Death squad
A death squad is a paramilitary or terrorist group that, on behalf of a state, or with its approval or tolerance, persecutes political or religious opponents and murders them or " disappears " by force.
Death squads are officially mostly illegal . Unofficially, however, they are often tolerated, supported or even controlled by the respective government. In countries with a weak civil government, this support can also come from the actual rulers, usually the military or an oligarchical elite such as large landowners . The boundaries between the regular armed forces and the police are often blurred, and overlapping personnel is not unusual. The occurrence of death squads in the 1970s and 1980s was particularly well known in many Latin American countries , where they were used on a massive scale to suppress political resistance .
history
Death squads occurred in many countries in the 20th century. In particular, their appearance was and is closely linked to so-called dirty wars against political opponents or insurgents.
Europe
Italy
In Italy , the fascist groups ( fasci italiani di combattimento ) asserted themselves from 1919, initially as squadrons with paramilitary terror against anarchists , socialists and communists . In the bloody years 1919 to 1924 the term “death squad” did not appear, but “squadrismo” stood for these activities.
Romania
In Romania was created in 1927 the fascist Iron Guard that connected the Italian model death cult, paramilitary operations and political assassinations. From 1936 the Iron Guard officially founded so-called death squads, the perpetrators of which then turned themselves over to the police to serve as martyrs for the guard. This seems to be one of the first cases of an official use of the term in Europe.
Spain
The so-called Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación (Antiterrorist Liberation Groups, GAL) existed in the Spanish state in the 1980s and fought against the ETA . The GAL were run by senior officials from the Ministry of the Interior, which at the time was under the leadership of Prime Minister Felipe González's government, and financed from government funds. The GAL assassinations killed a total of 28 people. As later became known, however, more than a third of those killed had no relation to the ETA.
Latin America
Death squads were particularly common in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s . Various governments have made use of them. They were often composed of members of the national armed forces and cooperated closely with high-ranking military officials . Mostly they persecuted left-wing rebels and their suspected sympathizers in the country, murdered their victims and in some cases destroyed entire villages. The US-run School of the Americas also served as a training facility for the leaders of such groups , which led to numerous political protests inside and outside the US (see also Reagan Doctrine ).
A French military tactic from the Algerian war, especially from the battle of Algiers , which has become known as the French doctrine , was also used to a large extent in the formation of the state oppressive apparatus . This was demonstrated by the French journalist Marie-Monique Robin in a 2003 documentary and a book based on it.
El Salvador
In the case of El Salvador , the existence of death squads became known to a wider public when they murdered Archbishop Óscar Romero and three American nuns. This sparked major clashes and protests in the US , as the death squads were closely related to the US-backed regime of El Salvador.
The death squads were supposed to prevent an impending revolution by eliminating the intellectual elite and possible leaders. Since the leaders of lower-class revolts themselves mostly came from the middle class, this was intended to make it impossible to direct the resistance.
This tactic was also suggested by "Military Advisors", military advisers from the USA, and even actively planned during implementation. Among other things, helicopters over San Salvador dropped slips of paper with the slogan "Be a patriot - kill a priest" and offered bonuses: For the murder of a farmer, death squads received 5,000 Colon , for a professor or intellectual 10,000 Colon and for the murder of a priest 25,000 Colón.
The El Mozote massacre , a war crime that left 900 civilian victims, was committed by government soldiers from the Atlacatl Battalion who had been trained by US Green Berets .
Brazil
In Brazil , death squads used force against reform efforts on behalf of the landowners.
Guatemala
In Guatemala , the regime had guerrilla movements that had formed due to social inequality and a lack of participation suppressed and murdered by death squads in the course of the civil war.
Africa
Rwanda
The genocide in Rwanda in 1994 was perpetrated by numerous death squads of eliminatory racist Hutu ( Interahamwe , Impuzamugambi ). They arrested Tutsi and opposition Hutu in many towns and villages. Death squad members usually slashed their victims with machetes or shot them at close range. The Armed Forces of Rwanda often assisted the Interahamwe in these massacres . Between 800,000 and 1 million people were murdered in this way within 90 days until the Rwandan Patriotic Front took power. France supplied the army with weapons and ammunition at the beginning of the riots.
South Africa
During the apartheid era , the white South African government operated a secret special police unit known as the Vlakplaas after its seat . She tortured and murdered numerous black resisters, the bodies were disposed of. Its leader Eugene de Kock was sentenced to 212 years imprisonment after the end of apartheid, the politicians named by him as clients remained largely unmolested.
middle East
Iraq
In February 2006 it became known that in recent times employees of the Iraqi, Shiite-dominated Ministry of the Interior, with the support of the USA, formed units which maintained torture centers and which are said to have developed into death squads after the withdrawal of the Americans.
Israel
In Palestine , Palestinian organizations have for years accused Israel of using death squads to liquidate radical Palestinians or those suspected of terrorism.
Asia
Indonesia
The destruction of the Indonesian Communist Party in the context of the massacres in Indonesia from 1965 to 1966 also took place with the help of death squads that were set up on Suharto's instructions .
Philippines
The death squads in the city became known through the candidacy of the mayor of Davao in the 2016 presidential election in the Philippines. The groups known by the local press as "Davao Death Squads" (DDS) kill criminals and, according to the FAZ, are recruited from the New People's Army , the armed arm of the Filipino communists. The candidate and later election winner Rodrigo Duterte tolerated the action of the commandos during his tenure as mayor.
See also
literature
- Bruce B. Campbell (Ed.): Death squads in global perspective: murder with deniability. St. Martin's Press, New York 2000, ISBN 0-312-21365-4 .
- Jeffrey A. Sluka: Death squad: the anthropology of state terror. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 2000, ISBN 0-8122-3523-1 .
- Marie Monique Robin : Escuadrones de la muerte: la escuela francesa . Ed. Sudamericana, Buenos Aires 2005. ISBN 950-07-2684-X
Individual evidence
- ↑ Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine, Eliade Cioran, Ionesco: L'oubli du fascisme . Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 2002, pp. 108-120.
- ↑ Spain's state-sponsored death squads. In: news.bbc.co.uk. July 29, 1998. Retrieved January 7, 2017 .
- ^ Marie-Monique Robin: Escadrons de la mort, l'école française . 2nd Edition. La Découverte, Paris 2008; ISBN 2-7071-4163-1 . In addition Escadrons de la mort, l'école française (death squads from French school) in the French-language Wikipedia. Also: Marie-Monique Robin: Death Squads - How France Exported Torture and Terror. In: Arte program archive . September 8, 2004, archived from the original on July 21, 2012 ; accessed on March 9, 2018 .
- ↑ Thomas Sheehan: Friendly Fascism. Business as Usual in America's Backyard . ( Memento of the original from June 20, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) In: J. Richard Golson (Ed.): Fascism's Return. Scandal, Revision, and Ideology since 1980 . University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln / London 1998, pp. 260-300.
- ↑ Revealed: Pentagon's link to Iraqi torture centers .
- ↑ Philippines: With the help of the death squads . In: FAZ . ( faz.net [accessed May 9, 2016]).
