Should any act of state violence be considered terrorism?
This essay primarily aims to focus on the idea that weather or not state violence must be considered terrorism. The essay will provide a detailed description of the meaning of violence. So that it can be used as a reference to understand what state violence really is. State violence involves any violence enacted by a State or any of its subsidiary bodies. This includes police and security forces, care institutions etc. (Kapferer 2011). In order to justify the fact that weather or not state violence can come into the category of terrorism it is first important to understand what terrorism is. This essay will provide a clear and detailed depiction of the same. After all the detailed study the essay will provide an answer to the question the essay has presented and also discuss why or why not state violence must be considered terrorism along with detailed analysis and reasons for the selection. The essay will also provide measures that can be taken by the government in order to make sure that state violence is prevented as much as possible.
As the World Health Organization defines violence is the deliberate use of physical power or/and threatening on oneself, another person or a community or group that results is severe damages such as injury, death, psychological harm and/or deprivation or mal development. All over the world, violence has resulted in almost 1.28 million deaths in 2013, which has increased from 1.13 million in 1990 (DeWall, Anderson & Bushman 2011).
Violence is classified into three major categories which are:
- Self-directed violence: This kind of violence is showcased by a person on himself/herself and is indicated by suicidal behaviour. Example: Suicide
- Interpersonal violence: This kind of violence is seen when a family member or intimate partner is targeted. It can also be in the form of Community violence in which the violence is exhibited by a stranger. Example: Child abuse, intimate partner violence, youth violence, rapeor sexual assault, abuse of the elderly (Grych & Swan 2012).
- Collective violence: This includes violence that is committed by large groups or States. Example: Crimes of hate committed by organized groups, terrorist acts and mob violence.
Violent acts can be physical, physiological, sexual or emotional. Violence can also be non-physical this kind of violence includes negligence, acts of omission and intimidation (Heise et al. 2011).
Terrorism can be defined as the use of intentional and unselective violence in order to create terror among a huge mass of people or establish the fear to accomplish a religious or political objective (Schwenkenbecher 2012).
In the late 18th century during the French Revolution the terms terrorism and terrorist originated. These terms later achieved huge during the U.S. presidency of Ronald Reagan (1981–89) after the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings. The words came again in the speech of people during the 9/11 attack that took Place in 2001 September 11 and also during the 2002 Bali bombings (Hanes & Machin 2014).
The term terrorism does not have a single definition that is most commonly accepted. As it is an altered term, who’s actual meaning is “morally wrong”. The word terrorism is often used by general public as government associates to abuse or criticise competition or threatening groups or person. Several political organisations, nationalist groups, religious groups, revolutionaries and ruling governments have been caught to be included in activities related to terrorism. Legislation related to Terrorism in various states has adopted terrorism as a crime. No universal agreement has been established to define terrorism as a war crime.
The Database of Global Terrorism that is maintained by the University of Maryland, College Park states that more than 61,000 incidents of non-state terrorism have taken place from 2000 to 2014, which has resulted in the death of 140,000 deaths people.
Defining Violence, Terrorism and State Violence
The literal meaning of a state is the sections into which a country is politically divided. The entire world is extremely huge because of which the man kind thought of distributing it into many sections politically and call them countries. Every country has a lead governing body for performing governmental jobs and exercising powers and responsibility. The government performs functions such as policy making and implementation and ensuring smooth and safe functioning of its country. As it is extremely difficult for one government group to take care of the entire nation a country is further divided into states and each state is leaded by a governmental body elected by the people of the nation and particular states who ensure the smooth functioning of the state and is answerable for its work to the country government head that is the president of the country (Brenner et al. (eds.) 2008).
Many scenarios and events have been witnessed in the past as well as in the present times where these governmental bodies who are responsible for taking care of the people they are governing themselves participate in activities in order to harm them and cause havoc all around. In this context the term state violence is used to define any violence enacted by these governmental bodies.
State violence is generally defined as any sort violence exhibited by the State or any of its subsidiary bodies such as security forces, police, care institutions and other government organisations (Punch 2012).
Political violence is the major cause of wars nowadays. Personal agendas of people exercising powers in the state have given rise to many political objectives that cause violence. This has caused a lot of problems all over the world and the situation will not change until an efficient solution is found for this particular problem. Political objectives are very much dependent upon the type of government a nation has. In a democratic nation members of political parties are concerned about convincing the citizens to win power and exercise it ethically. Political parties who try to influence the citizens through violence are considered to be “terror” organizations. In spite of this title many state or subsidiary body practice violence and threaten the general public for their selfish benefits.
The United Kingdom has an extremely diverse population due to which all the political events that happen all over the world often tend to give rise demonstrations and protests in the United Kingdom as well mostly in London (Castles, Haas & Miller 2013).
London has witnessed a huge number of, large-scale political demonstrations in the recent years. Some of these are the:
- The “Refugees Welcome Rally” in September 2015 in which over 100,000 protestors took part (Volpp 2017).
- In June 2015 around 250,000 people were believed to have taken part in the capital’s “anti-austerity” protests(Fominaya & Cox (eds.) 2013).
- In January 2017 almost 40,000 people protested outside the Embassy of United States, marched to Trafalgar Square in order to take part in a larger protest consisting almost 100,000 people.
In Northern Ireland such political demonstrations take place mostly in the marching season in the summers, in the month of June and July along the parade and protest routes in Belfast. Northern Ireland sometimes has political demonstrations but only a small amount of people participate in them that is almost a little more than 100. These demonstrations usually take place near Belfast City Hall.
As it has been already discussed in this particular essay that terrorism is when a collective group of people experience any sort of threat that directly harms them in a physical level or leaves them in a very scared and shocked state of mind. This is when a powerful person or group is involved in the attack because only he or they have the capability to cause a havoc so big.
Examples of State Violence that could be Considered Terrorism
Some Common examples of state violence that seem to be terrorism because they match with the definition and cause havoc in peoples life:
- Members of governmental parties initiate attacks, loots, fires etc. to showcase hate or disrespect to the opposition party, to blame it on them or to create a barrier in any of their work. Such attacks often take place in public places mostly filled up by a large number of people and thus it directly harms them physically or cause disturbance in their day to day life and important work (Payne 2008).
- There are events when a particular political member or group initiate havoc to cause personal harm to their respective target but it causes harm to common people as well.
- In countries such as the United States of America and the United Kingdom where racism has a deep and dark history in spite of which these countries have a very culturally and racially diverse population due to factors such as development; better lifestyle, education and employment opportunities(Canan et al. 2010). There have been a significant number of incidents when governmental officers and police officers have participated in activities which involve personal level physical and mental attacks and even murders as a result of racism. These incidents have given rise to major protests and havocs which is what terrorism looks like. In spite of the fact that all these people initiated such protests against the police, the police continued to showcase brutality by beating people up only causing the situation to worsen (Smith & Holmes 2008).
- The constitution of any country consists of a set of rules to favour basic civil rights of the residents of a country and when people were educated about the same they started to protest. Whenever such rights were seem to be violated people raised their voices and initiated protests which at times as a result witnessed government negligence of taking necessary actions and police brutality was witnessed severely (House 2014). Such protests were also carried on to seek justice for particular major criminal events.
- International terrorism has never been a stranger to powerful countries such as the United Kingdom and United States of America a major example is the 9/11 attack. These attacks have no negative involvement of the state of course but inefficiency of the state has been quite often witnessed in such scenarios, which has failed to resolve the havoc these foreign terrorists have been causing. Post such attacks Governments inefficiency to provide necessary care facilities and restoration has also led to havoc even post these major attacks.
As this essay has already discussed, terrorism is any event when a massive powerful group attacks a group of innocent people and by studying all these examples it is quite properly understood that these events cause massive havoc in lives of ordinary people and the powerful group that is the criminal in the scenario is the state and thus this must be considered terrorism (Jongman 2017). Only when this statement is accepted, legal laws that have been made to counter terrorism can be considered in such events as well. This will make the state more alert to not initiate any such event in the future and also if such events are witnessed appropriate justice can be provided to the public.
Conclusion
This essay defines violence as the deliberate use of physical power or/and threatening on oneself, another person or a community or group that results is severe damages such as injury, death, psychological harm and/or deprivation or mal development. According to this essay terrorism can be defined as the use of intentional and unselective violence in order to create terror among a huge mass of people or establish the fear to accomplish a religious or political objective. In the end the essay states that State violence is generally defined as any sort violence exhibited by the State or any of its subsidiary bodies such as security forces, police, care institutions and other government organisations. As all events of state violence cause massive havoc in the lives of common people and fulfil all the criteria mentioned in the essay they hence fall in the category of terrorism. This is important to be noted and accepted legally in order to stricken actions against such activities and give people the justice they deserve.
References
Brenner, , Jessop, B, Jones, M, Macleod, (eds.) 2008, State / Space: A Reader, John Wiley & Sons, United Kingdom.
Canan, H, Ankarali, H, Akova, YA, Torer, B, Ugurbas, SC & Gulcan, H 2010, ‘Comparison of UK and US screening criteria for detection of retinopathy of prematurity in a developing nation’, Journal of American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus, vol 14, no. 6, pp. 506-510.
Castles, , Haas, D & Miller, MJ 2013, The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World, 5th edn, Macmillan International Higher Education, Palgrave Macmillan.
DeWall, CN, Anderson, C & Bushman, 2011, ‘The general aggression model: Theoretical extensions to violence’, Psychology of Violence.
Fominaya, C, Cox, (eds.) 2013, Understanding European Movements: New Social Movements, Global Justice Struggles, Anti-Austerity Protest, illustrated edn, Routledge, USA, Cannada.
Grych, & Swan, S 2012, ‘Toward a more comprehensive understanding of interpersonal violence: Introduction to the special issue on interconnections among different types of violence’, Psychology of Violence, vol 2, no. 2, pp. 105-110.
Hanes, & Machin, 2014, ‘Hate Crime in the Wake of Terror Attacks: Evidence From 7/7 and 9/11’, Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, vol 30, no. 3, pp. 247-267.
Heise, , Jansen, , Ellsberg, , Kiss, L, Devries, K, Moreno, CG, Watts, CH & Abramsky, 2011, ‘What factors are associated with recent intimate partner violence? findings from the WHO multi-country study on women’s health and domestic violence’, BMC Public Health, vol 11, no. 109, pp. 1-17.
House, F 2014, Freedom in the World 2014: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties, Rowman & Littlefield, United States of America.
Jongman, AJ 2017, Political Terrorism A New Guide to Actors, Authors, Concepts, Data Bases, Theories, and Literature, 1st edn, Routledge, New York.
Kapferer, B 2011, Legends of People, Myths of State: Violence, Intolerance, and Political Culture in Sri Lanka and Australia, Berghahn Books, United States of America.
Payne, LA 2008, Unsettling Accounts, Duke University Press, United States of America.
Punch, M 2012, State violence, collusion and the troubles, Pluto Press, London.
Schwenkenbecher, A 2012, ‘What Is Terrorism?’, in Terrorism: A Philosophical Enquiry, Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Smith, W & Holmes, MD 2008, Race and Police Brutality: Roots of an Urban Dilemma, SUNY Press, New York.
Volpp, L 2017, ‘Refugees Welcome?’, Berkeley La Raza Law Journal, vol 28, no. 71, pp. 72-101.
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