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Secret police (or political police ) are police , intelligence , or security agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, ideological, or social opponents and dissidents . Secret police organizations are characteristic of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. They protect the political power of a dictator or regime and often operate outside the law to repress dissidents and weaken political opposition, frequently using violence. They may enjoy legal sanction to hold and charge suspects without ever identifying their organization.

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58-752: Siguranța was the generic name for the successive secret police services in the Kingdom of Romania . The official title of the organization changed throughout its history, with names including Directorate of the Police and General Safety ( Romanian : Direcția Poliției și Siguranței Generale ), the Secret Intelligence Service ( Romanian : Serviciul Secret de Informații ), the Special Intelligence Service ( Romanian : Serviciul Special de Informații ) or simply

116-660: A people's republic . Siguranța's role, as well as many of its employees, were integrated into the newly founded Department of State Security ("Securitate"). Around 1924, Siguranța secret intelligence assassinated a leader of the militant wing of the Romanian Communist Party . The victim was also the brother of dedicated Communist Elizaveta Zarubina , soon to become one of the USSR 's most crucial agents. A secret policeman came to her apartment in Bucharest later

174-637: A 1936 law, was "to investigate and suppress all anti-State tendencies". One method used to spy on citizens was to intercept letters or telephone calls. They encouraged ordinary Germans to inform on each other. As part of the Reich Security Main Office , it was also a key organizer of the Holocaust . Although the Gestapo had a relatively small number of personnel (32,000 in 1944), "it maximized these small resources through informants and

232-509: A certain extent in South Korea , remain virtually identical to traditional characters, with variations between the two forms largely stylistic. There has historically been a debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters . Because the simplifications are fairly systematic, it is possible to convert computer-encoded characters between the two sets, with the main issue being ambiguities in simplified representations resulting from

290-618: A constituent part of Zersetzung methods, although this is not definitely proven. The House of Terror museum in Budapest displays the headquarters for the Arrow Cross Party , which killed hundreds of Jews in its basement, among other targets considered "enemies of the race-based state". The same building was used by the State Protection Authority (or ÁVH) secret police. The Soviet-aligned ÁVH moved into

348-745: A large number of denunciations from the local population". After the defeat of the Nazis in World War II , Germany was split into West and East Germany . East Germany became a socialist state and ruled by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany . It was closely aligned with communist Russia and the Soviet Union . It had secret police, commonly referred to as the Stasi , which made use of an extensive network of civilian informers. From

406-869: Is 産 (also the accepted form in Japan and Korea), while in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan the accepted form is 產 (also the accepted form in Vietnamese chữ Nôm ). The PRC tends to print material intended for people in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and overseas Chinese in traditional characters. For example, versions of the People's Daily are printed in traditional characters, and both People's Daily and Xinhua have traditional character versions of their website available, using Big5 encoding. Mainland companies selling products in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan use traditional characters in order to communicate with consumers;

464-408: Is not turned against them. Authoritarian regimes therefore attempt to engage in "coup-proofing" (designing institutions to minimize risks of a coup ). Two methods of doing so are: Traditional Chinese characters Traditional Chinese characters are a standard set of Chinese character forms used to write Chinese languages . In Taiwan , the set of traditional characters is regulated by

522-620: Is responsible for detaining, torturing, mass beating, raping and starving thousands of civilians on the orders of Mugabe. In East Asia , the Embroidered Uniform Guard ( Chinese : 錦衣衞 ; pinyin : Jǐnyīwèi ) of the Ming dynasty was founded in the 1360s by the Hongwu Emperor and served as the dynasty's secret police until the collapse of Ming rule in 1644. Originally, their main functions were to serve as

580-693: Is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex life scandles [sic] and plain blackmail when they should be catching criminals. They also have a habit of sneering at local law enforcement officers. Yet in spite of these sentiments, Truman took no action to try to abolish the FBI, or even more modest reforms. Beginning a decade later in 1956, Hoover's FBI began the COINTELPRO project, aimed at suppressing domestic political opponents. Among other targets, this included Martin Luther King Jr. During

638-594: Is the regime's main intelligence agency. The Taiwan Garrison Command acted as a secret police/national security body which existed as a branch of the Republic of China Armed Forces. The agency was established at the end of World War II and operated throughout the Cold War. It was disbanded on 1 August 1992. It was responsible for suppressing activities viewed as promoting democracy and Taiwan independence. Secret police organizations originated in 18th-century Europe after

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696-493: The Chinese Commercial News , World News , and United Daily News all use traditional characters, as do some Hong Kong–based magazines such as Yazhou Zhoukan . The Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified characters. DVDs are usually subtitled using traditional characters, influenced by media from Taiwan as well as by the two countries sharing the same DVD region , 3. With most having immigrated to

754-663: The Geheimpolizei of Prussia were particularly notorious during this period. After 1860, the use of secret police declined due to increasing liberalization, except in autocratic regimes such as Tsarist Russia . In Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, the Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police, Gestapo ) and Geheime Feldpolizei (Secret Field Police, GFP) were a secret police organization used to identify and eliminate opposition, including suspected organized resistance. Its claimed main duty, according to

812-687: The 1952 coup , the State Security apparatus was reformed and reorganized to suit the security concerns of the new socialist regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser. The SSIS was made a separate branch of the Ministry of Interior and separated from the regular police command. During the Nasser era, It was intensively trained by the Soviet KGB on coercive interrogation techniques, mass surveillance, public intimidation and political suppression. The SSIS

870-1047: The Abbasid era which was led by the Abbasids in the 8th and 9th centuries during the Golden Age of Islam . In Japan, the Kenpeitai existed from 1881 to 1945 and were described as secret police by the Australian War Memorial . It had an equivalent branch in the Imperial Japanese Navy known as the Tokkeitai . However, their civilian counterpart known as the Tokkō was formed in 1911. Its task consisted of controlling political groups and ideologies in Imperial Japan , resembling closer

928-824: The Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities (or BRAC), suppressed political opponents such as the 26th of July Movement through methods including violent interrogations. Under the Communist Party of Cuba , the Ministry of the Interior has served a number of secret policing functions. As recently as 1999, the Human Rights Watch reported that repression of dissidents was routine, albeit harsher after heightened periods of opposition activity. The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor under

986-649: The Eastern Depot ( 東廠 ; Dōng Chǎng ), was formed to suppress suspected political opposition to the usurpation of the throne by the Yongle Emperor . Combined, these two organizations made the Ming dynasty one of the world's first police states . The Ministry of State Security ( 国家安全部 ; Guójiā Ānquán Bù ) in modern China controls a network of provincial and local State Security Bureaus, integrated with local Public Security Bureaus which make up part of

1044-591: The French Revolution and the Congress of Vienna . Such operations were established in an effort to detect any possible conspiracies or revolutionary subversion. The peak of secret-police operations in most of Europe was 1815 to 1860, "when restrictions on voting, assembly, association, unions and the press were so severe in most European countries that opposition groups were forced into conspiratorial activities." The Geheime Staatspolizei of Austria and

1102-788: The Getúlio Vargas dictatorship , between 1930 and 1946, the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS) was the government's secret police. During the military dictatorship in Brazil , DOPS was employed by the military regime along with the Department of Information Operations - Center for Internal Defense Operations (or DOI-CODI) and the National Intelligence Service (or SNI), and engaged in kidnappings, torture, and attacks against theaters and bookstores. The National Intelligence Directorate , or DINA,

1160-474: The Intelligence Service ( Romanian : Serviciul de Informații ), Created in 1908, in the aftermath of a major peasant revolt , it acted as a political police, monitoring, infiltrating and trying to dismantle political groupings considered undesirable by the government. Changing its structure several times during the first half of the 20th century, it was disbanded in 1948, when Romania became

1218-482: The Ministry of Education and standardized in the Standard Form of National Characters . These forms were predominant in written Chinese until the middle of the 20th century, when various countries that use Chinese characters began standardizing simplified sets of characters, often with characters that existed before as well-known variants of the predominant forms. Simplified characters as codified by

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1276-684: The Okhrana . Agents of the Okhrana were vital in identifying and suppressing opponents of the Tsar. The Okhrana engaged in torture and infiltration of opponents. They infiltrated labor unions, political parties, and newspapers. After the Russian Revolution , the Soviet Union established the Cheka , OGPU , NKVD , NKGB , and MVD . Cheka, as an authorized secret police force under the rule of

1334-767: The People's Republic of China are predominantly used in mainland China , Malaysia, and Singapore. "Traditional" as such is a retronym applied to non-simplified character sets in the wake of widespread use of simplified characters. Traditional characters are commonly used in Taiwan , Hong Kong , and Macau , as well as in most overseas Chinese communities outside of Southeast Asia. As for non-Chinese languages written using Chinese characters, Japanese kanji include many simplified characters known as shinjitai standardized after World War II, sometimes distinct from their simplified Chinese counterparts . Korean hanja , still used to

1392-640: The Shanghainese -language character U+20C8E 𠲎 CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-20C8E —a composition of 伐 with the ⼝   'MOUTH' radical—used instead of the Standard Chinese 嗎 ; 吗 . Typefaces often use the initialism TC to signify the use of traditional Chinese characters, as well as SC for simplified Chinese characters . In addition, the Noto, Italy family of typefaces, for example, also provides separate fonts for

1450-628: The Special Branch was established in 1934 originally as an anti-communist squad under MI5 with assistance from MI6 . The branch later joined the Crime Department of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force in 1946 and focused on preventing pro-KMT rightists and pro-CCP leftists from infiltrating the colony. The National Security Department in the current HKSAR is a secret police agency created after

1508-562: The State Research Bureau (SRB) was a secret police organisation for President Idi Amin . The Bureau tortured many Ugandans, operating on behalf of a regime responsible for more than five hundred thousand violent deaths. The SRB attempted to infiltrate every area of Ugandan life. In Zimbabwe, the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) was the secret police of President Robert Mugabe who

1566-759: The Truman Doctrine , Mexican president Miguel Alemán Valdés created DFS to combat communist opposition. The agency was later replaced by DISEN in 1985 after DFS agents were working for the Guadalajara Cartel . In 1989, it was replaced by CISEN . In Mississippi , the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission (or "Sov-Com") was a state agency given unusual authority by the governor of Mississippi from 1956 to 1977, to investigate and police private citizens in order to uphold racial segregation . This authority

1624-661: The US State Department reported that Cuba's Ministry of the Interior utilizes a network of informants known as the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (or CDR) to monitor government opponents. Secret state police have operated in secret among CDR groups, and most adult Cubans are officially members. CDR are tasked with informing on other Cubans and monitoring activity in their neighborhoods. During

1682-419: The rule of law . People apprehended by the secret police are often arbitrarily arrested and detained without due process. While in detention, arrestees may be tortured or subjected to inhumane treatment. Suspects may not receive a public trial , and instead may be convicted in a kangaroo court -style show trial , or by a secret tribunal. Secret police known to have used these approaches in history included

1740-552: The 1970's, the main form of political, cultural and religious repression practiced by the Stasi, was a form of 'silent repression' called Zersetzung ("Decomposition"). This involved the sustained use of covert psychological harassment methods against people, which were designed to cause mental and emotional health problems, and thereby debilitate them and cause them to become socially isolated. Directed-energy weapons are considered by some survivors and analysts to have also been used as

1798-676: The Bolsheviks, suppressed political opponents during the Red Terror . It also enacted counterintelligence operations such as Operation Trust , in which it set up a fake anti-Bolshevik organization to identify opponents. It was the temporary forerunner to the KGB , a later secret police agency used for similar purposes. The NKVD participated in the Great Purge under Stalin. In Cuba, President Fulgencio Batista 's secret police, known as

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1856-555: The People's Republic of China, traditional Chinese characters are standardised according to the Table of Comparison between Standard, Traditional and Variant Chinese Characters . Dictionaries published in mainland China generally show both simplified and their traditional counterparts. There are differences between the accepted traditional forms in mainland China and elsewhere, for example the accepted traditional form of 产 in mainland China

1914-587: The United States during the second half of the 19th century, Chinese Americans have long used traditional characters. When not providing both, US public notices and signs in Chinese are generally written in traditional characters, more often than in simplified characters. In the past, traditional Chinese was most often encoded on computers using the Big5 standard, which favored traditional characters. However,

1972-770: The Venezuelan government. From 1951 until 1953, it operated a prison camp on Guasina Island  [ es ] , which was effectively a forced labour camp . The Seguridad Nacional was abolished following the overthrow of Pérez Jiménez on 23 January 1958. During the crisis in Venezuela and Venezuelan protests , Vice Presidents Tareck El Aissami and Delcy Rodríguez have been accused of using SEBIN to oppress political demonstrations. SEBIN director and general Manuel Cristopher Figuera reported that SEBIN would torture political demonstrators during interrogation sessions. Ilan Berman and J. Michael Waller describe

2030-448: The emperor's bodyguard and to spy on his subjects and report any plots of rebellion or regicide directly to the emperor. Over time, the organization took on law enforcement and judicial functions and grew to be immensely powerful, with the power to overrule ordinary judicial rulings and to investigate, interrogate, and punish anyone, including members of the imperial family. In 1420, a second secret police organization run by eunuchs, known as

2088-657: The enactment of the Hong Kong National Security Law . The NSD has accused and arrested dissenting voices in Hong Kong for "endangering" the national security, including pro-democracy politicians, protestors, and journalists. Some websites were also reportedly banned by the department, including Hong Kong Watch . In the Middle East , located in Baghdad. Shurta was one of the most both powerful intelligence and secret police organizations of

2146-405: The fall of a totalitarian regime. Arbitrary detention , abduction and forced disappearance , torture , and assassination are all tools wielded by secret police "to prevent, investigate, or punish (real or imagined) opposition." Because secret police typically act with great discretionary powers "to decide what is a crime" and are a tool used to target political opponents, they operate outside

2204-416: The former fascist police headquarters and used it to torture and execute state opponents. In the Fascist Italy (1922-1943) and the Italian Social Republic (RSI), OVRA were a fascist Italian secret police organization. Ivan the Terrible implemented Oprichnina in Russia between 1565 and 1572. In the Russian Empire , the secret police forces were the Third Section of the Imperial Chancery and then

2262-407: The headquarters in Nasr City) were stormed by protesters that gathered evidence of torture tools, secret cells and documents showing surveillance on citizens. On March 15 2011, Egypt's Minister of Interior announced the dissolution of the State Security and declared the new National Security Agency would replace it and be responsible for its internal security and counter-terrorist duties. In Uganda ,

2320-493: The inverse is equally true as well. In digital media, many cultural phenomena imported from Hong Kong and Taiwan into mainland China, such as music videos, karaoke videos, subtitled movies, and subtitled dramas, use traditional Chinese characters. In Hong Kong and Macau , traditional characters were retained during the colonial period, while the mainland adopted simplified characters. Simplified characters are contemporaneously used to accommodate immigrants and tourists, often from

2378-725: The mainland. The increasing use of simplified characters has led to concern among residents regarding protecting what they see as their local heritage. Taiwan has never adopted simplified characters. The use of simplified characters in government documents and educational settings is discouraged by the government of Taiwan. Nevertheless, with sufficient context simplified characters are likely to be successfully read by those used to traditional characters, especially given some previous exposure. Many simplified characters were previously variants that had long been in some use, with systematic stroke simplifications used in folk handwriting since antiquity. Traditional characters were recognized as

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2436-682: The majority of Chinese text in mainland China are simplified characters , there is no legislation prohibiting the use of traditional Chinese characters, and often traditional Chinese characters remain in use for stylistic and commercial purposes, such as in shopfront displays and advertising. Traditional Chinese characters remain ubiquitous on buildings that predate the promulgation of the current simplification scheme, such as former government buildings, religious buildings, educational institutions, and historical monuments. Traditional Chinese characters continue to be used for ceremonial, cultural, scholarly/academic research, and artistic/decorative purposes. In

2494-916: The merging of previously distinct character forms. Many Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between these character sets. Traditional characters are known by different names throughout the Chinese-speaking world. The government of Taiwan officially refers to traditional Chinese characters as 正體字 ; 正体字 ; zhèngtǐzì ; 'orthodox characters'. This term is also used outside Taiwan to distinguish standard characters, including both simplified, and traditional, from other variants and idiomatic characters . Users of traditional characters elsewhere, as well as those using simplified characters, call traditional characters 繁體字 ; 繁体字 ; fántǐzì ; 'complex characters', 老字 ; lǎozì ; 'old characters', or 全體字 ; 全体字 ; quántǐzì ; 'full characters' to distinguish them from simplified characters. Some argue that since traditional characters are often

2552-556: The official script in Singapore until 1969, when the government officially adopted Simplified characters. Traditional characters still are widely used in contexts such as in baby and corporation names, advertisements, decorations, official documents and in newspapers. The Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative in Southeast Asia regarding simplification. Although major public universities teach in simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications such as

2610-700: The original standard forms, they should not be called 'complex'. Conversely, there is a common objection to the description of traditional characters as 'standard', due to them not being used by a large population of Chinese speakers. Additionally, as the process of Chinese character creation often made many characters more elaborate over time, there is sometimes a hesitation to characterize them as 'traditional'. Some people refer to traditional characters as 'proper characters' ( 正字 ; zhèngzì or 正寫 ; zhèngxiě ) and to simplified characters as 簡筆字 ; 简笔字 ; jiǎnbǐzì ; 'simplified-stroke characters' or 減筆字 ; 减笔字 ; jiǎnbǐzì ; 'reduced-stroke characters', as

2668-421: The other secret police agencies of the time period. For this it earned the nickname "the Thought Police". The Korean Central Intelligence Agency or KCIA was a secret police agency which acted extra-judicially and was involved in such activities as kidnapping a presidential candidate and the assassination of Park Chung-hee , among other things. In Taiwan, the National Security Bureau , established in 1954,

2726-484: The policing system of China. State security agents are People's Police officers with the dual function of law enforcement and repressing political dissent. State security bureaus and public security bureaus are functionally co-located within the same buildings as each other. The MSS and the Ministry of Public Security control the overall national police network of China and the two agencies share resources and closely coordinate with each other. In British Hong Kong ,

2784-407: The same year to arrest her; he was subsequently shot by Zarubina, attracting the attention of top Soviet intelligence officials. Secret police Egypt is home to Africa's and the Middle East's first internal security service: The State Security Investigations Service . Initially it was formed during the British occupation of Egypt as the Intelligence wing of the regular police . After

2842-519: The secret police as central to totalitarian regimes and "an indispensable device for the consolidation of power, neutralization of the opposition, and construction of a single-party state ". In addition to these activities, secret police may also be responsible for tasks not related to suppressing internal dissent, such as gathering foreign intelligence, engaging in counterintelligence, organizing border security, and guarding government buildings and officials. Secret police forces sometimes endure even after

2900-609: The secret police of East Germany (the Ministry for State Security or Stasi ) and Portuguese PIDE . A single secret service may pose a potential threat to the central political authority. Political scientist Sheena Chestnut Greitens writes that: When it comes to their security forces, autocrats face a fundamental 'coercing dilemma' between empowerment and control. ... Autocrats must empower their security forces with enough coercing capacity to enforce internal order and conduct external defense. Equally important to their survival, however, they must control that capacity, to ensure it

2958-528: The traditional character set used in Taiwan ( TC ) and the set used in Hong Kong ( HK ). Most Chinese-language webpages now use Unicode for their text. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommends the use of the language tag zh-Hant to specify webpage content written with traditional characters. In the Japanese writing system , kyujitai are traditional forms, which were simplified to create shinjitai for standardized Japanese use following World War II. Kyūjitai are mostly congruent with

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3016-819: The traditional characters in Chinese, save for minor stylistic variation. Characters that are not included in the jōyō kanji list are generally recommended to be printed in their traditional forms, with a few exceptions. Additionally, there are kokuji , which are kanji wholly created in Japan, rather than originally being borrowed from China. In the Korean writing system , hanja —replaced almost entirely by hangul in South Korea and totally replaced in North Korea —are mostly identical with their traditional counterparts, save minor stylistic variations. As with Japanese, there are autochthonous hanja, known as gukja . Traditional Chinese characters are also used by non-Chinese ethnic groups. The Maniq people living in Thailand and Malaysia use Chinese characters to write

3074-412: The ubiquitous Unicode standard gives equal weight to simplified and traditional Chinese characters, and has become by far the most popular encoding for Chinese-language text. There are various input method editors (IMEs) available for the input of Chinese characters . Many characters, often dialectical variants, are encoded in Unicode but cannot be inputted using certain IMEs, with one example being

3132-418: The words for simplified and reduced are homophonous in Standard Chinese , both pronounced as jiǎn . The modern shapes of traditional Chinese characters first appeared with the emergence of the clerical script during the Han dynasty c.  200 BCE , with the sets of forms and norms more or less stable since the Southern and Northern dynasties period c.  the 5th century . Although

3190-428: Was a powerful secret police agency under the rule of Augusto Pinochet , which was charged with killings and torture related to repression of political opponents. Chilean government investigations found that over 30,000 people were tortured by the agency. During the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez , the Seguridad Nacional secret police investigated, arrested, tortured , and assassinated political opponents to

3248-412: Was not officially dissolved until 1977. The Sov-Com served as a model for the Louisiana State Sovereignty Commission and the Alabama State Sovereignty Commission . In private writings in 1945, President Harry S. Truman wrote that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (under Director J. Edgar Hoover ) was tending towards becoming a secret police force: We want no Gestapo or Secret Police. F.B.I.

3306-443: Was responsible for suppressing opposition groups to Nasser and his successors (Sadat and Mubarak). Torture was a systematic practice by that repressive apparatus. During the War on Terror , The SSIS used to receive suspected terrorists that were sent to Egypt from the United States and used to interrogate them using torture. After the 2011 revolution , demonstrators demanded that the service be dissolved and several buildings (including

3364-445: Was used to suppress and spy on the activities of civil rights workers , along with others suspected of sentiments contrary to white supremacy. Agents from the Sov-Com wiretapped and bugged citizens of Mississippi, and historians identify the agency as a secret police force. Among other things, the Sov-Com collaborated with the Ku Klux Klan and engaged in jury tampering to harass targets. The agency ceased to function in 1973, but

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