State Violence in Brazil: Execution, Slaughter, and Disappearance in the Post-Authoritarian Era

2021 ◽  
pp. 129-147
Author(s):  
Javier Amadeo ◽  
Raiane Patrícia Severino Assumpção
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Transition Period ◽  
Authoritarian Regime ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Structural Nature ◽  
Social Mobilisation ◽  
Causes Of Violence

In this chapter, the authors seek to analyse the manifestations of state violence in Brazil in the post-transition period following the 1964-1985 authoritarian regime. First, some of the possible causes of violence in the country are briefly discussed, highlighting elements of a structural nature and others related to the legacy of the authoritarian period. In a second section, the so-called May Crimes of 2006, are examined, in which execution, slaughter, and disappearance took place. A third section of the chapter examines the process of social mobilisation that occurred as a response to these crimes, particularly the strategy used by the families of victims to appeal to the Inter-American human rights system to seek justice after frustrated efforts for investigation and justice within the country.

scholarly journals Penegakan Hak Asasi Manusia di Masa Transisi Demokrasi: Kasus Afrika Selatan dan Indonesia

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anwar Ilmar
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Political System ◽  
Transition Period ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Data Gathering ◽  
Authoritarian Regime ◽  
Transitional Period ◽  
The Political

Abstrak Penelitian ini hendak mengkaji tentang penegakan Hak Asasi Manusia di masa transisi demokrasi di Afrika Selatan dan Indonesia. Fenomena yang lazim terjadi pada era transisi dari rezim otoriter menuju rezim demokrasi yakni adanya tuntutan rakyat yang meminta pertanggungjawaban dari rezim otoriter atas praktik penyalahgunaan kekuasan negara di masa lalu. Apalagi hal tersebut menyangkut kejahatan kemanusiaan berupa pelanggaran Hak Asasi Manusia. Selanjutnya menjadi tantangan rezim di masa transisi untuk mengartikulasikan tuntutan tersebut dalam bentuk kebijakan politik sebagai wujud dari pelaksanaan keadilan transisional (transitional justice). Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk membandingkan kebijakan politik dan proses pelaksanaan keadilan transisional dua negara yang tengah dalam transisi politik dari rezim otoriter menuju demokrasi, yakni Afrika Selatan sejak berakhirnya rezim apartheid awal tahun 1990-an dan Indonesia sejak jatuhnya rezim Soeharto tahun 1998. Penelitian ini menggunakan teori sistem dan struktural untuk menganalisa proses politik perumusan dan pelaksanaan keadilan transisional di kedua negara. Metode penelitian yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah penelitian kualitatif dengan teknik analisa komparatif desktiptif. Teknik pengumpulan data dilakukan melalui telaah pustaka terhadap buku-buku yang berkaitan dengan topik penelitian ini. Penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa gagasan mengenai penegakan hak asasi manusia di Afrika Selatan dan Indonesia memiliki beberapa persamaan seperti pembentukan wadah melalui Komisi Kebenaran dan Rekonsiliasi. Namun di sisi lain terdapat perbedaan yang cukup kontras terkait peran elit rezim otoriter di masa transisi. Elit otoriter di Afrika Selatan yang masih berperan dalam sistem dan struktur politik memberikan dukungan terhadap proses penegakan keadilan transisional. Sebaliknya, di Indonesia elit otoriter yang masih menguasai sistem dan struktur politik terkesan menghambat proses penegakan keadilan transisional.   Kata Kunci; Demokrasi, Hak Asasi Manusia, Keadilan Transisional Abstract This research would like to analyze the human rights promotion during the democratic transition period in South Africa and Indonesia. The common phenomenon that happened during the transition period from authoritarian regime into democratic regime, is when the society were demanding the authoritarian regime to be responsible for their power abuses in the past. The power abuses refer to the human rights violations. Therefore it became the challenge for the new regime to articulate the people’s demand into political policies as a form of transitional justice. This research aimed to compare the political policies and transitional justice process between Indonesia and South Africa. The transition period happened in South Africa in 1990s when the apartheid regime ended, while in Indonesia was the collapse of the Soeharto’s regime in 1998. This paper used system and structural theory to analyze political process for arrangement and implementation of transitional justice for both countries. Research method used in this paper was qualitative research with comparative description as an analytical technic. Data gathering technic was done through literature review on related books. This research concluded the idea of human rights promotions in South Africa and Indonesia have several similarities, such as the establishment of human rights body named Komisi Kebenaran dan Rekonsiliasi (Truth and Reconciliation Commission). However on the other side, there was contrast difference regarding the role of the authoritarian elites in transitional period. Authoritarian elites in South Africa still had role in the political system and structure in giving support toward the establishment of transitional justice. In contrast, the authoritarian elites in Indonesia controlled the political system and structure to hamper the establishment of transitional justice. Keywords; Democracy, Human Rights, Transitional Justice

Risk, Desire and Adaptation: The Paradox of Queer Solidarity and the Political Possibility of Death Under Neoliberalism and Homonationalism

Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-200
Author(s):  
Natalie Kouri-Towe
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
State Violence ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sexual Rights ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Strategy I

In 2015, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid Toronto (QuAIA Toronto) announced that it was retiring. This article examines the challenges of queer solidarity through a reflection on the dynamics between desire, attachment and adaptation in political activism. Tracing the origins and sites of contestation over QuAIA Toronto's participation in the Toronto Pride parade, I ask: what does it mean for a group to fashion its own end? Throughout, I interrogate how gestures of solidarity risk reinforcing the very systems that activists desire to resist. I begin by situating contemporary queer activism in the ideological and temporal frameworks of neoliberalism and homonationalism. Next, I turn to the attempts to ban QuAIA Toronto and the term ‘Israeli apartheid’ from the Pride parade to examine the relationship between nationalism and sexual citizenship. Lastly, I examine how the terms of sexual rights discourse require visible sexual subjects to make individual rights claims, and weighing this risk against political strategy, I highlight how queer solidarities are caught in a paradox symptomatic of our times: neoliberalism has commodified human rights discourses and instrumentalised sexualities to serve the interests of hegemonic power and obfuscate state violence. Thinking through the strategies that worked and failed in QuAIA Toronto's seven years of organising, I frame the paper though a proposal to consider political death as a productive possibility for social movement survival in the 21stcentury.

Plausible Legality

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Habeas Corpus ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Drone Strikes ◽  
Indefinite Detention ◽  
Global War ◽  
Enhanced Interrogation

After 9/11, American officials authorized numerous contentious counterterrorism practices including torture, extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention, trial by military commission, targeted killing, and mass surveillance. While these policies sparked global outrage, the Bush administration defended them as legally legitimate. Government lawyers produced memoranda deeming enhanced interrogation techniques, denial of habeas corpus, drone strikes, and warrantless wiretapping lawful. Although it rejected torture, the Obama administration made similar claims and declined to prosecute abuses. This book seeks to understand how and why Americans repeatedly legally justified seemingly illegal security policies and what this tells us about the capacity of law to constrain state violence. It argues that legal cultures shape how political actors interpret, enact, and evade legal norms. In the global war on terror, a culture of legal rationalization encouraged authorities to seek legal cover—to construct the plausible legality of human rights violations—in order to ensure impunity for wrongdoing. In this context, law served as a permissive constraint, enabling abuses while imposing some limits on what could be plausibly legalized. Cultures of legal rationalization stand in contrast with other cultures prevalent in American history, including cultures of exception, which rely on logics of necessity and racial exclusion, and cultures of secrecy, which employ plausible deniability. Looking forward, legal norms remain vulnerable to manipulation and evasion. Despite the efforts of human rights advocates to encourage deeper compliance, the normalization of post-9/11 policy has created space for the Trump administration to promote a renewed culture of exception and launch bolder attacks on the rule of law.

Human rights abuses at the limits of the law: Legal instabilities and vulnerabilities in the ‘Global War on Terror’

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Legal Compliance ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Indefinite Detention ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
Global War

AbstractLaw following and law breaking are often conceptualised as polar opposites. However, authorities in liberal democracies increasingly deploy a strategy of what I callplausible legalityin order to secure immunity and legitimacy for proscribed practices. Rather than ignore or suspend law, they construct legal justifications for human rights abuses and other dubious policies, obscuring the distinction between legal compliance and non-compliance. I argue this is possible because instabilities in legal rules make them vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation. By tracing American rationales for contentious ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, indefinite detention, and ‘targeted killing’ practices in the ‘Global War on Terror’, I show that law need not always be abandoned or radically reconstituted to achieve troubling ends and that rule structures enable certain patterns of violation while limiting others. The international prohibition on torture is robust and universal, but provides vague definitions open to interpretation. Detention and lethal targeting regulations are jurisdictionally layered and contextually complex, creating loopholes and gaps. The article concludes by reflecting on implications for the protection of human rights. While law is not wholly indeterminate, human rights advocates must constantly advocate shared legal understandings that constrain state violence.

scholarly journals Jaime Wright (1929-1999) e a defesa dos direitos humanos no contexto da resistência à ditadura militar no brasil | Jaime Wright (1929-1999) and the defense of human rights in the context of the military dictatorship resistance in Brazil

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 09-22
Author(s):  
Rodrigo Pinto de Andrade ◽  
Rogerio De Almeida Souza
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Authoritarian Regime ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Support ◽  
Military Dictatorship ◽  
Brazilian Society ◽  
Politically Persecuted ◽  
The Military

Este texto tem como objetivo analisar a vida e a obra de Jaime Nelson Wright (1927-1999), pastor presbiteriano, opositor do regime militar no Brasil e intelectual engajado na luta pela defesa dos direitos humanos. Foi uma das vozes que mais combateu a ditadura militar no interior do protestantismo brasileiro. Desde a deflagração do golpe em 1964, fez a opção político/religiosa de não aderir ao regime autoritário. Wright se vinculou ao movimento estudantil e dedicou-se ao amparo religioso/pastoral dos perseguidos políticos. Sua contribuição como intelectual, perpassa o campo religioso. Ele atuou junto aos organismos internacionais voltados para a defesa dos direitos humanos e fundamentais à vida e denunciou as atrocidades do regime militar no Brasil. Para a efetivação da pesquisa foram utilizadas as seguintes fontes: documentos e imagens disponibilizados pelo projeto Brasil: Nunca Mais; jornais da época: entrevistas e matérias; decretos e leis. Os dados revelados pelas fontes indicam que a vida e obra de Jaime Wright contribuíram decisivamente para o processo de redemocratização do Brasil. This text analyzes the life and work of Jaime Nelson Wright (1927-1999), a Presbyterian pastor, a fierce opponent of the military regime in Brazil, and intellectually engaged in the struggle for the defense of human rights. He was one of the voices that most fought the military dictatorship in the Brazilian Protestant movement. Since the outbreak of the coup in 1964, he made the political and religious choice of not joining the authoritarian regime. Wright joined the student movement and dedicated himself to the religious support of the politically persecuted. His contribution as a committed intellectual goes beyond the clerical field. He was involved with international organizations dedicated to the defense of human rights and the fundamental rights to life. He also exposed the military regime's atrocities. For the realization of the research were used the following sources: documents and images made available by the Project Brazil: Never Again; newspapers of the time: interviews and stories; decrees and laws. The data revealed by the sources, indicate the life and work of Jaime Wright contributed in a decisive way to the re-democratization process in the Brazilian society.

Explaining State Violence in the Guatemalan Civil War: Rebel Threat and Counterinsurgency

2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 48-71
Author(s):  
Yuichi Kubota
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Propensity Score ◽  
Propensity Score Matching ◽  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Response Model ◽  
The Government ◽  
Guatemalan Civil War ◽  
Human Injury

AbstractLiterature on the Guatemalan Civil War has debated whether or not state violence was triggered by rebel activities. Did the government respond to each insurrection caused by the rebels, or did it blindly target regions where antigovernment antipathy and movements had historically prevailed? Because state violence was extensive during the civil war period, the dynamism of the war could have been the reason for its occurrence. Relying on the threat-response model of state violence, this article argues that human rights violations occurred when the government perceived a rebel threat that would have seriously degraded its capability in future counterinsurgencies. The article employs propensity score matching to address the problem of confounding in empirical analysis, and reveals that rebel attacks, particularly those targeting security apparatus and resulting in human injury, increased the likelihood of state violence in the Guatemalan Civil War.

The ‘Iukos Affair’. The Russian Judiciary and the European Court of Human Rights

2013 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence A. Groen
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
The Other ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Undue Influence ◽  
European Court ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Fundamental Freedoms ◽  
Structural Nature ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights

This note analyzes the functioning of the Russian judiciary on the basis of the European Court of Human Rights’ judgments in the cases of OAO Neftianaia Kompaniia Iukos and three of the company’s former leading executives, Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovskii, Platon Leonidovich Lebedev and the late Vasilii Aleksanian. The analysis turns to the breaches by the Russian state of Articles 5 (right to liberty and security), 6 (right to a fair trial) and 18 (permissible restrictions to the rights guaranteed) of the 1950 European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, as established by the Court in the aforementioned cases, and the role of the Russian judiciary therein. In light of the fundamental flaws and structural nature characterizing the violations found, the conclusion is reached that the Russian judiciary (still) appears not to be entirely free from undue influence by the other branches of government.

Assessing Human Rights in Russia: Not to Miss the Forest for the Trees A Response to Preclik, Schönfeld and Hallinan

2012 ◽  
Vol 37 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 349-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladislav Starzhenetskii
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Transition Period ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Human Rights Protection ◽  
Rights Protection ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Implementation Of Standards

AbstractLooking fourteen years into the past, Russia has made enormous progress in reforming its legal system in order to ensure human-rights protection under the Convention. This process of reform is still ongoing. The causes of the existing difficulties in the area of human-rights protection are better explained in terms of difficulties with implementation of standards in the Russian legal system rather than any antagonism between Russian and European human-rights attitudes. There are several groups of violations of the ECHR that need to be analyzed separately because of the different nature of the problems. Some of them reflect structural and practical problems of the Russian legal system immanent in a transition period of reforms and of the dismantling of old regulations and attitudes; others may be accounted for by the lack of proper (efficient, adequate and balanced) measures and solutions to address the numerous new challenges that Russian society is facing after the collapse of the Soviet Union. There are many examples that provide evidence that Russia is trying to amend its legal and political system to meet the requirements of the Convention.

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