Is Eritrea on a Spiraling Downfall?

State Crimes are defined as “acts that are largely committed, instigated or condoned by governments and their officials” (International State Crime initiative). These crimes are considered to be very serious crimes in society today, due to the fact that they are either committed or condoned by governmental personnel with the aim of achieving certain goals. Having said that, scholars today do not have the knowledge of how important these crimes are since it violate international and criminal law within that state. Eugene McLaughlin identified four categories of state crime; Political crimes, crimes by security, economic crimes and social and cultural crimes. However, I will focus on the two that are more widely acknowledged Political crime is corruption and censorship, a state has the right to label a behaviour as political crime if it’s seen as a threat to the state. Crime by security has to do with genocide and torture, a great example of crime by security is the Rwanda Genocide that occurred in 1994 which ended up killing 800,000 citizens in just a few weeks. According to Grabosky and Stohl (2010), state crimes can be divided into six main types; State terror against another state, state terror against private interests, State facilitation of another state’s terrorism, state terror against its own citizens, state facilitation of private actors and political terror scale. In this essay, I will be mainly concentrating on the Rwanda Genocide, Libyan civil war of 2011 and

countries that don’t listen often harm the people who take a stand for the greater good of their country. A good example of a refutable statement would include that when countries do not agree with protesters using acts of civil disobedience, they might refuse these acts with violence or the use of their military. Such as when Mahatmas Gandhi states in his speech, “Award us for it with what punishment you like; we will put up with it. Send us to prison and we will live there as in a paradise. Ask us to mount the scaffold and we will do so laughing. Shower what sufferings you like upon us; we will calmly endure all and not hurt a hair of your body. We will gladly die and will not so much as touch you. But as long as there is yet life in these our bones, we'll never comply with your arbitrary laws.” Demonstrating some of the ways a country would mutilate an enactor of civil disobedience and how they will not fight back, but find the good in the enactment and not as slight as quiver when being introduced to the wretched life they are about to be

The film focuses its attention on the use of forced conscripted military labor. Indisputably, the film highlights the miseries of Eritrean in implausible style. An extensive investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation highlights how Nevsun, through Segen could have been collaborating with the Eritrean dictatorial regime for cheap labor. Apparently under the military conscription Eritrea, every man below the age of fifty serves in the army for an indefinite period. Use of conscripted military labor is common especially by colluding with private companies to exploit the civilian. As Kesete Tekle, a former military personnel notes “refusing the assignment meant that the authorities could have

In addition, Cristiani’s exploitation of his people through critical code switching laid a foundation of resentment between the citizens of El Salvador and their government. The citizens witnessed the political crime continuing past what they thought was a peace agreement and Cristiani simply deflected their concerns by attributing it as random, non-critical crime. Therefore, the divide between the government and its people was widening and impeding their goal of democratization. A specific example of the civilian’s resentment was when El Salvador’s legislature passed an amnesty law that granted freedom of persecution to all war criminals. This occurred in 1993 after a UN supervised, Truth Commission investigated human right abuses committed during El Salvador’s civil war (McPhaul 2013). By failing to bring the war criminals to justice and downplaying the atrocities they committed and were continuing to commit post-war, Cristiani and the government had injected a sense of resentment into the people that sought retribution. As governing leader, Cristiani had to deal with the

Each year the lives of over 105,000 Christians are martyred just for their religion. Christians make up ten pre-cent of the population of Egypt, and the secular government discriminates Christians. Started in Egypt, Coptic Christians, one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, dating back to the time of Jesus. December of 2013 CBS News reported that “Coptic Christians have been discriminated against by the Muslim majority for centuries.” The secular government doesn’t consider Christians as equal citizens. So what can we do to help these people who are martyred just for their faith?

Almost a year ago, Egypt broke into civil unrest when protesters flooded Tahrir Square, demanding the end of Hosnia Mubarak’s regime. Although Mubarak stepped down within two weeks, Egypt is worse off today than it was last January. The Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), which played a vital role in the January revolution, has now become a violent and oppressive force. On the twenty-ninth of December 2011, the SCAF raided seventeen Egyptian, German, and US run NGOs in search of proof of illegal foreign funding.1 In a statement (A/HRC/18/NGO/77) submitted by the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR), and the Center for Egyptian Women’s

Nevertheless, the government is the sole authority that can guarantee the protection of human rights and freedoms. It is responsible for putting in place the necessary laws and policies to protect and safeguard the rightful enjoyment of human rights among its citizens. In this case, the government, therefore, act as the custodians of human rights, and they are responsible for any acts that are committed against the enjoyment of a person’s freedom. Thus, the state is the guarantor and protector of human rights. However, at times the government itself may carry itself in an irresponsible manner by being the violators of human rights in occurrences such as genocides.

At times, entire populations are sheltered from the rest of the world and its ‘pleasures’, to comply with an principle such as egalitarianism or socialism, i.e. communism in North Korea, and formerly the Soviet Union. These very same people are led to believe in blind faith that their society is always right, and therefore perfect. Unfortunately, the government in Anthem abuses

Darfur is the western region of the African country of Sudan. Currently, the people of Darfur have been continually attacked by the Sudanese army and by proxy-militia controlled by the Sudanese government. Families are being uprooted and starved, children tormented and murdered by the thousands and women raped without punishment. Innocent civilians in Darfur continue to be victims of unthinkable brutality. Many people have become homeless and seek protection in refugee camps in Chad. Yet despite its outward appearance, Darfur has a vast ethnic diversity and a complex, ancient system of resolving conflict. Genocide has occurred in several places around the world, but in Darfur there are certain reasons why it

Torture and Democracy written by Darius M. Rejali, delves into the complexity of torture that exists and has existed throughout the world. Published in 2007 by Princeton University Press in New Jersey, the book is an excellent resource for not just educators but, students and individuals interested in political science alike. Torture and Democracy, ISBN: 978-0-691-14333-0, is priced at $48.43 on Amazon.com for a paperback edition. The book has 849 pages that include appendixes in the latter section for readers to review references, notes, index, and other pertinent information that may have needed further explanation throughout the text. Darius Rejali is an accredited professor of political science at Reed College located in Oregon (Rejali 2007). Through his exquisite work and evaluation of torture records, Rejali is recognized as an expert on modern torture internationally (Rejali 2007). In Torture and Democracy, Rejali develops his thesis that torture in democratic states are prevalent even though it seems nonexistent. He argues that through techniques that are performed in such a way that leaves no marks on the

Imagine living in a nation where constant violence from civil disputes and the influence of a horrific genocide takes place daily and the government is too corrupt to stop it. This is currently occurring in Sudan, where millions of refugees are fleeing the country in hope for a better life in refugee camps in neighboring countries or even being resettled in a more peaceful community. This process for finding safety and later resettling can be connected back to the book Outcasts United where refugees of war assimilated countries resettle into the US in hope for starting a new life. Since Sudan’s civil conflict has specifically targeted the people living in the Darfur region, this kind of persecution can negatively affect the community of the

Throughout the course we have considered various states of exception and the institutions that have accomplished dehumanizing the people imprisoned. I will be discussing three institutions that have either been concentration camps or have established torture to a great extent. The Nazi concentration camps, Soviet Union Gulags, and the Guantanamo Bay detention camp each have or have had their own way of establishing power over the people detained, all have used different methods of control to demonstrate authority, however, each dehumanized people because they had the capability to do so.

The 1994 Rwandan genocide presented one of the most horrific crimes against humanity since the Holocaust of World War II. In addition, it was also the first tragedy of its kind with the opportunity to be represented in full by the media. Media played a different role here than in the Holocaust, providing large coverage of the atrocities taking place “Remarkably, during a genocide that claimed as many as a million lives, this is one of the only times a killing is

Ethiopia is one of the oldest surviving countries in the world. While its current economic, societal, and political conditions are considered povertous from the viewpoint of a first world nation, the country has been a relative powerhouse in the Horn of Africa. It has a large military, gross domestic product growth, and a relatively stable international position compared to its neighbors. In the last 60 years, however, it has been continually embroiled in a border dispute with its neighbor Eritrea. Eritrea, a former province of Ethiopia, has fought against the larger nation’s control for decades, resulting in war in the 1990s and massive tension in the area since. This border conflict has the potential to flare once again and throw the

Under that ‘state of emergency’, the government has the right to imprison individuals for any period of time, and for virtually no reason, thus keeping them in prisons without trials for any period. The political police may use intimidation, arbitrary arrest, torture and execution. It infiltrates other coercive agencies of the state, such as the regular police and the armed forces, to ensure their compliance. ” this state of emergency causing strong dissatisfaction of Egyptian, the citizens live under monitoring and political terror, human rights and political rights could not be gained.