Forced Human Toilet Stories
Janet Denzel
Civilized people hardly ever speak of certain aspects of human physiology, such as urination, defecation, and flatulence, or toilets and sanitation, faeces and their disposal, and the sewerage system (except of course during training programmes for doctors and nurses, or caregiving to infants and the elderly). Presumably this is why the awkward and perplexing, but significant problem of excrement and its disposal in the concentration camps that operated between 1939 and 1945 (if I may briefly define it so) has not been studied and treated separately so far. I would insist the problem was really important: it contributed to the general torment of incarceration, it caused many deaths, and was responsible for the outbreak and spread of epidemics, thus producing long-term effects survivors are still burdened with today.
The toilet or washroom was also the place where prisoners committed suicide and where their bodies were found. They took their lives either for reasons of their own or if forced by sadistic functionaries. Some of the victims were people with diarrhoea, who were got rid of in this way: they did not soil the floor or bed any more.
"If you're a good boy we will make sure that you will only be used by women. Maybe even be the personal toilet by a single woman. There are rich people who buy their daughters a personal toilet slave for their 18th Birthday. It's a tradition in certain circles. If you do good in your training, you will only be used a couple of times a day and not as a public human toilet." Lilly explained.
My hands grab onto the armrests and lift my arse and cunt off of The Hole's face just enough to relax and discard a liquid pillar of piss into my human fucking toilet. Heavy, it streams into his mouth like a ray of liquid sunshine into the bleak grey of the hospital. His mouth fills with the acid river before he begins to swallow, no time to test the Coriolis effect. Thirsty fucking Hole.
Again, the tapping of my heels echoes through the room as I draw The Hole by his pullchain over to a rusty, exposed pipe on the wall. Looping the chain around and in between the pipes, I grin with the satisfaction of having found a use for my wretched little human toilet. The Hole sits upright with his back against the wall and pipework. Attached. I reach between my tits pressed together inside a latex top and withdraw a tiny padlock and key.
The padlock sits resolute and secure around the links of the pullchain. The Hole will remain. The human toilet I've installed within these crumbling walls is going nowhere soon. One last time, I reached my gloved hand forward, grasping his jaw and forcing it open. I place the tiny key to the padlock on his tongue and gently close his shit-smeared mouth.
Gutierrez was one of the first civilians allowed as legal counsel for some of the Guantanamo prisoners. During her talk, "Torture, the Law and American Values," she said the site was set up purposely to allow torture and to gather intelligence outside of U.S. laws and with no concern for human rights. Some of the torture practices include water-boarding, sexual humiliation, forced standing for days, being held in darkness for months and deprivation of food and toilet facilities. She and other lawyers were allowed entry only after the Center for Constitutional Rights, where Gutierrez is lead attorney, filed habeas petitions subsequently approved by the U.S. Supreme Court.
By Nita Bhalla NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Hundreds of thousands of impoverished "low caste" Indians are being forced to clean human excreta from dry toilets and open drains, despite a ban on the discriminatory and undignified practice, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Monday. India has since Independence in 1947 enacted laws aimed at ending the practice of manual scavenging, which include commitments to modernise sanitation to end the manual disposal of faeces as well as outlawing employing anyone to do so. But centuries-old feudal, caste-based customs have allowed manual scavenging to persist, with communities facing barriers such as threats of violence, eviction and the withholding of wages if they try to leave the practice, said a report by HRW. "Successive Indian government attempts to end caste-based cleaning of excrement have been derailed by discrimination and local complicity," said Meenakshi Ganguly, HRW's South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. Caste-based discrimination known as "untouchability" was banned in 1955 in India. In September 2013, parliament went one step further and outlawed employing anyone to clean human excrement. The "Cleaning Human Waste: Manual Scavenging, Caste, and Discrimination in India" report said not only do people continue to collect and dispose of faeces, but they are often not paid cash wages - instead given leftover food, grain, old clothes, or access to land for their livestock and firewood. Local authorities are often complicit, said the report, citing examples of government village councils and municipalities such as Bharatpur, Dholpur, Karoli in Rajasthan and Sikandra, Mathura, Fatehgarh in Uttar Pradesh which still recruit low caste people to clean open defecation sites. HEALTH HAZARD Many people remain unaware of the law and their right to refuse to clean human waste, it said. Those who do refuse, face social pressure, including threats of violence and expulsion from their village, often with the support of local officials. The report, which surveyed more than 100 current and former manual scavengers in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh, said most of those employed were "Dalits" - a community which traditionally occupies the lowest place in caste system. In March 2014, Supreme Court confirmed however that it is "abundantly clear that the practice of manual scavenging continues unabated." Although there are no official figures on the number of people who are forced into the practice, the International Dalit Solidarity Network estimates there are 1.3 million manual scavengers in India, most of whom are women. Women usually clean dry toilets, men and women clean excrement from open defecation sites, gutters, and drains, and men are called upon to do the more physically demanding work of cleaning sewers and septic tanks. Human rights groups say not only is this a matter of dignity, but also that the repeated handling of human excrement without protection is a serious health hazard. It can cause constant nausea and headaches, respiratory and skin diseases, anaemia, jaundice, trachoma, and carbon monoxide poisoning. The HRW report called on authorities to enforce laws outlawing caste-based discrimination and banning manual scavenging and put in place specific rehabilitation measures to support those who lose employment. Groups representing the Dalit community welcomed the report, saying that it showed the lack of political will in combating manual scavenging. "This report serves as an illustration of one of the worst manifestations of caste-based discrimination in South Asia, inflicting human rights violations in all spheres of life including work, health, education and safety," said Rikke Nöhrlind, Executive Director of the International Dalit Solidarity Network. "The report also shows how the Indian government and officials must step up to the plate to end this practice as far too little has been done."
In 2010 the United Nations General Assembly explicitly declared that every person has the right to clean water, toilets and good hygiene and that these three essentials were necessary for the realization of all human rights. In doing so, the Assembly sought to galvanize the allocation of financial resources and political will to reach everyone, everywhere with water and sanitation by 2030. Since then, much progress has been made and communities around the world are transforming as governments, the private sector and non-profits work with civil society leaders to gain access to water and sanitation. Yet, within the communities with new taps, toilets, and healthy hygiene practices, distribution of access is still a challenge. Even the most well planned projects can unintentionally overlook certain groups including people with physical or mental disabilities and the elderly.
Step back. Every so often life offers us human stories of such immediacy that we (or at least I) devour them and pick over the bones obsessively. Such a story was that of Jeffrey Epstein and his chums. It's a rivetingly squalid tale, but for the fiction writer it also offers up endless lessons in human behaviour, sexual realpolitik and the application of power.