Political repression is the persecution Persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group by another group. The most common forms are religious persecution, ethnic persecution, and political persecution, though there is naturally some overlap between these terms of an individual or group for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing their ability to take part in the political life Politics is a process by which groups of people make decisions. The term is generally applied to behaviour within civil governments, but politics has been observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. It consists of "social relations involving authority or power" and refers to the of society A society is a body of humans generally seen as a community or group of humans - or other organisms of a single species - that is outlined by the bounds of cultural identity, social solidarity, functional interdependence, or eusociality. Human societies are characterized by patterns of relationships between individuals that share a distinctive. Political repression may be represented by discriminatory Discrimination toward or against a person of a certain group is the treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit. It can be behavior promoting a certain group , or it can be negative behavior directed against a certain group (e.g. redlining) policies, human rights Human rights refer to the "basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled." Examples of rights and freedoms which have come to be commonly thought of as human rights include civil and political rights, such as the right to life and liberty, freedom of expression, and equality before the law; and economic, social and cultural violation, surveillance abuse, police brutality Police brutality is the intentional use of excessive force, usually physical, but potentially also in the form of verbal attacks and psychological intimidation, by a police officer, imprisonment Incarceration is the detention of a person in jail or prison. People are most commonly incarcerated upon suspicion or conviction of committing a crime. Incarceration rates, when measured by the United Nations, are considered distinct and separate from the imprisonment of political prisoners and others not charged with a specific crime, involuntary settlement Forced settlements in the Soviet Union took several forms. Though the most notorious was the Gulag labor camp system of penal labor, resettling of entire categories of population was another method of political repression implemented by the Soviet Union. At the same time, involuntary settlement played a role in the colonization of remote areas of, stripping of citizen's rights A lishenets , from Russian word лишение, "deprivation", properly translated in this context as a disenfranchised, was a person stripped of the right of voting in the Soviet Union of 1918 — 1936. Disfranchisement was a means of repression of the categories of population that were classified as "enemies of the working people&, and violent action such as the murder, summary executions A summary execution is a variety of extrajudicial killing in which a person is killed on the spot without trial. Summary executions are often practiced by police, military, and paramilitary organizations and are associated with guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency, torture, forced disappearance A forced disappearance occurs when force is used to cause a person to vanish from public view, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty (and/or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person), thereby placing the victim outside the protection of law and other extrajudicial punishment Extrajudicial punishment is punishment by the state or some other official authority without the permission of a court or legal authority. Agents of a state apparatus often carry out this type of punishment if they come to the conclusion that a person is an imminent threat to the overall security of its political system. The existence of of political activists Activism, in a general sense, can be described as intentional action to bring about social change, political change, economic justice, or environmental wellbeing. This action is in support of, or opposition to, one side of an often controversial argument, dissidents A dissident, broadly defined, is a person who actively challenges an established doctrine, policy, or institution. When individual dissidents unite in a common cause they may become known as a dissident movement, or general population.

Where political repression is sanctioned and organised by the state, it may constitute state terrorism State terrorism refers to acts of terrorism conducted by governments. Like the definition of terrorism and that of state-sponsored terrorism, the definition of state terrorism remains controversial and without international consensus, genocide While precise definition varies among genocide scholars, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide . Article 2 of this convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, politicide or crimes against humanity Crimes against humanity, as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum, "are particularly odious offences in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings. They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a. Systemic and violent political repression is a typical feature of dictatorships For some scholars, dictatorship is a form of government that has the power to govern without consent of those being governed, while totalitarianism describes a state that regulates nearly every aspect of public and private behavior of the people. In other words, dictatorship concerns the source of the governing power and totalitarianism concerns, totalitarian Totalitarianism is a term employed by some political scientists, especially those in the field of comparative politics, to describe modern regimes in which the state regulates nearly every aspect of public and private behavior states and similar regimes. In such regimes, acts of political repression may be carried out by secret police Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy to maintain national security against internal threats to the state forces, army, paramilitary A paramilitary is a force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military force, but which is not regarded as having the same status. The term uses the Greek prefix para- , also seen in words such as paramedic. Currently, Iran has the largest paramilitary in the world groups or death squads A death squad is an armed squad that kills civilians, terrorists or guerillas. These groups tend to commit extrajudicial assassinations / extra-judicial killings and forced disappearances of persons. These killings are often conducted in ways meant to ensure the secrecy of the killers' identities, so as to avoid accountability and ensure. Relevant activities have also been found within democratic contexts as well.

If political repression is not carried out with the approval of the state, a section of government may still be responsible. An example is the FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency. The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime. Its motto is "Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity," COINTELPRO COINTELPRO was a series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States. The FBI used covert operations from its inception, however formal COINTELPRO operations took place between 1956 and 1971 operations in the United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the between 1956 and 1971.

In some states, such as the former Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , occasionally called the United Soviet Socialist Republic, was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the Russian: Союз Советских Социалистических Республик​ (help·info), tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh, "repression" can be an official term and official legal policy of repression with respect to internal political opponents of the state, see Soviet political repression.

Contents

Data on human rights violation and state repression

There are currently a wide variety of databases available which attempt to measure, in a rigorous fashion exactly what governments do against those within their territorial jurisdiction. The list below was created and maintained by Prof. Christian Davenport at the Kroc Institute & the University of Notre Dame. These efforts vary with regard to the particular form of human rights violation they are concerned with, the source employed for the data collection as well as the spatial and temporal domain of interest.

Global coverage

Regional coverage

Selective coverage of state repression

Country coverage of state repression

See also

Further reading

Articles

Books

Categories: Human rights abuses Categories: Human rights | Abuse | International criminal law | Crimes | Persecution Categories: Abuse | Injustice | Social psychology | Human rights abuses | Political repression

 

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