Vladimir Putin's secret police identity card, issued by the East German Stasi while he was working as a Soviet KGB liaison officer from 1985 to 1989.[1] Both organizations used similar forms of repression.[2]

Secret police (or political police)[3] are police, intelligence, or security agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, religious, 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.

History

Africa

Uganda

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]

Zimbabwe

In Zimbabwe, the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) was the secret police of President Robert Mugabe who is responsible for detaining, torturing, mass beatings, rape and starved thousands of civilians on the orders of Mugabe.

Asia

China

In East Asia, the jinyiwei (Embroidered Uniform Guard) 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 dongchang (Eastern Depot), 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 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 officers are uniformed 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 are each other and state security personnel use the people's police as cover to obfuscate their true identities, roles and ranks.[11] The MSS directs the activities of the Ministry of Public Security which controls the overall national police network of China and the two agencies share resources and closely coordinate with each other.[12]

Iraq

In the Middle East, located in Baghdad. Shurta was one of the most powerful secret police of the Abbasid era which was led by the Abbasids in the 8th and 9th centuries during the Golden Age of Islam.

Japan

In Japan, the Kenpeitai existed from 1881 to 1945 and were described as secret police by the Australian War Memorial.[13][14] 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".[15][16]

South Korea

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.[17][18]

Taiwan

In Taiwan, 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.

Europe

A machine used by Stasi to re-glue envelopes after mail had been opened for examination

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."[19] The Geheime Staatspolizei of Austria and the Geheimpolizei of Prussia were particularly notorious during this period.[20][19] After 1860, the use of secret police declined due to increasing liberalization, except in autocratic regimes such as Tsarist Russia.[19]

Germany

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".[21] One method used to spy on citizens was to intercept letters or telephone calls. They encouraged ordinary Germans to inform on each other.[22] 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".[23]

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.[24] From the 1970's, the main form of political, cultural and religious repression practiced by the Stasi, was a form of 'silent repression'[25] 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.[26] 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.[27]

Hungary

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".[28] 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.[29]

Italy

In the Fascist Italy (1922-1943) and the Italian Social Republic (RSI), OVRA were a fascist Italian secret police organization.

Russia

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.[30] They infiltrated labor unions, political parties, and newspapers.[31] After the Russian Revolution, the Soviet Union established the Cheka, OGPU, NKVD, NKGB, and MVD.[32] 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.[33] The NKVD participated in the Great Purge under Stalin.[34]

North America

Cuba

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.[35][36]

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.[37] 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.[38] 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.[39]

Mexico

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.

United States

Arrest of Rudolf Abel by the FBI

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.[40] Agents from the Sov-Com wiretapped and bugged citizens of Mississippi, and historians identify the agency as a secret police force.[41][42][43] Among other things, the Sov-Com collaborated with the Ku Klux Klan and engaged in jury tampering to harass targets.[44][45] The agency ceased to function in 1973, but was not officially dissolved until 1977.[46][47]

In private writings in 1945, President Harry S. Truman wrote that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (under Director J. Edgar Hoover) had transformed into a secret police force, and compared it to the Gestapo:

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.[48][49][50]

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.[51][52] Among other targets, this included Martin Luther King Jr.[53]

South America

Brazil

During the Getúlio Vargas dictatorship, between 1930 and 1946, the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS) was the government's secret police.[54]

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.[55]

Chile

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.[56] Chilean government investigations found that over 30,000 people were tortured by the agency.[57]

Venezuela

During the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez, the Seguridad Nacional secret police investigated, arrested, tortured, and assassinated political opponents to the Venezuelan government.[58][59] From 1951 until 1953, it operated a prison camp on Guasina Island, which was effectively a forced labour camp.[58] The Seguridad Nacional was abolished following the overthrow of Pérez Jiménez on 23 January 1958.[58][60]

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.[61]

Functions and methods

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."[62] 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.[63]

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.[64]

Control

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.[65]

Authoritarian regimes therefore attempt to engage in "coup-proofing" (designing institutions to minimize risks of a coup). Two methods of doing so are:

  • Increasing fragmentation (i.e., dividing powers among the regime security apparatuses to prevent "any single agency from amassing enough political power to carry out a coup") and
  • Increasing exclusivity (i.e., purging the regime security apparatus to favor familial, social, ethnic, religious, and tribal groups perceived as more loyal).[65]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Norman, Greg (12 December 2018). "Vladimir Putin's East Germany Stasi secret police ID card uncovered in archives". Fox News. Retrieved 15 April 2023.
  2. ↑ Guriev, Sergei; Treisman, Daniel (4 April 2023). Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 49–51. ISBN 978-0691224473.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. 1 2 3 4 Berman, Ilan; Waller, J. Michael (2006). "Introduction: The Centrality of the Secret Police". Dismantling Tyranny: Transitioning Beyond Totalitarian Regimes. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. XV.
  4. ↑ Juan José Linz, Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes (Lynne Rienner, 2000), p. 65.
  5. ↑ "Secret police". Cambridge Dictionary.
  6. ↑ "BBC News | Africa | Idi Amin's legacy of terror". news.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  7. ↑ "Uganda releases former head of Amin's secret police". UPI. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  8. ↑ Darnton, John (1979-04-18). "Secret‐Police Records Reveal Vast Paranoia Of Idi Amin's Regime (Published 1979)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  9. ↑ James A. Flath; Norman Smith (2011). Beyond Suffering: Recounting War in Modern China. Vancouver: UBC Press. ISBN 9780774819558. OCLC 758370695.
  10. ↑ "Crime and Policing in China | Office of Justice Programs". www.ojp.gov. Retrieved 2023-10-16.
  11. ↑ Bishop, Bill. "MSS goes with "People's Leader 人民领袖"; Dual circulation; US South China Sanctions; Missile tests; TikTok". sinocism.com. Retrieved 2023-10-16.
  12. ↑ greatcharlie (2020-11-23). "Commentary: Maintaining the Harmony between the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of State Security in an Apparent Totalitarian China". greatcharlie. Retrieved 2023-10-16.
  13. ↑ "Stolen Years: Australian Prisoners of War". Australian War Memorial. Archived from the original on 2010-01-21. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  14. ↑ "MEMBERS OF THE KENPEITAI (JAPANESE SECRET POLICE) AND THE HIKARI KIKAN (JAPANESE MILITARY POLICE) ..." www.awm.gov.au. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  15. ↑ W. G. Beasley, The Rise of Modern Japan, p. 184, ISBN 0-312-04077-6.
  16. ↑ Edwin P. Hoyt, Japan's War, p. 113. ISBN 0-07-030612-5.
  17. ↑ Halloran, Richard (1973-08-20). "Seoul's Vast Intelligence Agency Stirs Wide Fear (Published 1973)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  18. ↑ Chapman, William (1979-10-30). "Army Seizes KCIA Reins". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  19. 1 2 3 Robert Justin Goldstein, Political Repression in 19th Century Europe (1983; Routledge 2013 ed.)
  20. ↑ "Mathieu Deflem: International Policing in Nineteenth-Century Europe: The Police Union of German States, 1851-1866". Mathieu Deflem. Retrieved 2020-10-26.
  21. ↑ Gellately, Robert (1988). "The Gestapo and German Society: Political Denunciation in the Gestapo Case Files". The Journal of Modern History. 60 (4): 654–694. doi:10.1086/600440. ISSN 0022-2801. JSTOR 1881013. S2CID 154408648 – via JSTOR.
  22. ↑ "Introduction - Control and opposition in Nazi Germany - CCEA - GCSE History Revision - CCEA". BBC Bitesize. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  23. ↑ Gestapo Archived 2022-01-30 at the Wayback Machine, Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
  24. ↑ Gary Bruce, The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi (Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 81-83.
  25. ↑ Mike Dennis, Norman LaPorte (2011). "The Stasi and Operational Subversion". State and Minorities in Communist East Germany. Berghahn Books. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-857-45-195-8.
  26. ↑ Dennis, Mike (2003). "Tackling the enemy: quiet repression and preventive decomposition". The Stasi: Myth and Reality. Pearson Education Limited. p. 112. ISBN 0582414229.
  27. ↑ Krishnan, Armin (2017). Military Neuroscience and the Coming Age of Neurowarfare. London: Routledge. p. 205. ISBN 978-1-315-59542-9.
  28. ↑ "A History Lesson in Budapest". Pulitzer Center. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  29. ↑ McKay, Barry. Hairsine, Kate (ed.). "House of Terror explores Hungarian secret police methods | DW | 31.10.2009". DW.COM. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  30. ↑ "Tsarist methods of control - state infrastructure - Security of the Tsarist state before 1905 - Higher History Revision". BBC Bitesize. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  31. ↑ "Okhranka | Russian police organization". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  32. ↑ Stephen J. Lee, Russia and the USSR, 1855-1991: Autocracy and Dictatorship (Routledge, 2006), passim.
  33. ↑ "Cheka | Soviet secret police". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  34. ↑ "Secret Police". www.loc.gov. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  35. ↑ Deane, Philip (1959-01-04). "Castro's men pour into Havana". The Guardian. Havana. Archived from the original on 2021-06-07. Retrieved 2021-06-07.
  36. ↑ Kirkpatrick, Lyman B. Jr. (1968). "Chapter 7 - Batista's Cuba". The Real CIA. Silver Spring, MD, USA: Ground Zero Books, Ltd. ISBN 9780809001217.
  37. ↑ "CUBA'S REPRESSIVE MACHINERY: VIII. Routine Repression". Human Rights Watch. Archived from the original on 2021-06-07. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  38. ↑ "2010 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - Cuba". US Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. Archived from the original on 2021-06-07. Retrieved 2021-02-09 – via UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
  39. ↑ COLOMER, JOSEP M. (2000). "Watching Neighbors: The Cuban Model of Social Control". Cuban Studies. 31: 118–138. ISSN 0361-4441. JSTOR 24486170 – via JSTOR.
  40. ↑ Cook, Karen (2013). "Struggles Within: Lura G. Currier, the Mississippi Library Commission, and Library Services to African Americans". Information & Culture. 48 (1): 142. doi:10.7560/IC48108. ISSN 2164-8034. JSTOR 43737455. S2CID 144408708 – via JSTOR.
  41. ↑ Dittmer, John (1995). Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. p. 60. ISBN 978-0-252-06507-1.
  42. ↑ Bowers, Rick (2010). Spies of Mississippi: The True Story of the Spy Network that Tried to Destroy the Civil Rights Movement. National Geographic Books. ISBN 978-1-4263-0596-2.
  43. ↑ Hertzberg, Hendrik (24 February 2009). ""Breach of Peace"". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  44. ↑ Teepen, Tom (1998-03-29). "Mississippi panel terrorized blacks". Deseret News. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  45. ↑ Sack, Kevin (1998-03-18). "Mississippi Reveals Dark Secrets of a Racist Time (Published 1998)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  46. ↑ "The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission: An Agency History". mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us. Archived from the original on 2019-12-05. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  47. ↑ "MS Digital Archives". MS Digital Archives. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  48. ↑ "May 12, 1945 | Harry S. Truman". www.trumanlibrary.gov. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  49. ↑ Truman, Harry S. (1997). Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman. University of Missouri Press. p. 22. ISBN 978-0-8262-1119-4.
  50. ↑ Sherrill, Robert (1980-11-02). "Harry S. Truman: A President in Private". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  51. ↑ "A Huey P. Newton Story - Actions - COINTELPRO". PBS. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  52. ↑ Ogbar, Jeffrey O. G. (2017-01-16). "The FBI's War on Civil Rights Leaders". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  53. ↑ "Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)". Stanford University - The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute. 2017-05-02. Archived from the original on Jul 9, 2021. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  54. ↑ Viviane Godinho Corrêa, Michelle. "DOPS - Departamento de Ordem Política e Social - História". InfoEscola (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 8 August 2021.
  55. ↑ "Brazil - The National Intelligence Service, 1964-90". Library of Congress. 1997. Archived from the original on 2015-04-05. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  56. ↑ de Onis, Juan (1977-08-13). "Secret Police Agency Is Abolished in Chile". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  57. ↑ Mariano Castillo (2017-06-03). "Chile convicts 106 former intelligence agents". CNN Digital. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  58. 1 2 3 Ramírez Delgado, María (11 February 2021). "El Miedo que nos Enseñó la Seguridad Nacional. A Propósito del 23 de Enero" [The Fear National Security Taught Us. About 23 January]. Fundacionciev (in Spanish). Retrieved 20 March 2021.
  59. ↑ Damiano, Daniela (30 November 2015). "La Dictadura de Pérez Jiménez no Hizo de Venezuela una Potencia" [The Pérez Jiménez Dictatorship did not make Venezuela a Power]. Amnistia (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 14 September 2018. Retrieved 20 March 2021.
  60. ↑ López F., Carlos Eduardo (4 December 2016). "#MemoriaFotográfica: A la Caza de la Seguridad Nacional" [# PhotoMemory: Hunting for National Security]. El Impulso (in Spanish). Retrieved 20 March 2021.
  61. ↑ "CÓDIGO 58- Entrevista a Manuel Cristopher Figuera (Jueves 11 DE JULIO 2019) 3/5". www.youtube.com. Archived from the original on 2021-11-17.
  62. ↑ Dragomir, Elna (2018). "Police State". In Arrigo, Bruce A. (ed.). The SAGE Encyclopedia of Surveillance, Security, and Privacy. SAGE Publications, Inc. pp. 753–56.
  63. ↑ Gaus, Gerald F. (1996). Justificatory Liberalism: An Essay on Epistemology and Political Theory. Oxford University Press. p. 196.
  64. ↑ Stove, R. J. (2003). The Unsleeping Eye: Secret Police and Their Victims. Encounter Books. San Francisco. ISBN 1-893554-66-X.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  65. 1 2 Greitens, Sheena Chestnut (2016). Dictators and their Secret Police: Coercive Institutions and State Violence. Cambridge University Press. pp. 23–25.
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