Editing Disembowelment (section)

==Disembowelment of humans as torture==
{{more citations needed section|date=August 2023}}
[[File:Martyrdom by disembowelling and by decapitation of two men. Wellcome V0033265.jpg|thumb|Martyrdom by disembowelling and by decapitation of two men]]
If a living person is disemboweled, it is invariably fatal without major medical intervention.  Historically, disembowelment has been used as a severe form of [[capital punishment]].  If the intestinal tract alone is removed, death follows after several hours of gruesome pain. The victim will often be fully conscious while the torture is performed if the vital organs aren't damaged, and will be able to see their intestine being removed, but will eventually lose consciousness due to blood loss. However, in some forms of intentional disembowelment, [[decapitation]] or the removal of the [[heart]] and [[lung]]s would hasten the victim's death.{{fact|date=April 2024}}

===Asia===
====Vietnam====
Various accounts have asserted that during the [[Vietnam War]], members of the [[Viet Cong]] sometimes made calculated use of disembowelment as a means of [[psychological warfare]], to coerce and intimidate rural [[peasant]]s.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Hubbel |first=John G. |title=The Blood-Red Hands of Ho Chi Minh |journal=Reader's Digest |date= November 1968  |pages=61–67 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |title=Off With Their Hands |journal=Newsweek |date=15 May 1967}}</ref> Peer De Silva, former head of the [[Saigon]] department of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] (CIA), wrote that from as early as 1963, Viet Cong units were using disembowelment and other methods of mutilation as psychological warfare.<ref name=desilva>{{cite book |last=De Silva |first=Peer |title=Sub Rosa: The CIA and the Uses of Intelligence |year=1978 |publisher=Time Books |place=New York |isbn=0-8129-0745-0}}</ref> The extent, however, to which this punishment was perpetrated may be impossible to gauge and while detailed accounts survive regarding how civilians were disemboweled by Viet Cong,{{citation needed|date=February 2022}} the use of this torture appears to have been quite arbitrary and there is no record that such actions were sanctioned by the [[North Vietnam]]ese government in [[Hanoi]]. Disembowelment and other methods of intimidation and torture were intended to frighten civilian peasants at a local level into cooperating with the Viet Cong or discourage them from cooperating with the [[South Vietnamese Army]] or its allies.<ref name=desilva/>{{citation needed|date=February 2022}}

===Europe===

====Romania====
In early 1941, during the [[Legionnaires' rebellion and Bucharest pogrom#The Bucharest pogrom|Bucharest pogrom]] in which 125 [[Jewish]] civilians were killed, multiple cases of torture including disembowelment were recorded.<ref name="Ancel">{{cite book|last=Ancel|first=Jean|title=History of the Holocaust – Romania |year=2002|publisher=[[Yad Vashem]]|location=[[Israel]]|isbn=965-308-157-8|language=he}} For details of the Pogrom itself, see volume I, pp. 363–400.</ref>

====Netherlands====
On 10 July 1584, [[Balthasar Gérard]] shot and killed [[William the Silent|William of Orange]], who had advocated for [[Spanish Netherlands|Dutch independence]] from the [[Philip II of Spain|King of Spain]].<ref name=jardine>{{Cite book| author= Jardine, Lisa| author-link= Lisa Jardine|title= The Awful End of William the Silent: The First Assassination of A Head of State With A Handgun |place= London |publisher= HarperCollins |year= 2005 |isbn= 0-00-719257-6 }}</ref> The assassin was interrogated and condemned to death almost immediately.<ref>{{cite book|last=Motley|first=John L.|title=The Rise of the Dutch Republic, Vol. 3|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4836|author-link=John Lothrop Motley|year=1856}}</ref> On 14 July, after suffering various tortures during each of the five days since the assassination, Gérard was disemboweled and [[dismembered]] while still alive, after which his heart was torn out and then he was beheaded by his Dutch executioners.<ref name=jardine/><ref>{{Cite book|last= Foucault|author-link= Michel Foucault|first =Michel |title=[[Discipline and Punish]] |chapter = The Spectacle of the scaffold. }}</ref>

====Roman Empire====
[[File:Martyrdom of saint erasmus.jpg|thumb|Martyrdom of saint Erasmus]]
[[Christianity|Christian]] tradition states that [[Erasmus of Formiae]], also known as Saint Elmo, was finally executed by disembowelment in about A.D. 303, after he had suffered extreme forms of torture during the persecutions of Emperor [[Diocletian]] and [[Maximian]].{{fact|date=April 2024}}

====England<span class="anchor" id="DisembowelmentEngland"></span>====
[[File:BNMsFr2643FroissartFol97vExecHughDespenser.jpg|thumb|The execution of [[Hugh Despenser the Younger]], who was hanged, drawn and quartered for high treason in 1326]]
In [[England]], the punishment of being "[[hanged, drawn and quartered]]" was typically used for men convicted of [[high treason]]. This referred to the practice of dragging a man by a hurdle (similar to a fence) through the streets, removing him from the hurdle and (1) hanging him from the neck (but removing him before [[death]]), (2) drawing (i.e. disembowelling) him slowly on a wooden block by slitting open his abdomen, removing his [[entrail]]s and his other organs (which were frequently thrown on a fire), and then [[decapitation|decapitating]] him and (3) quartering, i.e. dividing the body into four pieces.  The man's head and quarters would often be [[parboiled]] and displayed as a [[Deterrence (legal)|warning]] to others. As part of the disembowelment, the man was also typically [[emasculation|emasculated]] and his genitals and entrails would be burned.{{fact|date=April 2024}}

[[William Harrington (priest)|William Harrington]], Hugh le Despenser the Younger and William Parry are examples of men who were hanged, drawn and quartered – tortured on the rack, [[Hanging|hanged]] until not quite dead, subjected to emasculation, disembowelment and then chopped into quarters.<ref name="Schama">{{cite news |first=Simon |last=Schama |title=Simon Schama's John Donne |date=26 May 2009 |publisher=BBC2 |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo |access-date=18 June 2009}}</ref>

====Germany====
From the 15th century, ordinances are retained that threaten with a terrible punishment those who stripped off the bark of a standing tree in the common woods. A typical wording is found in the 1401 ordinance from [[Oberursel (Taunus)|Oberursel]]:<ref>For a number of such ordinances, see * {{cite book|last=Grimm|first=Jacob|title=Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer
|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wQqgbG5oBaAC&pg=PA519|pages=519–20|year=1854|publisher=Dieterich|location=Göttingen|access-date=2013-03-13}} '''German original''': "''und wo der begriffen wird, der einen stehenden baum schälet, dem wäre gnad nützer dan recht u. wann man deme sol recht thun, soll man ihm seinen nabel bei seinem bauch aufschneiden u. ein darm daraus thun, denselbigen nageln an den stamm u. mit der person herumgehen, so ,lang er ein darm in seinem leib hat''"</ref>
{{blockquote|"...and whoever is caught stripping off a standing tree, mercy would have been more beneficial to him than the law is; for when law is to be fulfilled, then one is to cut up his stomach at the navel, and pull out a length of the gut. The gut is to be nailed to the tree, and one is keep going around that tree with the person, so long as he still has any part of the gut left in his body."}}
[[Jacob Grimm]] observes that no case of the punishment being carried out has been found in records from that period (15th century), but 300 to 500 years earlier, the [[West Slavs|Western Slavic]] tribes like the [[Wends]]  are said to have revenged themselves upon Christians by binding the guts to an erect pole and driving them around until the person was fully eviscerated.<ref>'''i)''' General comment, with connotations of this being a type of human sacrifice {{cite book|last=Hübner|first=Johann|title=Kurtze Fragen aus der politischen Historia, volume 6|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9t4GAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA500|page=500|year=1703|publisher=Gleditsch|access-date=2013-03-13}}, '''ii)''' 8th century description from 772-73, {{cite book|last=Caesar|first=Aquilin Julius|title=Beschreibung des Herzogthum Steyermarks, Volume 1|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r4wAAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA88|pages=88–89|year=1786|publisher=Zaunrith|location=Gräz|access-date=2013-03-13}},  '''iii)''' Danish 1096 retaliation on Wends, by like execution method, {{cite book|last=Sell|first=Johann Jakob|title=Geschichte des Herzogthums Pommern, volume 1|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iQcBAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA88|pages=88–89|year=1819|publisher=Flittner|location=Berlin|access-date=2013-03-13}}, '''iv)''' 1131 pagan attacks on Christians by Wends, {{cite book|last=Röper|first=Friedrich L.|title=Geschichte und Anekdoten von Dobberan in Mecklenburg|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=f30AAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA111|pages=111–13|year=1808|publisher=Self-published|location=Dobberan|access-date=2013-03-13}}</ref> In the 13th century, members of the now extinct Baltic ethnic group of [[Old Prussians]] in one of the battles against the [[Teutonic Knights]], are said to have captured one such knight in 1248 and made him undergo this punishment.<ref>{{cite book|last=Voigt|first=Johannes|title=Geschichte Preussens: Von den altesten Zeiten bis zum Untergange der Herrschaft des Deutschen Ordens. Die Zeit von der Ankunft des Ordens bis zum Frieden 1249, Volume 2|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EcZOAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA613|pages=613–614|year=1827|publisher=Bornträger|location=Königsberg|access-date=2013-03-13}}</ref>

===Americas===
[[File:Nezahualcoyotl.jpg|thumb|right|upright|Nezahualcoyotl as shown in the [[Codex Ixtlilxochitl]], folio 106R, painted roughly a century after Nezahualcoyotl's death]]
[[Nezahualcoyotl (tlatoani)|Nezahualcoyotl]], a 15th-century [[Acolhua]]n ruler of [[Texcoco (altepetl)|Texcoco]], a member of the [[Aztec Triple Alliance]] (now [[Mexico]]), promulgated a law code that was partially preserved. Those who had engaged in the passive role of homosexual anal intercourse had their intestines pulled out, then their bodies were filled with ash, and finally, were burnt.  The active or penetrating partner was simply [[Suffocation in ash|suffocated in a heap of ash]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Täubel|first=Gottlob|title=Allgemeines Historienbuch von den Merkwurdigsten Entdeckungen fremder ehedem ganz unbekannter Länder und Inseln|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KooM0KKNHr8C&q=sodomiterey&pg=RA1-PA207|pages=206–07|year=1796|publisher=Gottlob Täubel|location=Vienna|access-date=2013-03-13}}</ref>{{better source needed|date=February 2022}}