so, do those who influence public opinion allow the trend to continue, or would they support a counter humanitarianism?

It is early summer, 2019, a steamy evening in the public gallery of the Shoalhaven Council building in the New South Wales town of Huskisson. Elected councillors are discussing applications for commercial developments and requests for houseowners to cut down trees that hinder views. They also deliberate a motion to disqualify a community newspaper from receiving Council revenue because councillors have been offended by their critics in the newspaper.

The chair of the meeting is the town Mayor, who represents the Greens party. She conducts the meeting with dignity and professionalism but is the target of repeated abuse from half a dozen councillors, mostly male, who ridicule her rulings.

This example of democracy at work may seem only local and the implications parochial, but the chemistry of that meeting has lessons that apply internationally. Councillors’ opposition to a woman and to her mostly female-elected supporters displayed intolerance, abuse, an unwillingness to listen, let alone take notice of others’ views. Appearing convinced of their wisdom, the abusers drew from an apparent expectation that no one should challenge their boorish, bullying, misogynistic, self-important behaviour.

They argued that commercial developments be allowed even against the interests of local Indigenous people on whose land the new developments were to occur. They were enthusiastic about the right to remove trees and they passed the motion that, in effect, the newspaper editor should be punished for daring to allow criticism of councillors. In that debate, the councillor who moved the motion made false claims as though any concern with the truth was irrelevant.

Arrogance, bullying, a lack of commitment to democratic principles and not the slightest touch of humility captured that meeting. Even in local government in a country which is not a police state, authoritarianism flourished. The same conduct has appeared in other liberal democracies, hence a need for language which expresses liberating, non-destructive visions of the future.

A language for humanity includes questions of identity, ideals of humane governance and determination not to be cruel to future generations. The crescendo comes with a redefinition of human rights and with passion for crafting a different politics. Poets will have the last words.

In commentators’ evaluations of social and foreign policies, cruelty as an intended, or as an unanticipated consequence of policies, has received little attention. In policy appraisals, the notion ‘cruelty’ seldom appears, not even in an index, and has not been acknowledged to be a purpose of policies even if the cruel consequences have been obvious. It was as though an alleged rational process should be cleansed of any consideration of irrational actions such as causing serious harm to citizens or to animals.

The absence of regular commentary on the business of inflicting cruelty prompts this book's aim, to show cruelty in the play of politics, in the design and implementation of state policies and in non-state responses. If truths about worldwide cruelties become evident, the elimination of such practices should become a key consideration in any future crafting of policies and in the advocacy of values which influence political cultures. Advocacy of humanitarian alternatives to cruelty would depend on the spirit of universal human rights, challenges to oppressive uses of power and the promotion of policies to address social and economic inequalities.

The behaviour of nation-states, their governments, institutions and the cohorts of politicians, public servants and media acolytes who contribute to cruelty needs to be exposed. Identifying the cruelties of citizens who act as individuals, or as loyal members of well-organized groups, prompts questions: do they look in a mirror, do they pretend all is well, nothing unusual has happened?

Cruelty refers to a wanton and unnecessary infliction of suffering on body and mind. The adjective ‘wanton’ describes conduct without regard to what is right, just or humane. That could include discrimination, torture or murder by individuals or by a state, as in the mass famine in China from 1956 to 1976 (the Great Leap Forward) which killed tens of millions of people.

In Western parlance, cruelty also warrants definitions according to specific contexts. In marriage relationships, cruelty includes mental and physical harm occurring over a period of time.

We are living in an anguishing historical period. From one direction come dire warnings about humans’ future if the challenges posed by climate change and ecological instability are not addressed within a rather tiny window of less than twelve years. From another direction come depressing indications that peoples around the world are choosing by their own free will, extremist autocrats, even demagogues, who are extinguishing fires of freedom, building walls to keep the unwanted out and stigmatizing the stranger. In such an atmosphere, human rights are in retreat, empathy for the suffering of others is repudiated, international law is all but forgotten in the annals of diplomacy and the United Nations is often reduced to the bickering of irresponsible governments seeking nothing grander than maximum national advantage, and in the process, let the common public good of humanity be damned. Facing such reality with eyes wide open is a challenge that few acknowledge, and even fewer have the stamina, insight, compassion, wisdom and imagination needed to discern a brighter alternative future for humanity.

Stuart Rees is such an exception. His Cruelty or Humanity has the courage to portray reality in all its degrading ugliness without taking refuge in some specious bromide. His book addresses the range of cruelties that befall those most vulnerable among us in myriad specific circumstances. With an astonishing command over the global and historical landscapes of cruelty, Rees leads us through the wilderness of the most evil happenings, which have been enacted individually and collectively. And yet, through it all he manages to guide us toward the light of hope without indulging sentimentality or embracing false optimism.

What gives this perilous journey its defining originality is the degree to which Rees brings to bear the knowledge and timeless wisdom of poets both to depict the intensities of the darkness but also to instruct readers that the disciplined and lyrical insight of a poet can better than the rest of us find shafts of light that illuminate paths leading to empowerment, transcendence and liberation.

Utopian thinking requires creative, non-harmful conduct in individual relationships. It imagines socially just practice in institutions and in the manner in which policies are crafted and implemented. These challenges also confront those who derive pleasure by promoting fear, discrimination and brutality. The persistence of cruelty worldwide makes it urgent to respond with humanitarian alternatives. Overcoming the fatalism that nothing can be done is a first task.

Oscar Wilde insisted that a map of the world that did not include utopia was not worth even glancing at, so he challenged his public to consider the ideals of a common humanity. Gary Younge's response to the Oscar Wilde challenge is a vision of a community without border guards, barbed wire, passport control, walls, fences or barriers. But Younge commented, ‘Sadly desperate people are turned away at borders all the time. Others are incarcerated for having the audacity to cross borders we have created, to escape wars we have started, environmental chaos we have contributed to or poverty we have helped create. Others die trying.’

In deliberations about policies towards asylum seekers and refugees, constant reverence for borders becomes an obstacle to conceiving the importance of sanctuary and asking why the powerlessness of millions persists. Fixed borders are an idea of modernity and the nation-state. An humanitarian agenda needs to look beyond the binary of the border and the nation-state.

A common humanity refers to a quality of living, as in the enjoyment of political and economic rights, and to a set of values, as in the acknowledgement of responsibility to care for others. Commitment to ‘humanity’ includes a moral imperative to respect such rights and to live by such values and begins by assessing the ways in which power is exercised.

There comes a time when abhorrence over cruelty should be expressed spontaneously and passionately, separate from academic references, scholarly analytical theory, legal punctiliousness and political hypocrisy. There comes a time when an explicit verdict on the bestiality of state and non-state actors should be delivered in the court of common decency and universal human rights. That time is now.

Few states can escape the opprobrium of using cruelty as a form of governance. Motivated by religious dogma or political ideology, every non-state violent group has also dug deep into depravity. States and their opponents have fuelled one another: separate in opposition yet joined in derision of democracy and humanity, in refusing dialogue and applauding violence.

Two levels of officially sanctioned cruelty appear in states which sustain cruelty over long periods and in those whose apparent pleasure in such violence takes place in a time-limited period. In the first category, states which continue brutalities over time include Indonesia's oppression of West Papuans, Morocco's decades long containment of the people of Western Sahara, Israel's siege of Gaza, a Saudi Arabian penal system which subjugates women and promotes medieval-like punishments to anyone who challenges the state, the US fascination with weapons of all kinds, their specific states’ retention of capital punishment and the inevitable botched executions, the Singhalese government of Sri Lanka's continued discrimination against Tamils, the subjugation of Tibetan people and culture by Chinese takeover, Hun Sen's authoritarianism in Cambodia and Australia's imprisonment of asylum seekers on remote islands.

The distinction between brutality which either seems endless or occurs within a time frame is blurred, though a possible time limit hints at an end to cruelties and hopes that non-violent times might materialize.

Psychological, social, political, religious, cultural forces? How to explain cruelty?

To respond to those questions, I’ll explore three overlapping theses: the banality of evil; conditioned, automaton-like behaviour; the attraction of sadism. Following that exploration, and with a feeling of travelling up a tributary of the main arguments, I’ll also ponder the force of ideas about efficiency as a fuel for cruelty, though I’ll only be pursuing that line of inquiry with regard to the civil war between Colombian government forces and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels in Colombia. That exploration comes at the end of this chapter.

The banality thesis identifies widespread acceptance of cruelties if legitimized by states, their governments, their policies and/or by other powerful institutions. Analysis of conditioned behaviour refers largely to operators of state and non-state organizations who keep the wheels of cruelty turning, yet such personnel usually remain invisible, inaccessible and non-accountable. Completing the cruelty puzzles requires accounts of sadistic behaviour, which is embedded as much in cultures of violence as in the pathology of any one person.

The explanations overlap but have distinct characteristics.

The banality of evil

Conversations about cruelty usually prompt references to Hannah Arendt's concept ‘the banality of evil’. At the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, charged with the murder of millions of Jews during the Second World War, philosopher Arendt observed an apparent conventional individual who appeared to be blind to the evil he had committed. Supposedly bereft of any capacity to ponder the immorality of his actions, Eichmann could remain obedient to his Nazi masters and carry out his murderous tasks unhindered by ethical considerations.

The men in power are convinced that it is only violence that moves and guides men, and they do so boldly use violence for the maintenance of the present order of things. But the existing order is not maintained through violence but through public opinion, the effect of which is impaired by violence. Thus, the activity of violence weakens and impairs precisely what it intends to maintain. (Leo Tolstoy)

A malignancy

Joy Gardner was born in 1963 in Jamaica to a 15-year-old mother. She never knew her father. When she was seven, her mother moved to the UK to work. Joy would not follow her mother until 1987, by which time she had a grown-up daughter of her own and was pregnant with her son. She had the boy, Graham, while in Britain and sought leave to remain to be with her mother but was refused. Although her mother was British, rule changes meant her adult offspring had no right to remain. A team of police and immigration officers arrived at her north London home on 28 July 1993 with instructions to deport her and her son to Jamaica. She was bound, gagged and restrained with a body belt. She collapsed, fell into a coma and died of asphyxiation.

In October 2005, Otto Ondawame from West Papua knocked on my office door. He was on the run from the Indonesian army's special forces unit Kopassus. Otto had protested the 1969 ‘Act of Free Choice’ when 1,026 West Papuans were held at gunpoint and ordered to vote for integration with Indonesia. Ondawame had committed a serious crime by raising the flag of his country and in 2001 had protested when the West Papuan leader Theys Eluay was found with his throat cut. Together with colleagues, I protected Otto during his years of exile and study in Australia. The Australian Department of Immigration eventually deported him to Vanuatu, where he died in 2014.