| This article is part of the Terrorism series: |
| Definition & Conventions |
| Counterterrorism & "War on Terror" |
| Lists: Groups,
State sponsors, |
| Types: Nationalist, Religious, Left-wing, Right-wing, State, Islamic, Ethnic, Bioterrorism, Narcoterrorism, Domestic, Nuclear, Anarchist |
| Tactics: Hijacking, Suicide bomber |
| Configurations: Fronts, Independent actors |
| Other: Terrorism insurance |
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State terrorism is a subset of terrorism, referring to acts of terror committed by national governments or their proxies. State terrorism can be effected directly, at the hands of national military or security forces, or indirectly, through state sponsored terrorist organizations. States can terrorize their own populations, to secure rule and suppress dissent, or foreign citizens, to support favoured or destabilize unfavoured foreign regimes. Although focus is often placed upon non-state terrorist actors, over the last hundred years the sum humanitarian costs of state terrorism has dwarfed that of non-state terrorism, claiming the lives of millions and causing mass disruption and trauma.
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State terrorism, like terrorism, is a contested, value-laden term often used to vilify the enemy. Acts that accusers may describe as terror, supporters may defend as legitimate defense against supposed threats. State terrorism has been defined as "The use or threat of violence by the state or its agents or supporters, particularly against civilian individuals and populations, as a means of political intimidation and control (i.e. a means of repression)" (Sluke, 2000). However, many contend that states cannot commit acts of terror and/or that acts of terror cannot be committed within the scope of a declared war. These arguments hinge on legal definitions and semantic issues that do not reflect common usage and the cognate link between terrorism and the emotion, terror. The distinction between state and nonstate terror has been criticized as distracting from or justifying official terrorism (Chomsky and Herman, 1979). Some, such as Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón view particular political systems as instances of state terrorism: "State terrorism is a political system whose rule of recognition permits and/or imposes a clandestine, unpredictable, and diffuse application, even regarding clearly innocent people, of coercive means prohibited by the proclaimed judicial ordinance." Some acts of state terrorism also qualify as genocide, democide, crimes against humanity or mass murder.
Globally, state terrorism creates more casualties, disruption and hardship than non-state terrorism. This is, in part, due to the fact that states generally possess more powerful, sophisticated and sweeping means of enforcing violence than non-state organizations. Only national militaries are known to possess so-called "weapons of mass destruction", capable of inflicting massive casualties instantly. Only states have the ability to deprive people of basic living requirements, such as food, shelter and medical care. Only states can capture national mass media, allowing them to distract popular opinions from ongoing acts of mass violence. Rummel (1994) observed, "In total, during the first eighty years of this century, almost one hundred and seventy million men, women and children have been shot, beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to death; buried alive, drowned, hung, bombed, or killed in any other of the myriad ways governments have inflicted death on unarmed helpless citizens and foreigners."
Although state terrorism is an almost universal social phenomenon, instances of state terror usually fall into certain categories. Unfair trial, torture and extrajudicial execution are common practices of state terror, often used to terrorize domestic populations by sovereign or proxy regimes.
Citizens of Western nations are generally protected from unfair trial by constitutional or legislative safeguards and the requirements of due process. Undeveloped nations may have weak institutions and unstable political climates that allow governments to have inappropriate influence over the judiciary, allowing dissenters to be victimized as criminals.
According to Amnesty International (1997), in 1996, out of 150 countries surveyed, 82 had committed torture. Acts of torture are fueled by the lucrative international trade in torture equipment. Many Western companies sell equipment to known human-rights violating regimes.
Extrajudicial execution, or political murder, is the practice of states or their proxies illegally assassinating citizens because they are viewed as political threats and to intimidate communities. Extrajudicial execution may be carried out by the official military, police forces or unofficial paramilitaries (often called "death squads" or euphemized as "civilian defence"). In the latter case, there may be strong ties between the paramilitaries and official forces, with an overlapping membership and a "blind eye" turned to illegal activities.
Such death squads often unpredictably attack the socially disadvantaged ("undesirables"), religious or ethnic minorities, or citizens deemed to be subversive. Their targets typically include the homeless, street children, union leaders, indigenous peoples, clergy, activists, journalists, and academics. Death squads conveniently shield their sponsors from liability, the illusion of spontaneous criminal violence providing "plausible deniability". Often, the bodies of victims are secretly disposed, typically in mass graves, leaving no evidence of a crime and increasing the trauma to families and communities. These cases are known as "disappearances", particularly in South America. The UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances was formed in 1980 to investigate the global phenomenon of disappearances.
Chile, under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, pursued an extensive policy regarded by many as state terrorism against both civilians at home and perceived enemies abroad. On the international stage, the Chilean state's actions included the assassination of former ambassador Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C., by means of a car bomb, the killing of Gen. Carlos Prats in Argentina in similar circumstances, and the attempted assassination of Bernardo Leighton in Italy.
Recently, Colombian death squads have been accused of murdering numbers of the poor and the homeless, as well as other social undesirables.
Under the dictatorship of Fidel Castro, Cuba has been accused by nearly every human rights organization in the world of gross and continual abuses in the treatment of its citizenry. This includes extrajudicial killings, political imprisonment, and coercion of its population through control of basic resources.
The government of the People's Republic of China has repeatedly engaged in behaviors considered to violate international standards of human rights. Some of these are also considered by many as acts of state terrorism, such as the suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
China has also actively suppressed movements in Tibet which support independence for the Dalai Lama. Some of these actions, such as mass imprisonment and using violence against peaceful demonstrators, would be classified by some as state terrorism.
In democratic Germany of the 1920s and early 1930s, the national-socialist party's paramilitary organisation SA terrorized political opponents and minorities. Although the SA committed their crimes in the open, they were only forbidden for short periods of time in 1924 and 1932. In 1932 power shifted from SA to the other Nazi party's paramilitary organisation SS. During Adolf Hitler dictatorship of Germany (1933-1945) the SS played a key role in building a system of state terror. It controlled the Gestapo, and is responsible for the persecution and the extermination of the Jews, brutalities and killings in concentration camps, excesses in the administration of occupied territories, the administration of the slave labor program and the maltreatment and murder of prisoners of war.
During the 1950s in East Germany, labor revolts and labor strikes were often put down with what most would consider hugely disproportionate force, the goal likely being to terrorize workers into conforming behavior. Also East Germany provided assistance to the Red Army Faction, a West German terrorist organization.
The massacres of communist PKI members in Indonesia from 1965 - 1969 are estimated to have claimed the lives of up to a million and have been described as "anti-communist pogroms". The official minimum number of deaths is 500,000.
The United States Department of State includes Iran as a terrorist state using its definition of state-sponsors of terrorist activity. This is based mainly on allegations of financial support to terrorist organisations, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Palestinian Islam Jihad, and PFLP-GC ; as well as "financial, training, weapons, explosives, political, diplomatic, and organizational aid" to Hizbullah. [1] (http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2002/)
Iraq under Saddam Hussein is widely believed to have been responsible for numerous chemical weapons attacks on its own civilian population to stem revolutionary activity and pacify ethnic groups. One of the more famous incidents is the Halabja poison gas attack.
See also Human rights situation in Saddam's Iraq and Human rights situation in post-Saddam Iraq.
Israel has a policy of directly attacking the leaders of organizations that it considers to be terrorist. These counter-terror attacks sometimes result in the deaths of civilians, leading to accusations against Israel of state terrorism. This practise has also been criticized as "extra-judicial executions".
Various Israeli operations in refugee camps such as Jenin have been condemned as terroristic, while Israelis would point north to Syria's handling of Hama to show that their actions result in far less collateral damage. In addition, the use of bulldozers and other demolition devices to destroy the houses of suicide bombers and houses in the Gaza Strip that contain tunnels to smuggle weapons from Egypt is also criticized as terrorism.
The ruling junta of Myanmar has repeatedly engaged in activities to suppress democratic movements within the country. Many of the junta's opponents, such as Aung San Suu Kyi, believe the goal of some of these is to terrorize the population into compliance. See, for instance, the August 8, 1998 Burma protest.
In Northern Ireland, Loyalist death squads, supported by the British military, have been blamed for the deaths of Irish Catholics as part of a campaign of terror.
Under the reigns of Lenin and Stalin, political opponents of the Soviet regime, as well as perceived "enemies of the people", were subject to incarceration under life-threatening circumstances and execution. Stalin was able to cement his hold on power by intimidating and executing his political opponents, real and imagined.
The assassination of dissidents in exile (such as the 1940 murder of Leon Trotsky in Mexico by agents of Josef Stalin) might also be considered an example of state terrorism.
During the 1970s and the 1980s, several groups attacked suspected members of Basque terrorist organization ETA. These groups are:
These groups have been suspected and in some cases proved to include Spanish policemen and to be funded with state secret funds.
Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón's investigations led to the conviction of a Spanish PSOE minister and several subordinates for organizing the GAL.
The United States Department of State classifies Syria as a terrorist state following its definition of state-sponsors of terrorist activity. This is based mainly on allegations of financial, diplomatic, political, military, and/or logistic support to terrorist organisations, including DFLP, Hizbullah, PFLP, PFLP-GC and Palestinian Islam Jihad. [2] (http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2002/)
A number of critics have labeled actions of the United States of America as terrorism. For instance, the US has taken sides in various foreign civil wars and conflicts, notably siding with Israel against other Middle East countries, often working with organizations with questionable human rights practices. The CIA, in particular, has been accused of supporting terrorist organizations in other countries. Such support has been labeled state terrorism.
Other actions have also been criticized as terroristic in intent.
The Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is considered by some as another example of mass killing of civilians which went beyond the laws of war. This has been a highly debated issue over the years. See Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden during WWII, which killed many people, especially civilians, is also considered state terrorism by some.
Some, particularly critics of the US, claim the UN sanctions on Iraq, which the US helped push for, harmed the people more than the government. A response to this is that other countries in the security council, particularly France and Russia, established backdoors so that they could profit immensely through kickbacks. Similarly, the entire "Oil for food" program has come under investigation for taking kickbacks and bribes from Saddam Hussein. Of course, those opposed to the sanctions again don't offer any viable alternative.
Another example is the use of economic and political pressure on the Allende government in Chile. The United States' military action against Nicaragua in 1984-1985 was criticized by some commentators as terroristic after the International Court of Justice, whose authority the US does not recognize, found the US guilty of "unlawful use of force" [3] (http://212.153.43.18/icjwww/icases/inus/inus_isummaries/inus_isummary_19860627.htm). The US Army runs the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation training camp, the successor to "The School of the Americas", in Georgia, USA where some of its graduates have gone on to commit acts of what others consider to be state terrorism in Latin America.