Political Repression. Linda Camp Keith

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      The Standard Model of Human Rights

      December 2001, Gbarnga, Liberia: Students rioted to protest the killing of a fourth grade boy by the police commander; the police killed two more students during the demonstration in front of the police station. (U.S. Department of State 2001)

      October and December 2008, Central Yerevan, Armenia: Newspaper editors Nikol Pashinian and Shogher Matevosian were arrested after participating in a march with supporters of the former President Levon Ter-Petrosian, a vocal critic of the government, and two months later the Gyumri-based television channel Gala TV was harassed by government officials following its broadcasting of Levon Ter-Petrosian’s campaigning activities. (Amnesty International 2009)

      October 2005, Gambia: The government arrested and detained opposition leaders who had publicly criticized or who had expressed political views in disagreement with the government. (U.S. Department of State 2005)

      May 2001, Liberia: Security forces detained 24 persons from a truckload of internally displaced persons fleeing fighting: it is believed that detainees were transported to the Gbatala military base; however, they have not been seen since. (U.S. Department of State 2001)

      February 2007, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire: Moustapha Tounkara and Arthur Vincent, two young mobile phone salesmen, were arrested by members of the national security forces; their bullet-riddled bodies were found the next day. (Amnesty International 2007)

      October 2005, Azerbaijan: The Court of Grave Crimes sentenced seven opposition leaders to between two and a half and five years in prison on alleged charges for their role in post-election violence; their convictions were based on confessions allegedly extracted under torture. (Human Rights Watch 2005)

      August and September 2005, Ecuador: The state police arrested Washington Enrique Vilela Barra and Luis Antonio Cevallos Barre; their bodies were found the following day. Military officers patrolling the northern province of Sucumbios opened fire with no warning on a vehicle, killing Servio Pena Jimenez and seriously injuring Ramon Zamora Zamora. (U.S. Department of State 2005)

      2004, Indonesia: Security forces continued to commit unlawful killings of rebels, suspected rebels, and civilians in areas of separatist activity, and the government largely failed to hold soldiers and police accountable for such killings and other serious human rights abuses. (U.S. Department of State 2004)

      January 2004, Democratic Republic of Congo: Authorities at a military prison placed two civilians in front of freshly dug graves and then proceeded to bludgeon them to death with hammers. (Ibid.)

      February 2004, Nepal: State soldiers killed 17-year-old Subhadra Chaulagain and 18-year-old Reena Rasaili, who were reportedly attempting to flee custody; it is alleged that the girls, who were accused by the Royal Nepalese Army of being Maoists, were captured, beaten, and raped before being killed. (Ibid.)

      March 2004, Haiti: Five Haitian National Police officers arrested five youths from the pro-Aristide neighborhood of La Saline in Port-au-Prince; the next day their bodies, bearing signs of torture, were found near the airport. (Ibid.)

      February 2000, Russia (Chechnya): The military used indiscriminate force in areas of significant civilian populations, resulting in numerous deaths, and also engaged in extrajudicial killings. For example, Russian riot police and contract soldiers executed at least 60 civilians in Aldi and Chernorechiye, suburbs of Grozny. (U.S. Department of State 2000)

      January through October 1999, Burundi: Soldiers killed more than 55 civilians in Mubone, Kabezi commune, in May soldiers killed 11 Hutu civilians, including women and children, in July soldiers killed 30 civilians in Kanyosha commune, in August soldiers shot and killed an estimated 50 civilians in Kanyosha commune and used grenades and machine guns to kill an unknown number of civilians in Ruziba, Bujumbura Rural province, and in October a soldier shot and killed six persons, including three children and two women, at the Ruyaga regroupment site in Bujumbura Rural province—the army claims the civilians were collaborating with rebels. (U.S. Department of State 1999)

      The long list above presents a very few examples of countless acts of political repression occurring throughout the world every year despite a near-universal commitment among nation-states not to engage in these behaviors. Social scientists committed to the study of human rights or contentious state politics have produced a substantive and growing body of empirical research that seeks to identify the factors that motivate these actors to engage in repression, and what circumstances enhance or constrain their opportunity and their willingness to utilize coercive tools against their own citizens. In this chapter I address the “standard model” that has developed over time, expanding it to cover a much longer period and broadening the model to reflect the subsequent developments in the literature regarding our conceptualization and measurement of democracy and to make use of newly available measures of specific individual rights. Because I find that the standard model as a whole continues to perform well in explaining a broad range of acts of political repression, I use these base models as the foundation for the analyses in the following chapters that examine that effect of the judiciary and the law on state repression.

       Conceptualizing and Measuring Repression

      I agree with Davenport’s (2007c) broad definition of political repression, which, while drawing generally on Goldstein (1978), still accurately reflects the consensus of the current literature: “By most accounts, repression involves the actual or threatened use of physical sanctions against an individual or organization, within the territorial jurisdiction of the СКАЧАТЬ