If there’s official secrecy, smell a rat. The usual answer is “security”, but in reality you’ll find a story of human misery, abuse, torture, rape. Yarl’s Wood is a name added to the long list of locations under the control of the very Western Governments bemoaning untold horrors committed by human beings on others. Sadism is supposed to be an act of barbarism which “civilised”, “democratic” states abhor.

Where did all this start? In recent history Chicago is seen as a contender, but a look at what was trended following experiments in human endurance to sensory deprivation. Go back a few decades and practices in Northern Ireland‘s detention centres look familiar.

Other familiar names include Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib where these techniques were practiced and refined. They continued even as they were getting press coverage, although the detail and horrors have only emerged when those who endured them have spoken about their sufferings.

The proliferation of these torture sites is not accidental, a product of rogue personnel. It is a result of deliberate acts around what Naomi Klein writes about in “Shock Doctrine”. I is practiced not only against what are regarded as problematic states, but is used against people internally. The withdrawal of benefits to many needy people is such an example.

That such doctrines are counter productive is amply demonstrated by groups who are now practicing their own forms of “shock doctrine”. Everyone has been sickened by the ever more outrageous practices of groups acting in the name of Islam. Their ideas are not new or confined to them: rather they have learned from a world that has practiced colonialism with no holds barred on the treatment of those colonised. Our leaders continually say they espouse humanity and justice. It might just work if they set an example using those humanitarian values rather than what they themselves describe as the law of the jungle.