Derussification (or derussianization) is a process or public policy in different states of the former Russian Empire and the Soviet Union
or certain parts of them, aimed at restoring national identity of
indigenous peoples: their language, culture and historical memory, lost
due to Russification.
The term can be also used to describe the marginalization of the
language, culture and other attributes of the Russian-speaking society
through the promotion of other, usually autochthonous, languages and
cultures.
The former Russian presence in Kars is indicated by remaining buildings of typical Russian architecture of the late 19th–early 20th century.
After the Treaty of Moscow (1921) transferred the Kars Oblast and a number of adjacent territories to Turkey,
almost all Christians, who made up 47% of the population according to
the 1897 census, left these territories. The share of Slavs in the
region, which at that time was 10.6% of the population (including 7.7%
of Russians proper), dropped to a few thousand Spiritual Christians
from Russia, most of whom returned to the Soviet Union in the mid-1920s
and mid-1960s. The Greek, Armenian and Georgian communities ceased to
exist.
In the period between 1945 and 1969, the derussification of Harbin ended, which at the peak of White emigration during the 1920s had an almost 300,000 Russian-speaking population in Northeast China. Most of the remaining Russian residents chose to migrate to the United States, Australia, or returned to the USSR.
In the Soviet Union
Korenizatsiia
was an early policy of the Soviet government for the integration of
non-Russian nationalities into the governments of their specific Soviet republics. In the 1920s, the policy promoted representatives of the titular nation, and their national minorities, into the lower administrative levels of the local government, bureaucracy, and nomenklatura
of their Soviet republics. The main idea of the korenizatsiia was to
grow communist cadres for every nationality. In Russian, the term korenizatsiia derives from korennoe naselenie (коренное население, "native population"). The policy practically ended in the mid-1930s with the deportations of various nationalities.
By the mid-1930s, with purges in some of the national areas, the
policy of korenizatsiia took a new turn, and by the end of the 1930s the
policy of promoting local languages began to be balanced by greater Russianization. Moreover, Stalin
seemed set on greatly reducing the number of officially recognized
nationalities by contracting the official list of nationalities in the
1939 census, compared with the 1926 census. The term korenizatsiia went
out of use in the latter half of the 1930s, replaced by more
bureaucratic expressions, such as "selection and placement of national
cadres" (подбор и расстановка национальных кадров).
From 1937, the central press started to praise Russian language and
Russian culture. Mass campaigns were organized to denounce the "enemies of the people". "Bourgeois nationalists"
were new enemies of the Russian people which had suppressed the Russian
language. The policy of indigenization was abandoned. In the following
years, the Russian language became a compulsory subject in all Soviet
schools.
The pre-revolution Russian nationalism was also rehabilitated.
Many of the heroes of Russian history were re-appropriated for
glorification. The Russian people became the "elder brother" of the "Socialist family of nations". A new kind of patriotism, Soviet patriotism, was declared to mean a willingness to fight for the Socialist fatherland.
In 1938, Russian became a mandatory subject of study in all non-Russian
schools. In general, the cultural and linguistic russification
reflected the overall centralization imposed by Stalin. The Cyrillic script was instituted for a number of Soviet languages, including the languages of Central Asia that in the late 1920s had been given Latin alphabets to replace Arabic ones.
During the Soviet era, a significant number of ethnic Russians
and Ukrainians migrated to other Soviet republics, and many of them
settled there. According to the last census in 1989, the Russian
'diaspora' in the Soviet republics had reached 25 million. Some historians evaluating the Soviet Union as a colonial empire, applied the "prison of nations"
idea to the USSR. Thomas Winderl wrote "The USSR became in a certain
sense more a prison-house of nations than the old Empire had ever been."
Sino-Soviet Split
After the Sino-Soviet split, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security and the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping in 1963 issued the document "Notice on Requesting Investigation and Research on Issues Existing in Russian Place Names and Proposing Handling Opinions",
demanded Heilongjiang Province to derussify place names within its
jurisdiction. Subsequently, the Heilongjiang Provincial Department of
Civil Affairs conducted studies and identified 20 Russian place names
that were used in the past but now have Chinese names (mainly streets in
Harbin, and islands on Amur River)
and 9 place names without Chinese names; then sent a written report to
Beijing on December 27, 1963, containing suggestions for renaming
Russian place names, as well as a note that some place names needed
further study. On December 26, 1964, the State Council of the People's
Republic of China approved the proposal for the derussification of place
names.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union
In
most of the Central Asian and Transcaucasian republics of the former
Soviet Union, the share and size of the Russian population fell
particularly rapidly due to mass emigration, natural decline, and a
prolonged population explosion among indigenous peoples who began to
increase their presence in Russia as migrant workers.
Thus, in Tajikistan during the first ten years of independence, the number of Russians decreased from 400,000 to 60,000.
In 2010, the Russian language in the republic was deprived of the
status of a language of interethnic communication. The rapid
derussification of many other cities and regions of Kazakhstan and
Central Asia continues.
For example, the share of the Russian population in Astana between 1989 and 2009 fell from 54.5% to 24.9%; in Almaty from 59.1% to 33.2%; in Bishkek from 55.8% to 26.1%.
Transition from the Cyrillic script
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the number of countries officially using the Cyrillic script shrank, which can also be considered a sign of derussification. The script ceased to be used in Azerbaijan, Moldova, Turkmenistan and partly in Uzbekistan. In Kazakhstan, a complete transition of the Kazakh language from Cyrillic to Latin is scheduled by 2025.
All dedicated Russian-language schools were closed down, and their students sent to Turkmen schools across the country.
The Turkmen government reduced Russian-language instruction to one hour
a week, blocked most Russian-language media, and later curtailed access
to Russian-language material in the national library.
In Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan
used Latin letters from 1929 to 1940, after which the country switched
to Cyrillic during a Stalinist reform. Prior to that, the Arabic script was used there.
On September 28, 2017, the Parliament of Kazakhstan held a
hearing at which the draft of the new alphabet based on Latin was
presented. The alphabet will consist of 25 characters. The project of
the alphabet was presented by the director of the Coordination and
Methodological Center of Language Development, Erbol Tleshev. According
to him, the alphabet was compiled taking into account the language
system of the Kazakh language and the opinions of experts. The Director
of the Institute of Linguistics, Erden Kazybek, said that each letter of
the alphabet will mean one sound and will not include additional
graphic characters.
On October 27, 2017, president Nursultan Nazarbayev
signed a decree on the translation of the Kazakh alphabet from Cyrillic
to Latin. The document, published on October 27, envisages a gradual
transition to Latin graphics by 2025. The decree also approved a new
alphabet.
On February 26, 2018, during a meeting with the Minister of Information and Communications, Dauren Abayev, President of KazakhstanNursultan Nazarbayev
ordered to translate the activities of the state authorities
exclusively into the Kazakh language. This transition will take place in
stages.
In Moldova
Moldova was annexed into the USSR as the Moldavian SSR following the Soviet-German Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in 1940. Soon after, the language of the country was renamed from "Romanian" to "Moldavian"
and it ceased being written in the Latin alphabet, changing to
Cyrillic. This policy would only be reversed in 1989, after large
demonstrations imbued with patriotic feeling.
Romanian is an official language in the Moldovan constitution since its
independence, and it is Moldova's sole official language today.
Russian is still in use but not as important as it was in the Soviet
era, since it has no special status in the country and its usage as
mother tongue has been declining for some time.
Derussification in Ukraine began in the aftermath of the Collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when Ukraine became independent. However, in their first years after independence, decommunisation, and the creation of a free market capitalist
economy took precedent. However, the processes of derussification and
decommunisation are intimately linked, and some key steps were made
spontaneously and unsystematically.
As of 2022, the decommunisation process is largely complete within
Ukraine, and so more energies have been devoted recently to
derussification. This process was compounded and accelerated by the
escalation in the Russo-Ukrainian War starting with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Against the background of the invasion, de-Russification began in
earnest in Ukraine. In villages and towns, street names were changed
and Soviet-Russian monuments were demolished. Changes were made in Lviv, Dnipro, Kyiv and Kharkiv. In turn, Ivano-Frankivsk became the first city in Ukraine to be completely free of Russian names.
As of April 8, 2022, according to a poll by the sociological group Rating, 76% of Ukrainians support the initiative to rename streets and other objects whose names are associated with Russia or the Soviet Union.
The Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) have undergone derussification since their independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Occupation of the Baltic states resulted in a significant ethnic Russian minority, who, almost without exception, spoke only Russian.
Derussification efforts began with switching the language of official
business from Russian to the local Baltic languages, and restoring
traditional nationality and citizenship laws. In parallel with the
situation in Ukraine, however, more effort was devoted to
decommunization than to derussification in the early years of
independence.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine accelerated derussification in
the Baltic states. One change of note was the Latvian decision to
convert all existing public schools to Latvian-only, beginning in September 2023.
While policies have previously been in place to encourage the use of
Latvian over Russian in education settings, these rules were
inconsistently enforced and schools were not monitored. All public
schools in Latvia will use Latvian as the language of education by
September 2025.
Some international relations scholars have been skeptical of madman theory as a strategy for success in bargaining. One study found that madman theory is frequently counterproductive, but that it can be an asset under certain conditions. Another study found that there are both bargaining advantages and disadvantages to perceived madness.
History
In 1517, Niccolò Machiavelli had argued that sometimes it is "a very wise thing to simulate madness" (Discourses on Livy, book 3, chapter 2). However, in Nixon's Vietnam War, Kimball argues that Nixon arrived at the strategy independently, as a result of practical experience and observation of Dwight D. Eisenhower's handling of the Korean War.
In his 1962 book, Thinking About the Unthinkable, futurist Herman Kahn argued that to "look a little crazy" might be an effective way to induce an adversary to stand down.
I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese
to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the
war. We'll just slip the word to them that, "for God's sake, you know
Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can't restrain him when he's
angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button" and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.
In October 1969, the Nixon administration indicated to the Soviet Union that "the madman was loose" when the United States military was ordered to full global war readiness alert (unbeknownst to the majority of the American population), and bombers armed with thermonuclear weapons flew patterns near the Soviet border for three consecutive days.
The administration employed the "madman strategy" to force the North Vietnamese government to negotiate an end to the Vietnam War.
In July 1969 (according to a CIA report declassified in February 2018),
President Nixon may have suggested to South Vietnamese president Thieu
that the two paths he was considering were either a nuclear weapons
option or setting up a coalition government.
Several American diplomats, staff members, friends, and family, knew Nixon indulged in alcohol and had trouble battling insomnia, for which he was prescribed sleeping pills. According to Ray Price, he sometimes took them together. This affected his acuity and understanding of his surroundings on several occasions; from John Ehrlichman calling him "looped", to Manolo Sanchez, a Republican operative and special counsel to the President, thinking Nixon had a stroke
or heart attack while on the phone with him, to not being able to pick
up a telephone call from the British prime minister during the Mideast crisis. Both Nixon's daughter Julie Nixon Eisenhower and friend Billy Graham acknowledged this fact, after his presidency. Nixon also took dilantin, recommended by Jack Dreyfus. That medicine is usually prescribed for anti-seizure attacks, but in Nixon's case it was to battle depression. Also, Henry Kissinger portrayed the 1970 incursion into Cambodia as a symptom of Nixon's supposed instability.
Former US president Donald Trump is considered a modern example of the madman strategy.
Some have characterized former US PresidentDonald Trump's behavior towards allies and hostile states as an example of madman theory. For instance, during the KORUS FTA renegotiations Trump told US trade negotiators to warn South Korean diplomats that "if they don't give the concessions now, this crazy guy will pull out of the deal", which Jonathan Swan of Axios characterized as a "madman" approach to international relations.
Jonathan Stevenson argued in The New York Times
that Trump's strategy could have been less effective than Nixon's
because Nixon tried to give the impression that "he'd been pushed too
far, implying that he would return to his senses if the Soviets and
North Vietnamese gave in", whereas the North Korean
government was unlikely to believe that "Trump would do the same"
because his threats were "standard operating procedure", not a temporary
emotional reaction.
International relations scholar Roseanne W. McManus argued that Trump
stating that he was relying on madman theory made the approach
counterproductive, as he was undermining the belief that his "madness"
was genuine.
Another example of madman theory has also been attributed to Russian presidentVladimir Putin, especially in the lead up and during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. In 2015, Martin Hellman
stated that "nuclear weapons are the card that Putin has up his sleeve,
and he's using it to get the world to realise that Russia is a
superpower, not just a regional power." This use of the madman theory,
Hellman argued, was something which the West had not "properly caught on to."
In 2022, days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Gideon Rachman argued in the Financial Times
that Putin's "penchant for publishing long, nationalist essays"
regarding Ukrainian and Russian history, his plans of nuclear weapons
exercises as well as his image of "growing increasingly out of touch and
paranoid" and isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic,
could have been the use of madman strategy. Rachman stated that Putin
"is ruthless and amoral. But he is also shrewd and calculating. He takes
risks, but he is not crazy", comparing Putin's recent actions to his
more "rational" actions of the previous 20 years. However, Rachman also
noted that "the line between acting like a madman and being a madman is
disconcertingly thin."
In the first days of the invasion, Paul Taylor of Politico
also speculated that Putin was using the madman strategy, after his
decision to place Russian deterrence nuclear forces on "special alert".
Taylor stated that Putin was exhibiting "pathological behavior" by
"swinging wildly from seeming openness to negotiations to a full-scale
invasion of Ukraine in four fronts, while threatening the world with
mass destruction." Taylor also referred to Putin's television address
prior to the invasion, stating that "his branding Ukraine's elected leaders as drug-addicted neo-Nazis raised doubts even among supportive Russians about his mental state and health."
Research
Political scientist Scott Sagan and the historian Jeremi Suri criticized the theory as "ineffective and dangerous," citing the belief that the Soviet leader Brezhnev
did not understand what Nixon was trying to communicate, and
considering the chance of an accident from the increased movements of
U.S. forces.
President Trump's alleged use of the theory with North Korea has been
similarly criticized, suggesting the chance of an accident arising from
North Korea's string of missile testing was also increased. Stephen Walt has argued that not many successful cases of madman theory can be found in the historical record. McManus has argued that some forms of "madness" can be an asset in bargaining, whereas other forms are counterproductive.
Joshua A. Schwartz points that besides any quantifiable advantage in
foreign relations, the perceived madness also "entails significant
domestic costs that potentially erode its efficacy".
According to political scientists Samuel Seitz and Caitlin
Talmadge, "The historical record, both before Trump’s presidency and
during it, demonstrates that madman tactics typically fail to strengthen
deterrence or generate bargaining leverage." They cite three main
reasons: target states fail to receive the message that the "madman"
thinks he is sending, target states do not see the "madman" behavior as
credible, and target states do not give into the "madman" even when
they believe the madman rhetoric, because the madman is perceived as
being unable to make credible assurances of future behavior.
An extrajudicial killing (also known as an extrajudicial execution or an extralegal killing) is the deliberate killing of a person without the lawful authority granted by a judicial proceeding. It typically refers to government authorities, whether lawfully or unlawfully, targeting specific people for death, which in authoritarian regimes
often involves political, trade union, dissident, religious and social
figures. The term is typically used in situations that imply the human rights of the victims have been violated; deaths caused by police actions
or legitimate warfighting are generally not included, even though
military and police forces are often used for killings seen by critics
as illegitimate. The label "extrajudicial killing" has also been applied
to organized, lethal enforcement of extralegal social norms by
non-government actors, including lynchings and honor killings.
The Human Rights Measurement Initiative
measures the right to freedom from extrajudicial execution for
countries around the world, using a survey of in-country human rights
experts.
Article 3(d) of the First Geneva Convention
explicitly prohibits carrying out executions without passing a prior
judgement by a competent and regularly constituted court with all
commonly recognized judicial guarantees for everyone taking part in the
trial.
By country
Africa
Burundi
Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in Burundi.
Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in Egypt.
Egypt recorded and reported more than a dozen unlawful extrajudicial
killings of apparent ‘terrorists’ in the country by the NSA officers and
the Interior Ministry police in September 2021. A 101-page report
detailed the ‘armed militants’ being killed in shootouts despite not
posing any threat to the security forces or nations of the country while
being killed, which in many cases were already in custody. Statements
by the family and relatives of those killed claimed that the victims
were not involved in any armed or violent activities.
Eritrea
The 2019 Universal Periodic Review of the United Nations Human Rights Council found that in 2016, Eritrean
authorities committed extrajudicial killings, in the context of a
"persistent, widespread and systematic attack against the civilian
population" since 1991, including "the crimes of enslavement,
imprisonment, enforced disappearance, torture, other inhumane acts,
persecution, rape and murder".
Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in Ethiopia.
Ivory Coast
Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in Ivory Coast.
Kenya
Extrajudicial executions are common in informal settlements in Kenya. Killings are also common in Northern Kenya under the guise of counter-terrorism operations.
Libya
Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in Libya.
Argentina's National Reorganization Process
military dictatorship during the 1976–1983 period used extrajudicial
killings systematically as way of crushing the opposition in the
so-called "Dirty War" or what is known in Spanish as La Guerra Sucia.
During this violent period, it is estimated that the military regime
killed between eleven thousand and fifteen thousand people and most of
the victims were known or suspected to be opponents of the regime. These included intellectuals, labor leaders, human rights workers, priests, nuns, reporters, politicians, and artists as well as their relatives.
Authorities Half of the number of extrajudicial killings were
reportedly carried out by the murder squad that operated from a
detention center in Buenos Aires called Escuela Mecanica de la Armada.
The dirty wars in Argentina sometimes triggered even more violent
conflicts since the killings and crackdowns precipitated responses from insurgents.
Brazil
Brazilian politician Marielle Franco had been an outspoken critic of extrajudicial killings. She was assassinated in March 2018.
When General Augusto Pinochet assumed power in the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, he immediately ordered the purges, torture, and deaths of more than 3,000 supporters of the previous democratic socialist government without trial. During his regime, which lasted from 1973 to 1989, elements of the Chilean Armed Forces and police continued committing extrajudicial killings. These included Manuel Contreras, the former head of Chile's National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), which served as Pinochet's secret police. He was behind numerous assassinations and human rights abuses such as the 1974 abduction and forced disappearance of Socialist Party of Chile leader Victor Olea Alegria. Some of the killings were also coordinated with other right-wing dictatorships in the Southern Cone in the so-called Operation Condor.
There were reports of United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
involvement, particularly within its activities in Central and South
America that promoted anti-Communist coups.
While CIA's complicity was not proven, American dollars supported the
regimes that carried out extrajudicial killings such as the Pinochet
administration. CIA, for instance, helped create DINA and the agency admitted that Contreras was one of its assets.
Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in El Salvador.
During the Salvadoran Civil War, death squads achieved notoriety when far-right vigilantes assassinated Archbishop Óscar Romero for his social activism in March 1980. In December 1980, four Americans—three nuns and a lay worker—were raped and murdered
by a military unit later found to have been acting on specific orders.
Death squads were instrumental in killing hundreds of peasants and
activists, including such notable priests as Rutilio Grande. Because the death squads involved were found to have been soldiers of the Salvadoran Armed Forces, which was receiving U.S. funding and training from American advisors during the Carter administration, these events prompted outrage in the U.S. and led to a temporary cutoff in military aid from the Reagan administration, although death squad activity stretched well into the Reagan years (1981–1989) as well.
Honduras also had death squads active through the 1980s, the most notorious of which was Battalion 316.
Hundreds of people, including teachers, politicians and union bosses,
were assassinated by government-backed forces. Battalion 316 received
substantial support and training from the United States Central Intelligence Agency.
Jamaica
Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in Jamaica.
On 7, 8, and 9 December 1982 fifteen prominent Surinamese men who had criticized Dési Bouterse's ruling military regime were murdered. This tragedy is known as the December murders. The acting commander of the army Dési Bouterse was sentenced 20 years in prison by the Surinamese court martial on the 29 November 2019.
Due to the highly decentralized nature of policing in the United States,
there are no official estimates of extrajudicial killings which are
committed by law enforcement. According to research which was conducted
by reporters at The Guardian, the number of killings which are committed by law enforcement in the United States is estimated to be around 1,000 per year. The same figure is used by international human rights groups such as Amnesty International. However, a 2021 study undertaken by researchers at the University of Washington and published in The Lancet suggests the total may be twice as high due to systemic underreporting by local police departments.
Based on a survey of human rights experts administered by the
Human Rights Measurement Initiative, the U.S. scores a 4.1 on a scale of
0-10 on the right to freedom from extrajudicial execution.
a deliberate killing not authorized
by a previous judgment pronounced by a regular constituted court
affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as
indispensable by civilized peoples. Such term, however, does not include
any such killing that, under international law, is lawfully carried out
under the authority of a foreign nation.
The legality of killings such as in the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011 and the death of Qasem Soleimani
in 2020 have been brought into question. In that case, the US defended
itself claiming the killing was not an assassination but an act of
"National Self Defense".
There had been just under 2,500 assassinations by targeted drone strike by 2015, and these too have questioned as being extrajudicial killings.
Concerns about targeted and sanctioned killings of non-Americans and American citizens in overseas counter-terrorism activities have been raised by lawyers, news firms and private citizens.
On September 30, 2011 a drone strike in Yemen killed American citizens Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan. Both resided in Yemen at the time of their deaths. The executive order approving Al-Awlaki's death was issued by Barack Obama in 2010, and was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights in that year. The U.S. president issued an order, approved by the National Security Council,
that Al-Awlaki's normal legal rights as a civilian should be suspended
and his death should be imposed, as he was a threat to the United
States. The reasons provided to the public for approval of the order
were Al-Awlaki's links to the 2009 Fort Hood Massacre and the 2009 Christmas Day bomb plot, the attempted destruction of a Detroit-bound passenger-plane. The following month, al-Awlaki's son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, an American citizen, was killed by another US drone strike and in January 2017 Nawar al-Awlaki, al-Awlaki's eight-year-old daughter, also an American citizen and half-sister of Abdulrahman, was shot to death during the raid on Yakla by American forces along with between 9 and 29 other civilians, up to 14 al-Qaeda fighters, and American Navy SEALWilliam Owens.
President Donald Trump
President
Donald Trump continued the practice of extrajudicial killings of his
predecessor. Those killed under this policy include:
Qasem Soleimani, killed in Baghdad by a drone strike on 3 January 2020
The New York Times reported 13 November 2020 that Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah
was assassinated 7 August 2020 on the streets of Tehran by Israeli
operatives at the behest of the United States, according to four
intelligence officials of the United States.
On September 3, 2020, a law enforcement officer in Lacey, Washington fatally shot Michael Forest Reinoehl
during a shootout. Reinoehl initiated the shootout according to
statements by officials. However, there were conflicting witness
reports, most notably Nathaniel Dingess, who told The New York Times, that agents opened fire on Reinoehl while on the phone and eating candy without verbal warning.
Dingess said that Reinoehl attempted to take cover by the side of a car
before he was fatally shot and was only carrying a phone. Reinoehl was a self-described Antifa activist who was charged of second-degree murder by the Portland Police Bureau following the fatal shooting on August 29, 2020, of a Patriot Prayer supporter, Aaron J. Danielson, in Portland, Oregon. In a Fox News cable television interview September 12, 2020, hosted by Jeanine Pirro, President Trump commenting on Reinoehl's death said, "This guy [Reinoehl] was a violent criminal, and the U.S. Marshals killed him ... And I will tell you something – that's the way it has to be". At an October 15, 2020 rally in Greenville, North Carolina he further elaborated on his praise for the shooting. Trump said "they didn't want to arrest him", which Rolling Stone characterized as Trump describing the Reinoehl's death as an extrajudicial killing. although in a statement immediately after the death the United States Marshals Service had said that their task force was attempting to arrest Reinoehl.
President Joe Biden
President Joe Biden continued his predecessors' practice of extrajudicial killings. Those killed during his administration include:
Ayman al-Zawhiri, killed in Kabul by a drone strike on 31 July 2022.
Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in Venezuela. According to Human Rights Watch almost 18,000 people have been killed by security forces in Venezuela since 2016 for "resistance to authority" and many of these killings may constitute extrajudicial execution. Amnesty International estimated that there were more than 8,200 extrajudicial killings in Venezuela from 2015 to 2017.
Ahead of a three-week session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, the OHCHR chief, Michelle Bachelet, visited Venezuela between 19 and 21 June 2019.
Bachelet expressed her concerns for the "shockingly high" number of
extrajudiciary killings and urged for the dissolution of the Special Action Forces (FAES).
The report also details how the Venezuelan government has "aimed at
neutralising, repressing and criminalising political opponents and
people critical of the government" since 2016.
Islamic Republic of Afghanistan officials presided over murders, abduction, and other abuses with the tacit backing of their government and its western allies, Human Rights Watch alleged in its report from March 2015.
Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in Bangladesh.
The Bangladesh Police special security force Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) has long been known for extrajudicial killing. In a leaked WikiLeaks cable it was found that RAB was trained by the UK government. 16 RAB officials (sacked afterwards) including Lt Col (sacked) Tareque Sayeed,
Major (sacked) Arif Hossain, and Lt Commander (sacked) Masud Rana were
given death penalty for abduction, murder, concealing the bodies,
conspiracy and destroying evidences in the Narayanganj Seven Murder case.
Beside this many alleged criminals were killed by Bangladesh police by the name of Crossfire. In 2018, many alleged drug dealers were killed in the name of "War on Drugs" in Bangladesh.
India
Hardeep Singh Nijjar was a political refugee from India living in Canada. He was murdered 18 June 2023. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused 18 September 2023 the Indian government publicly of complicity.
Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in India. A form of extrajudicial killing is called police encounters. Such encounters are also being staged by military and other security forces. Extrajudicial killings are also common in Indian states especially in Uttar Pradesh where 73 people were killed from March 2017 to March 2019.
Police Encounter on 6 December 2019, by the Telangana Police in the 2019 Hyderabad gang rape case killing the 4 accused is another form of extrajudicial killing.
In the 1953 Iranian coup d'état a regime was installed through the efforts of the American CIA and the British MI6 in which the Shah (hereditary monarch) Mohammad Reza Pahlavi used SAVAK death squads (also trained by the CIA) to imprison, torture and/or kill hundreds of dissidents. After the 1979 revolution death squads were used to an even greater extent by the new Islamic government. In 1983, the CIA gave the Supreme Leader of Iran—Ayatollah Khomeini—information on KGB
agents in Iran. This information was probably used. The Iranian
government later used death squads occasionally throughout the 1970s,
1980s, and 1990s; however by the 2000s it seems to have almost entirely,
if not completely, ceased using them.
The Dutch secretary of Foreign Affairs Stef Blok wrote Januari 2019 to the States General of the Netherlands that the intelligence service AIVD
had strong indications that Iran is responsible for the murder of
Mohammad Reza Kolahi Samadi in 2015 in Almere and of Ahmad Mola Nissi in
2017 in The Hague.
The country has since become increasingly partitioned following the Iraq War into three zones: a Kurdish ethnic zone to the north, a Sunni center and the Shia ethnic zone to the south. The secularArab socialistBaathist
leadership were replaced with a provisional and later constitutional
government that included leadership roles for the Shia (Prime Minister)
and Kurdish (President of the Republic) peoples of the nation. This
paralleled the development of ethnic militias by the Shia, Sunni, and
the Kurdish (Peshmerga).
There were death squads formed by members of every ethnicity. In the national capital of Baghdad some members of the now-Shia Iraqi security forces (and militia members posing as members of Iraqi Police or Iraqi Armed Forces) formed unofficial, unsanctioned, but long-tolerated death squads. They possibly had links to the Interior Ministry and were popularly known as the 'black crows'. These groups operated night or day. They usually arrested people, then either tortured or killed them.
The victims of these attacks were predominantly young males who had probably been suspected of being members of the Sunni insurgency.
Agitators such as Abdul Razaq al-Na'as, Dr. Abdullateef al-Mayah, and
Dr. Wissam Al-Hashimi have also been killed. These killings are not
limited to men; women and children have also been arrested and/or
killed. Some of these killings have also been part of simple robberies or other criminal activities.
A feature in a May 2005 issue of the magazine of The New York Times claimed that the Multi-National Force – Iraq had modelled the "Wolf Brigade", the Iraqi interior ministry police commandos, on the death squads used in the 1980s to crush the left-wing insurgency in El Salvador.
Western news organizations such as Time and People disassembled this by focusing on aspects such as probable militia membership, religious ethnicity, as well as uniforms worn by these squads rather than stating the United States-backed Iraqi government had death squads active in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.
In a report from October 2015, Amnesty International documented incidents that "appear to have been extrajudicial executions" against Palestinian civilians. Several of those incidents occurred after Palestinians attempted to attack Israelis or Israel Defense Forces
soldiers. Even though the attackers did not pose a serious threat, they
were shot without attempting to arrest the suspects before resorting to
the use of lethal force. Medical attention for severely wounded
Palestinians was in many cases delayed by Israeli forces.
The New York Times reported 13 November 2020 that Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah
was assassinated 7 August 2020 on the streets of Tehran by Israeli
operatives at the behest of the United States, according to four
intelligence officials of the United States.
Iranian nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh
was killed 27 November 2020 on a rural road in Absard, a city near
Tehran. One American official — along with two other intelligence
officials — said that Israel was behind the attack on the scientist.
On 16 March 2023, the Israeli Army killed four Palestinian militants in Jenin.
One motionless victim was shot in the head. According to The Guardian,
the Israeli group of military veterans against the occupation, Breaking the Silence, called this an "extrajudicial execution".
Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in Pakistan. A form of extrajudicial killing called encounter killings by police is common in Pakistan. Case in point is Naqeebullah Mehsud and Sahiwal Killings. The Province of Balochistan
has also seen a significant number of disappearances, many of which
have been attributed to security forces by residents: anti-government Baloch nationalists claim thousands of cases and have stated a belief that most of these disappeared persons have been killed. Official numbers of disappeared persons have varied considerably, ranging between 55 and 1,100 victims. Human rights organizations have dubbed this practice as the "kill and dump policy".
Papua New Guinea
Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in Papua New Guinea.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called the massacre the single deadliest event for journalists in history. Even prior to this, the CPJ had labeled the Philippines the second most dangerous country for journalists, second only to Iraq.
Protest against the Philippine war on drugs in front of the Philippine Consulate General in New York City, October 2016
Following the victory of Rodrigo Duterte in the 2016 Philippine presidential election,
a campaign against illegal drugs has led to widespread extrajudicial
killings. This follows the actions by then-Mayor Duterte to roam Davao in order to "encounter to kill".
The move has sparked widespread condemnation from international publications and magazines, prompting the Philippine government to issue statements denying the existence of state-sanctioned killings.
On September 26, 2016, Duterte issued guidelines that would
enable the United Nations Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings to probe
the rising death toll.
On December 14, 2016, Duterte cancelled the planned visit of the
Rapporteur who declined to accept government conditions that were not
consistent with the code of conduct for special rapporteurs.
Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in Turkey.In 1990 Amnesty International published its first report on extrajudicial executions in Turkey. In the following years the problem became more serious. The Human Rights Foundation of Turkey determined the following figures on extrajudicial executions in Turkey for the years 1991 to 2001:
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
98
283
189
129
96
129
98
80
63
56
37
In 2001 the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Ms. Asma Jahangir,
presented a report on a visit to Turkey.
The report presented details of killings of prisoners (26 September
1999, 10 prisoners killed in a prison in Ankara; 19 December 2000, an
operation in 20 prisons launched throughout Turkey resulted in the death
of 30 inmates and two gendarmes).
For the years 2000–2008 the Human Rights Association (HRA) gives the following figures on doubtful deaths/deaths in
custody/extra judicial execution/torture by paid village guards.
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
173
55
40
44
47
89
130
66
65
In 2008 the human rights organization Mazlum Der counted 25 extrajudicial killings in Turkey.
Vietnam
Nguyễn Văn Lém (referred to as Captain Bay Lop) (died 1 February 1968 in Saigon) was a member of the Viet Cong who was summarily shot in Saigon during the Tet Offensive. The photograph of his death would become one of many anti-Vietnam War icons in the Western World.
Demonstration in Warsaw, reminding about the disappearances of oppositionals in Belarus.
In 1999 Belarusian opposition leaders Yury Zacharanka and Viktar Hanchar together with his business associate Anatol Krasouski disappeared. Hanchar and Krasouski disappeared the same day of a broadcast on state television in which President Alexander Lukashenko ordered the chiefs of his security services to crack down on "opposition scum". Although the State Security Committee of the Republic of Belarus
(KGB) had them under constant surveillance, the official investigation
announced that the case could not be solved. The disappearance of
journalist Dzmitry Zavadski in 2000 has also yielded no results. Copies of a report by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which linked senior Belarusian officials to the cases of disappearances, were confiscated. Human Rights Watch claims that Zacharanka, Hanchar, Krasouski and Zavadski likely became victims of extrajudicial executions.
Russia
Extrajudicial killings have taken place in Russia. In the Russian Federation, a number of journalist murders
were attributed to public administration figures, usually where the
publications would reveal their involvement in large corruption
scandals. It has been regarded that the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko
was linked to Russian special forces. American and British intelligence
agents have claimed that Russian assassins, some possibly at orders of
the government, are behind at least fourteen targeted killings in the United Kingdom that police authorities have termed non-suspicious. The United Kingdom attributes the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in March 2018 to the Russian military-intelligence agency GRU. The German foreign minister Heiko Maas said there were "several indications" that Russia was behind the poisoning of Alexei Navalny.
In Soviet Russia, since 1918 the secret police organization Cheka was authorized to execute counter-revolutionaries without trial. Hostages were also executed by Cheka during the Red Terror in 1918–1920. The successors of Cheka also had the authority for extrajudicial executions. In 1937–38 hundreds of thousands were executed extrajudicially during the Great Purge under the lists approved by NKVD troikas.
In some cases, the Soviet special services did not arrest and then
execute their victims but just secretly killed them without any arrest.
For example, Solomon Mikhoels
was murdered in 1948 and his body was run over to create the impression
of a traffic accident. The Soviet special services also conducted
extrajudicial killings abroad, most notably of Leon Trotsky in 1940 in Mexico, Stepan Bandera in 1959 in Germany, Georgi Markov in 1978 in London.
From 1983 until 1987, the Spanish government supported paramilitary squads, denominated GAL, to fight ETA, a Basque terrorist organization. A relevant example was the Lasa and Zabala case, in which José Antonio Lasa and José Ignacio Zabala were kidnapped, tortured and executed by police forces in 1983.
During the Troubles, an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland, British security forces and intelligence agents were accused of committing extrajudicial killings against suspected IRA members. Brian Nelson, an Ulster Defence Association member and secret British agent, was convicted in a court of sectarian murders.
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