7.2.4 Government Abuse of Force and Reaction Against It
Government abuse of force, such as torture or an unnecessary degree of violence, causes people to turn against the authorities.
All governments use force as part of law enforcement, but they should show a degree of restraint when doing so. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Appendix 1) contains the following injunctions:
Article 3: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”
Article 5: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
The interpretation of these rules is a matter for a country’s legal system. There are legal remedies for breaches, as described earlier (5.4.7), but sometimes law enforcement agencies break those laws by abusing their powers:
● Some authoritarian governments maintain control over the population by using brutal force against dissenters, to enforce conformity and instil a fear of stepping out of line – as has been the case in China for example (6.3.1.6).
● Some democratic governments try to retain power by the use of force, as has been observed in Russia and Turkey among others (6.3.1.1).
● If the population distrusts the result of an election, and cannot replace an unsatisfactory leader by democratic means, there is the potential for protests. Sometimes these lead to violent crackdowns such as those described in BBC reports on What’s happening in Belarus? and in Myanmar: What has been happening since the 2021 coup?
As it is outside the framework of agreed governance, government abuse of force is classified here as a form of Ungoverned Power. The following sub-sections examine different aspects of this issue:
● The use of torture cannot be justified and is counterproductive (7.2.4.1). America damaged its political legitimacy by using torture in Iraq for example, and that helped al Qaeda to recruit more volunteers. And the information obtained under torture is of doubtful value.
● A government’s use of disproportionate force against its own people is illegal under human rights law (7.2.4.2). No government has the right to kill or injure people during an arrest, or when they are in prison, or when they are peacefully protesting. The international ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement drew attention to police violence.
● Public reactions to a State’s violent abuse of its power can lead to matching violence, with the potential for sliding into civil war (7.2.4.3). The Syrian civil war started as a response to heavy-handed suppression of dissent.
This page is intended to form part of Edition 4 of the Patterns of Power series of books. An archived copy of it is held at https://www.patternsofpower.org/edition04/724a.htm.