Secret police (or political police) [3] are police, intelligence, or security agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, ideological, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. [4] They protect the political power of a dictator or regime and often operate outside the law to repress dissidents and weaken political opposition, frequently using violence. [5] They may enjoy legal sanction to hold and charge suspects without ever identifying their organization.
Egypt is home to Africa's and the Middle East's first internal security service: The State Security Investigations Service. Initially it was formed during the British occupation of Egypt as the Intelligence wing of the regular police. After the 1952 coup, the State Security apparatus was reformed and reorganized to suit the security concerns of the new socialist regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser. The SSIS was made a separate branch of the Ministry of Interior and separated from the regular police command. During the Nasser era, It was intensively trained by the Soviet KGB on coercive interrogation techniques, mass surveillance, public intimidation and political suppression.
The SSIS was responsible for suppressing opposition groups to Nasser and his successors (Sadat and Mubarak). Torture was a systematic practice by that repressive apparatus. During the War on Terror, The SSIS used to receive suspected terrorists that were sent to Egypt from the United States and used to interrogate them using torture. After the 2011 revolution, demonstrators demanded that the service be dissolved and several buildings (including the headquarters in Nasr City) were stormed by protesters that gathered evidence of torture tools, secret cells and documents showing surveillance on citizens. On March 15 2011, Egypt's Minister of Interior announced the dissolution of the State Security and declared the new National Security Agency would replace it and be responsible for its internal security and counter-terrorist duties.
In Uganda, the State Research Bureau (SRB) was a secret police organisation for President Idi Amin. The Bureau tortured many Ugandans, operating on behalf of a regime responsible for more than five hundred thousand violent deaths. [6] [7] The SRB attempted to infiltrate every area of Ugandan life. [8]
In Zimbabwe, the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) was the secret police of President Robert Mugabe who is responsible for detaining, torturing, mass beating, raping and starving thousands of civilians on the orders of Mugabe.
In East Asia, the Embroidered Uniform Guard (Chinese :錦衣衞; pinyin :Jǐnyīwèi) of the Ming dynasty was founded in the 1360s by the Hongwu Emperor and served as the dynasty's secret police until the collapse of Ming rule in 1644. Originally, their main functions were to serve as the emperor's bodyguard and to spy on his subjects and report any plots of rebellion or regicide directly to the emperor. Over time, the organization took on law enforcement and judicial functions and grew to be immensely powerful, with the power to overrule ordinary judicial rulings and to investigate, interrogate, and punish anyone, including members of the imperial family. In 1420, a second secret police organization run by eunuchs, known as the Eastern Depot (東廠; Dōng Chǎng), was formed to suppress suspected political opposition to the usurpation of the throne by the Yongle Emperor. Combined, these two organizations made the Ming dynasty one of the world's first police states. [9]
The Ministry of State Security (国家安全部; Guójiā Ānquán Bù) in modern China controls a network of provincial and local State Security Bureaus, integrated with local Public Security Bureaus which make up part of the policing system of China. State security agents are People's Police officers with the dual function of law enforcement and repressing political dissent. [10] State security bureaus and public security bureaus are functionally co-located within the same buildings as each other. [11] The MSS and the Ministry of Public Security control the overall national police network of China and the two agencies share resources and closely coordinate with each other. [12] [ better source needed ]
In British Hong Kong, the Special Branch was established in 1934 originally as an anti-communist squad under MI5 with assistance from MI6. [13] The branch later joined the Crime Department of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force in 1946 and focused on preventing pro-KMT rightists and pro-CCP leftists from infiltrating the colony. [14]
The National Security Department in the current HKSAR is a secret police agency created after the enactment of the Hong Kong National Security Law. [15] The NSD has accused and arrested dissenting voices in Hong Kong for "endangering" the national security, including pro-democracy politicians, protestors, and journalists. [16] [17] Some websites were also reportedly banned by the department, including Hong Kong Watch. [18]
In the Middle East, located in Baghdad. Shurta was one of the most both powerful intelligence and secret police organizations of the Abbasid era which was led by the Abbasids in the 8th and 9th centuries during the Golden Age of Islam.
In Japan, the Kenpeitai existed from 1881 to 1945 and were described as secret police by the Australian War Memorial. [19] [20] It had an equivalent branch in the Imperial Japanese Navy known as the Tokkeitai. However, their civilian counterpart known as the Tokkō was formed in 1911. Its task consisted of controlling political groups and ideologies in Imperial Japan, resembling closer the other secret police agencies of the time period. For this it earned the nickname "the Thought Police". [21] [22]
The Korean Central Intelligence Agency or KCIA was a secret police agency which acted extra-judicially and was involved in such activities as kidnapping a presidential candidate and the assassination of Park Chung-hee, among other things. [23] [24]
In Taiwan, the National Security Bureau, established in 1954, is the regime's main intelligence agency. The Taiwan Garrison Command acted as a secret police/national security body which existed as a branch of the Republic of China Armed Forces. The agency was established at the end of World War II and operated throughout the Cold War. It was disbanded on 1 August 1992. It was responsible for suppressing activities viewed as promoting democracy and Taiwan independence.
Secret police organizations originated in 18th-century Europe after the French Revolution and the Congress of Vienna. Such operations were established in an effort to detect any possible conspiracies or revolutionary subversion. The peak of secret-police operations in most of Europe was 1815 to 1860, "when restrictions on voting, assembly, association, unions and the press were so severe in most European countries that opposition groups were forced into conspiratorial activities." [25] The Geheime Staatspolizei of Austria and the Geheimpolizei of Prussia were particularly notorious during this period. [26] [25] After 1860, the use of secret police declined due to increasing liberalization, except in autocratic regimes such as Tsarist Russia. [25]
In Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, the Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police, Gestapo) and Geheime Feldpolizei (Secret Field Police, GFP) were a secret police organization used to identify and eliminate opposition, including suspected organized resistance. Its claimed main duty, according to a 1936 law, was "to investigate and suppress all anti-State tendencies". [27] One method used to spy on citizens was to intercept letters or telephone calls. They encouraged ordinary Germans to inform on each other. [28] As part of the Reich Security Main Office, it was also a key organizer of the Holocaust. Although the Gestapo had a relatively small number of personnel (32,000 in 1944), "it maximized these small resources through informants and a large number of denunciations from the local population". [29]
After the defeat of the Nazis in World War II, Germany was split into West and East Germany. East Germany became a socialist state and ruled by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. It was closely aligned with communist Russia and the Soviet Union. It had secret police, commonly referred to as the Stasi, which made use of an extensive network of civilian informers. [30] From the 1970's, the main form of political, cultural and religious repression practiced by the Stasi, was a form of 'silent repression' [31] called Zersetzung ("Decomposition"). This involved the sustained use of covert psychological harassment methods against people, which were designed to cause mental and emotional health problems, and thereby debilitate them and cause them to become socially isolated. [32] Directed-energy weapons are considered by some survivors and analysts to have also been used as a constituent part of Zersetzung methods, although this is not definitely proven. [33]
The House of Terror museum in Budapest displays the headquarters for the Arrow Cross Party, which killed hundreds of Jews in its basement, among other targets considered "enemies of the race-based state". [34] The same building was used by the State Protection Authority (or ÁVH) secret police. The Soviet-aligned ÁVH moved into the former fascist police headquarters and used it to torture and execute state opponents. [35]
In the Fascist Italy (1922-1943) and the Italian Social Republic (RSI), OVRA were a fascist Italian secret police organization.
Ivan the Terrible implemented Oprichnina in Russia between 1565 and 1572. In the Russian Empire, the secret police forces were the Third Section of the Imperial Chancery and then the Okhrana. Agents of the Okhrana were vital in identifying and suppressing opponents of the Tsar. The Okhrana engaged in torture and infiltration of opponents. [36] They infiltrated labor unions, political parties, and newspapers. [37] After the Russian Revolution, the Soviet Union established the Cheka, OGPU, NKVD, NKGB, and MVD. [38] Cheka, as an authorized secret police force under the rule of the Bolsheviks, suppressed political opponents during the Red Terror. It also enacted counterintelligence operations such as Operation Trust, in which it set up a fake anti-Bolshevik organization to identify opponents. It was the temporary forerunner to the KGB, a later secret police agency used for similar purposes. [39] The NKVD participated in the Great Purge under Stalin. [40]
In Cuba, President Fulgencio Batista's secret police, known as the Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities (or BRAC), suppressed political opponents such as the 26th of July Movement through methods including violent interrogations. [41] [42]
Under the Communist Party of Cuba, the Ministry of the Interior has served a number of secret policing functions. As recently as 1999, the Human Rights Watch reported that repression of dissidents was routine, albeit harsher after heightened periods of opposition activity. [43] The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor under the US State Department reported that Cuba's Ministry of the Interior utilizes a network of informants known as the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (or CDR) to monitor government opponents. [44] Secret state police have operated in secret among CDR groups, and most adult Cubans are officially members. CDR are tasked with informing on other Cubans and monitoring activity in their neighborhoods. [45]
During the Truman Doctrine, Mexican president Miguel Alemán Valdés created DFS to combat communist opposition. The agency was later replaced by DISEN in 1985 after DFS agents were working for the Guadalajara Cartel. In 1989, it was replaced by CISEN.
In Mississippi, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission (or "Sov-Com") was a state agency given unusual authority by the governor of Mississippi from 1956 to 1977, to investigate and police private citizens in order to uphold racial segregation. This authority was used to suppress and spy on the activities of civil rights workers, along with others suspected of sentiments contrary to white supremacy. [46] Agents from the Sov-Com wiretapped and bugged citizens of Mississippi, and historians identify the agency as a secret police force. [47] [48] [49] Among other things, the Sov-Com collaborated with the Ku Klux Klan and engaged in jury tampering to harass targets. [50] [51] The agency ceased to function in 1973, but was not officially dissolved until 1977. [52] [53] The Sov-Com served as a model for the Louisiana State Sovereignty Commission and the Alabama State Sovereignty Commission.
In private writings in 1945, President Harry S. Truman wrote that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (under Director J. Edgar Hoover) was tending towards becoming a secret police force:
We want no Gestapo or Secret Police. F.B.I. is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex life scandles [sic] and plain blackmail when they should be catching criminals. They also have a habit of sneering at local law enforcement officers. [54] [55] [56]
Yet in spite of these sentiments, Truman took no action to try to abolish the FBI, or even more modest reforms. Beginning a decade later in 1956, Hoover's FBI began the COINTELPRO project, aimed at suppressing domestic political opponents. [57] [58] Among other targets, this included Martin Luther King Jr. [59]
During the Getúlio Vargas dictatorship, between 1930 and 1946, the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS) was the government's secret police. [60]
During the military dictatorship in Brazil, DOPS was employed by the military regime along with the Department of Information Operations - Center for Internal Defense Operations (or DOI-CODI) and the National Intelligence Service (or SNI), and engaged in kidnappings, torture, and attacks against theaters and bookstores. [61]
The National Intelligence Directorate, or DINA, was a powerful secret police agency under the rule of Augusto Pinochet, which was charged with killings and torture related to repression of political opponents. [62] Chilean government investigations found that over 30,000 people were tortured by the agency. [63]
During the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez, the Seguridad Nacional secret police investigated, arrested, tortured, and assassinated political opponents to the Venezuelan government. [64] [65] From 1951 until 1953, it operated a prison camp on Guasina Island , which was effectively a forced labour camp. [64] The Seguridad Nacional was abolished following the overthrow of Pérez Jiménez on 23 January 1958. [64] [66]
During the crisis in Venezuela and Venezuelan protests, Vice Presidents Tareck El Aissami and Delcy Rodríguez have been accused of using SEBIN to oppress political demonstrations. SEBIN director and general Manuel Cristopher Figuera reported that SEBIN would torture political demonstrators during interrogation sessions. [67]
Ilan Berman and J. Michael Waller describe the secret police as central to totalitarian regimes and "an indispensable device for the consolidation of power, neutralization of the opposition, and construction of a single-party state". [3] In addition to these activities, secret police may also be responsible for tasks not related to suppressing internal dissent, such as gathering foreign intelligence, engaging in counterintelligence, organizing border security, and guarding government buildings and officials. [3] Secret police forces sometimes endure even after the fall of a totalitarian regime. [3]
Arbitrary detention, abduction and forced disappearance, torture, and assassination are all tools wielded by secret police "to prevent, investigate, or punish (real or imagined) opposition." [68] Because secret police typically act with great discretionary powers "to decide what is a crime" and are a tool used to target political opponents, they operate outside the rule of law. [69]
People apprehended by the secret police are often arbitrarily arrested and detained without due process. While in detention, arrestees may be tortured or subjected to inhumane treatment. Suspects may not receive a public trial, and instead may be convicted in a kangaroo court-style show trial, or by a secret tribunal. Secret police known to have used these approaches in history included the secret police of East Germany (the Ministry for State Security or Stasi) and Portuguese PIDE. [70]
A single secret service may pose a potential threat to the central political authority. Political scientist Sheena Chestnut Greitens writes that:
When it comes to their security forces, autocrats face a fundamental 'coercing dilemma' between empowerment and control. ... Autocrats must empower their security forces with enough coercing capacity to enforce internal order and conduct external defense. Equally important to their survival, however, they must control that capacity, to ensure it is not turned against them. [71]
Authoritarian regimes therefore attempt to engage in "coup-proofing" (designing institutions to minimize risks of a coup). Two methods of doing so are:
The Geheime Staatspolizei, abbreviated Gestapo, was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the Stasi, was the state security service and secret police of East Germany from 1950 to 1990.
Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security and intelligence in British, Commonwealth, Irish, and other police forces. A Special Branch unit acquires and develops intelligence, usually of a political or sensitive nature, and conducts investigations to protect the State from perceived threats of subversion, particularly terrorism and other extremist political activity.
The Bureau for Intelligence and Security of the State, shortened to as SAVAK or S.A.V.A.K. was the secret police of the Imperial State of Iran. It was established in Tehran in 1957 and continued to operate until the Islamic Revolution in 1979, when it was dissolved by Iranian prime minister Shapour Bakhtiar.
The Ministry of Public Security is a government ministry of the People's Republic of China responsible for public and political security. It oversees more than 1.9 million of the country's law enforcement officers and as such the vast majority of the People's Police. While the MPS is a nationwide police force, conducting counterintelligence and maintaining the political security of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) remain its core functions.
The Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional or DINA was the secret police of Chile during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The DINA has been referred to as "Pinochet's Gestapo". Established in November 1973 as a Chilean Army intelligence unit headed by Colonel Manuel Contreras and vice-director Raúl Iturriaga, the DINA was then separated from the army and made an independent administrative unit in June 1974 under the auspices of Decree 521. The DINA existed until 1977, after which it was renamed the Central Nacional de Informaciones or CNI.
Extrajudicial punishment is a punishment for an alleged crime or offense which is carried out without legal process or supervision by a court or tribunal through a legal proceeding.
The International and State Defense Police was a Portuguese security agency that existed during the Estado Novo regime of António de Oliveira Salazar. Formally, the main roles of the PIDE were the border, immigration and emigration control and internal and external state security. Over time, it came to be known for its secret police activities.
Óscar Humberto Mejía Víctores was a Guatemalan military officer and politician who served as the Head of Government from August 1983 to January 1986. A member of the military, he was head of state during the apex of repression and death squad activity in the Central American nation. When he was minister of defense, he rallied a coup against President Ríos Montt, which he justified by declaring that religious fanatics were abusing the government. He allowed for a return to democracy, with elections for a constituent assembly being held in 1984, followed by general elections in 1985.
A security agency is a governmental organization that conducts intelligence activities for the internal security of a nation. They are the domestic cousins of foreign intelligence agencies, and typically conduct counterintelligence to thwart other countries' foreign intelligence efforts.
The Ministry of State Security (MSS) is the principal civilian intelligence, security and secret police agency of the People's Republic of China, responsible for foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, and the political security of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). One of the largest and most secretive intelligence organizations in the world, it is headquartered in Haidian, Beijing, with powerful semi-autonomous branches at the provincial, city, municipality and township levels throughout China.
Political repression is the act of a state entity controlling a citizenry by force for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing the citizenry's ability to take part in the political life of a society, thereby reducing their standing among their fellow citizens. Repression tactics target the citizenry who are most likely to challenge the political ideology of the state in order for the government to remain in control. In autocracies, the use of political repression is to prevent anti-regime support and mobilization. It is often manifested through policies such as human rights violations, surveillance abuse, police brutality, imprisonment, involuntary settlement, stripping of citizen's rights, lustration, and violent action or terror such as the murder, summary executions, torture, forced disappearance, and other extrajudicial punishment of political activists, dissidents, or general population. Direct repression tactics are those targeting specific actors who become aware of the harm done to them while covert tactics rely on the threat of citizenry being caught. The effectiveness of the tactics differ: covert repression tactics cause dissidents to use less detectable opposition tactics while direct repression allows citizenry to witness and react to the repression. Political repression can also be reinforced by means outside of written policy, such as by public and private media ownership and by self-censorship within the public.
The Ministry of Public Security is a public agency and one of the biggest ministry of the Government of Vietnam, performing the function of state management of security, order and social safety; counterintelligence; crime prevention investigation; fire prevention and rescue; execution of criminal judgments, judgment enforcement not subject to imprisonment, custody or temporary detention; legal protection and support; State management of public services in sectors and fields under the Ministry's state management. It is headed by the Minister of Public Security.
The State Security Committee of the Republic of Belarus is the national intelligence agency of Belarus. Along with its counterparts in Transnistria and South Ossetia, it kept the unreformed name after declaring independence.
The Directorate General of Forces Intelligence, commonly known by its acronym DGFI, is the defense intelligence agency of the Bangladesh Armed Forces, tasked with collection, collation and evaluation of strategic and topographic information, primarily through human intelligence (HUMINT). As one of the principal members of the Bangladesh intelligence community, the DGFI reports to the Director-General under the executive authority of the head of government, the Prime Minister, and is primarily focused on providing intelligence for the Prime Minister, the Cabinet of Bangladesh, and the Armed Forces of Bangladesh.
State Security, or StB / ŠtB, was the secret police force in communist Czechoslovakia from 1945 to its dissolution in 1990. Serving as an intelligence and counter-intelligence agency, it dealt with any activity that was considered opposition to the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the state.
A police state describes a state whose government institutions exercise an extreme level of control over civil society and liberties. There is typically little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive, and the deployment of internal security and police forces play a heightened role in governance. A police state is a characteristic of authoritarian, totalitarian or illiberal regimes. Such governments are typically one-party states and dominant-party states, but police-state-level control may emerge in multi-party systems as well.
Human rights abuses in Chile under Augusto Pinochet were the crimes against humanity, persecution of opponents, political repression, and state terrorism committed by the Chilean Armed Forces, members of Carabineros de Chile and civil repressive agents members of a secret police, during the military dictatorship of Chile under General Augusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990.
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