Blurring the lines between the police and the military

Report: European and Israeli arms sales to Mexico

Andrew — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 11:45:25 +0000

07 Jan 2021

A new report published by an international coalition of peace organisations explores the way arms companies in Europe and Israel are fuelling violence in Mexico. The report - called "Deadly Trade: How European and Israeli arms exports are eaccelerating violence in Mexico" is based on research by eight organizations and a review of more than 9,000 pages Mexican military documents never before made public. It can be accessed online here: https://stopusarmstomexico.org/deadly-trade/

The report explores how weapons companies based in Europe and Israel have exported more than 238,000 firearms to Mexico for use by police between 2006 and 2018, in addition to thousands of weapons for military use. Gun homicides and other violence by state forces and criminal organizations increased dramatically during this period, while policies in arms exporting countries that neglect or violate human rights have contributed to the violence. Weapons identified in the report include machine guns military-grade assault rifles, submachine guns, sniper rifles, semi-automatic handguns.

The report identifies a number of companies exporting weapons to Mexico, including:

Beretta: sold 108,660 weapons including 25,000 rifles and other long guns
Heckler & Koch: 19,123 firearms, such as pistols, assault rifles, machine guns, and launchers. Half of the 10,000 G36 rifles exported ended up being used by police in states they were specifically banned from exporting to.
Sig Sauer: between 2011 and 2019, Sig Sauer sold at least 13,174 firearms for use by police in Mexico. In April 2020, Sig Sauer exported 50,000 pistols to Mexico from the US for use by the newly formed National Guard.
Walther: since 2006, Mexico has received 3,098 pistols manufactured by Walther
Israeli Weapons Industry: in 2012 an end use certificate submitted to the U.S. State Department by SEDENA (Mexican Secretariat of National Defense) requested the export of 1,010 Galil assault rifles manufactured by Israeli Weapons Industry to Mexico, at a value of US$1.7 million.
FN Herstal: including over 4000 MINIMI-machine guns and 0.50 caliber heavy machine guns.
Česká Zbrojovka: exports include 2,600 CZ 805 BREN assault rifles and CZ P-09 5,000 handguns.

The report also identifies cases of serious human rights abuses carried out by police units known to use weapons produced by European and Israeli arms companies. For example, weapons produced by Beretta and Heckler & Koch have been used by police units involved in the forced disappearance of 43 student teachers from the Ayotzinapa Normal School in September 2014, and National Gendarmerie officers - who are armed with weapons produced by Czech company Česká Zbrojovka - on April 6, 2016 arbitrarily detained and tortured a 17-year-old adolescent.

The report was written by: Global Exchange (US), OPAL (Italy), American Friends Service Committee (Israel), Ohne Rüstung Leben (Germany), NESEHNUTÍ (Czech Republic), Vredesactie (Belgium), Agir Pour la Paix (Belgium), Comisión Mexicana de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos, and the Centro de Estudios Ecuménicos (Mexico) It can be accessed online here: https://stopusarmstomexico.org/deadly-trade/

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Police militarisation

Police militarisation theme

Equipment, training and tactics Who profits? Blurring the lines between the police and the military

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The militarisation of policing and internal security

Sarah — Wed, 29 Nov 2017 14:43:37 +0000

Protesters face police at a sit-in on the beach at Karbabad, Bahrain, in June 2012 during the Bahraini uprising. They were met with tear gas.

29 Nov 2017

Author(s)

Sarah Robinson

The visible face of police militarisation is the use of militarised equipment and body armour; of sniper rifles and tanks facing down protesters in Ferguson, United States, and of heavily armoured vehicles patrolling the streets of the favelas of Rio de Janiero. But such conspicuous militarisation is merely a symptom – an end-product – of a militarised mindset that sees those being policed not as members of a community in need of protection but as a threat.

The perception of threat

Militarisation is driven by “the idea that the world is a dangerous place” (Enloe, 2016). It is a process that relies upon the widespread social acceptance of a narrative of insecurity. There is always a new emergency just around the corner. The ‘war on terror’ has been used to mobilise a culture of fear across the world from France to Kenya to Indonesia but whether the ‘war’ that is being waged is on terror – or on drugs or on gangs – the response of the state is always framed in the language of militarised conflict.

A soldier is schooled to assume a threat before the need for help and to respond accordingly by eliminating it (Tabassi and Dey, 2016). But whereas the role of a solider is supposedly to confront a threat coming from outside – an external enemy – increasingly the danger is identified as coming from within. When militarised language is used to talk about perceived internal threats, the danger that is to be eliminated is to be found on the streets of our towns and villages and the war that is being waged is a war on our own communities, who have themselves become the enemy.

The enemy within

The militarisation of policing is nothing new and police forces in colonial and other oppressive regimes have long sought to control rather than protect but increasingly the boundaries between what is considered to be internal and external security are becoming blurred. In ‘The Fourth World War’, Marcela Paz describes a state of low-intensity war where “it is increasingly hard to make a distinction between military and police activity”. Whilst taking care to be “conscious of how state and global violence differ across contexts” (Tabassi and Issa, 2017) and not to conflate repressive policing with the great violence occurring in some parts of the world, it is possible to recognise a shift away from the notion of ‘defence’ – which “used to refer to protecting a country’s own borders” – to ‘national security’; an idea which “requires the country to be militarily prepared, in a state of constant alert” and emphasises “the idea of the enemy within” (Paz, 2017). More and more, the “wars of states are being fought within their borders – often against their own people – by police forces” (Tabassi and Dey, 2016).

Militarised policing is racist policing

The militarised mind, trained to see threat, sees surroundings filled with potential enemies who become dehumanised and ‘other’ when looked at in this light. Those identified as potential enemies are almost always, for one reason or another, on the margins of society; they may be political activists, social dissidents, gender nonconformists or poor. But, almost always, they will also be perceived as ‘other’ in racialised terms. The militarisation of policing is a militarisation against minority ethnic groups and people of colour the world over.

The ‘war on terror’ has raised the spectre of an Islamic threat and is used to justify militarised policing that targets Muslim communities. Indigenous groups such as the Mapuche in Chile are marked out for protecting their land and resources. Entire neighbourhoods populated by people of colour such as the favelas of Rio de Janiero are deemed a threat to social cohesion and blackness is conflated with criminality and met with violence. Militarised policing is used to sustain the colonial occupations of the lands of one ethnic group by another, such as in Palestine .

Militarised borders define who is, and who is not, a citizen: who has rights and merits the protection of the state and who is a threat to the social order. The Schengen Area allows for free movement of people (and, of course, capital) within Fortress Europe whilst undesirables drown on its shores. The militarised border regime “based on the exclusion of black and brown people” (Segantini, 2017) “sustains cultural notions of relative human worth” (Linke, 2010). It operates “as an amorphous buffer zone against global mobility and the presumed threat of race” (Linke, 2010).

Militarised policing is supposed to make society safer but the security that it is supposed to ensure is the security of selected groups at the expense of those not deemed to be of value. We are not expected to interrogate whose safety is being protected. Militarised policing did not protect Tamir Rice, a black child who was shot dead by police in Cleveland, United States, in 2014 for playing with a toy gun. In West Papua, far from guaranteeing their safety, the “Indonesia police are making West Papua unsafe for Papuans. The police have become the main actor perpetrating human rights violations against West Papuans” (MacLeod, Moiwend and Pilbrow, 2016).

A militarised mindset

The militarised mindset is nurtured by police trainings which simulate scenarios of extreme threat and encourage knee-jerk militarised responses. In the United States, the National Tactical Officers Association (NTOA) runs a training called ‘Talk-Fight-Shoot-Leave’ which “encourages use-of-force solutions and ‘warrior mentalities’ over de-escalation tactics” (Tabassi and Issa, 2016). Such trainings are also often racist, such as the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) trainings held in the United States which use negative racial stereotypes in their dramatisations and regularly host Islamophobic speakers. Trainings are one of the key mechanisms through which militarised policing is exported.

There is a widespread use of militaristic tactics and weaponry. Sometimes actual military weapons find their way from the military into the hands of the police. Policing tactics are often indiscriminate and disproportionate to the threat posed and can be indistinguishable from those of the army uses against enemy combatants. There is a blurring of the lines between the police and the military with police units adopting increasingly militarised behaviours and the military taking on policing roles.

Militarisation is deeply rooted in patriarchy. Militarised structures prize masculine values such as obedience to authority, hierarchy and control and reflect these back into society: reinforcing gender norms and roles which define “masculinity as powerful and aggressive and femininity as humble and passive” (Laska and Molander, 2012) and the gendered order “in which men exercise power over women” (Cockburn, 2010), irrespective of women’s direct participation in them.

Militarised attitudes may show themselves in the increased use or threat of violence although police brutality does not mean militarisation in itself. Rather, it may be symptomatic of a way of dealing with an ‘enemy’, as are the tools – the machine guns and tear gas – that are chosen to carry out the task at hand.

Who profits?

Militarised policing works in favour of those who are already powerful. As in Bahrain, it is used to quell dissent and crush protest. It keeps those lower down the social order in their place. Gizele Martins describes how when the favelas of Rio de Janiero were occupied by the army in 2014 and 2015, one soldier was sent in for every fifty-five inhabitants. The state, which had never seen fit to provide the same ratio of teachers or doctors, was willing to spend vast sums of money to maintain its control. Militarised policing protects the interests of the capitalist, imperialist elite: their financial institutions and sites of power, their factories and shops and the mines, quarries and pipelines that they use to extract natural resources that do not belong to them from land that is not theirs. It protects their ability to exploit and harm the environment and profit from the labour of others.

Militarised policing also directly benefits those who profit from the provision of privatised security services and the sale of militarised equipment and training to police forces around the world. The homeland security industry has grown at 5% annually since 2008 despite a worldwide recession (Buxton and Hayes, 2016).

Demilitarisation

Whilst a clear shift towards militarised policing can be observed across the world, there exist numerous examples of attempts to demilitarise the police; often in response to the end of an armed conflict or the fall of an authoritarian regime. In most of these examples, militarised policing has tended to resurface in an adapted form. The South Korean police force is currently undergoing a process of demilitarisation with the abolition of conscription to the police force as part of military service by 2023. A main role of police conscripts has been to confront protesters during political demonstrations. It remains to be seen what the outcome of this step towards demilitarisation will be and what its effects it will have on the wider police force.

In Colombia, conversely, there are concerns about the militarisation of policing in a context of demilitarisation after the signing of peace accords between the government and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) in 2016. Since the peace accords were signed, over one hundred leaders from different social movements have been assassinated. A new military doctrine called the Damascus Doctrine is being developed by the armed forces which consists of strengthening the armed forces to play a role as the principal interlocutor between the state and civil society.

Resistance

True demilitarisation will require challenging the militarised mindset that sustains militarised policing. A main aim of our new web resource is to bring the fore stories of resistance from communities across the globe from Kenya to Brazil to South Africa and the United States and so act as a networking and solidarity tool for those already experiencing the impact of militarised policing. We hope that you find them inspiring.

Author information

Sarah Robinson worked at the War Resisters’ International London office for a year from September 2016 researching the different ways police forces around the world are being militarised and developing an online resource on police militarisation. Her work was funded by Quaker Peace and Social Witness.

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Theme

Police militarisation

Police militarisation theme

What is the militarisation of policing? Who profits? Blurring the lines between the police and the military Equipment, training and tactics Racism and citizenship Gender and sexuality Threat perception Repression of protest Border militarisation Resistance

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The Civil Nuclear Constabulary: Structure and Concerns

Sarah — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 09:56:58 +0000

Members of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary

01 Dec 2017

Author(s)

Martyn Lowe, Marianne Birkby

As a police force, the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC) is unique in the way that it is organised and operates. It describes itself as an armed force.

Officers are known as ‘griffins’ because a griffin icon forms part of their logo.

The CNC was established in 2005, replacing the Atomic Energy Authority Constabulary which had been established in 1955.

It is run by the Civil Nuclear Police Authority (CNPA) and is a branch of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy with a board which consists of representatives from the nukiller industry.

One member of the Ministry of Defence police who has been on secondment to the CNC described it as extremely well resourced.

It has over 1,100 armed police whose job is to guard Britain’s atomic reactors.

A £39m firearms training centre is currently being built next to the Sellafield nukiller waste plant in Cumbria.

In addition to this, there is the CNC Strategic Escort Group. This is a specialist team who provide armed protection for high security nuclear cargo during transportation in the UK and internationally.

Officers are armed with high powered guns and tasers. They patrol around nuclear plants with their jurisdiction stretching three miles beyond the military fences around nuclear installations. Visitors to Cumbria are usually unaware that the CNC have power to stop and search people innocently walking in the countryside within three miles of Sellafield. A German reporter covering the Copeland by-election was recently stopped on a public footpath by two armed CNC officers and asked for his name and what he was doing. When he asked why the CNC needed to know, the officers replied “because of the world situation”.

Through the CNC, the CNPA is authorised to carry out covert intelligence operations against anti-nuclear protesters. In July 2009, Judge Christopher Rose said that the CNC’s “approach to covert activity is conspicuously professional”. He found that the system for storing the intelligence gained from informers was “working well” and that “senior officers regard covert surveillance as a long-term requirement”.

All of this is alarming enough in itself but questions have also been raised as to whether the CNC can be properly considered to be a police organisation given anomalies regarding accountability and governance.

The nuclear industry was reported as having paid £57m in 2009 alone to finance the CNC. Around one third of this was paid by the private consortium managing the Sellafield nuclear site.

The body that regulates the CNC is also funded by the nuclear industry. So, this is an armed police force that is accountable not to the law of the land but to an industry desperate to build new nuclear reactors in the UK. New nuclear installations will mean more CNC and the further militarisation of what are largely rural areas.

Author information

Martyn Lowe is a campaigner against nuclear power and weapons and a member of the Editorial Board at Information for Social Change, an activist organisation that examines issues of censorship, freedom and ethics amongst library and information workers. He is a former volunteer at the War Resisters’ International office.

Marianne Birkby lives in Cumbria and is a campaigner with Radiation Free Lakeland.

Armed police from the Civil Nuclear Constabulary. Photo credit / copyright: Marianne Birkby.

Yellow flag and barbed wire. Photo credit / copyright: Marianne Birkby.

Countries

United Kingdom

Theme

Police militarisation

Police militarisation theme

Blurring the lines between the police and the military Equipment, training and tactics Repression of protest

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Colombia: militarisation after the peace agreements

Andrew — Fri, 15 Sep 2017 13:45:25 +0000

Protesters in Buenaventura, Colombia, dressed in mock police clothes.

06 Oct 2017

Author(s)

Christian Peñuela

My name is Christian Peñuela. I'm a conscientious objector. I'm part of an organisation called Colectiva la Tulpa. It's an organisation of conscientious objectors from the city of Bogotá, Colombia, South America.

As an organisation, we are raising the debate and being very critical of the public agenda in our country around the peace agreements already signed between the Colombian government and the Farc guerrilla. We believe that there is going to be an increased context of militarisation after the agreement in which, unfortunately, the investment in war from the Colombian state will continue.

The public spending is not going to stop and we think that's problematic. There are some new military doctrines - in this case, called the Damascus Doctrine - at this moment being constructed by the armed forces. The doctrine strengthens the military forces as the institution in charge of the main dialogue with civil society. We also question the fact that military service continues to be compulsory. After the peace agreements and other issues we are aware of, that's in this post agreement context.

There are also some free trade agreements, for example, the Free Trade Agreement between Colombia and Israel

that has been estimated at $700 million and the military is going to be the third sector that benefits most. With Israeli companies of the state of Israel offering different services, including security and weapons, whose aim is to continue the context of militarisation in the rural areas and in the cities. Mainly, we are worried about the fact that it's going to be a heavy investment. We believe that it's going to be a heavy investment in military intelligence

and that intelligence is going to be use to pursue different social movements in Colombia. In fact, something we are concerned about is that after the peace agreements signed on November 26th 2016, more than a 100 social leaders from different social movements like indigenous, farmers, afro-descendant, have been killed.

For us, it's problematic because this happened after the peace agreements. Mainly, we are also thinking of the fact that many of the youth of Colombia are going to continue being enrolled into military service. The issue of compulsory military service is still unresolved. We question why there is a compulsory military service, post agreement, where there is not going to be an internal conflict any more to answer to those demands that used to justify compulsory military service. We believe that our young people will become 'exports' - they will perform military service then will pursue a career abroad as mercenaries. At no time they are problematising access to opportunities. Their right to health, work and other things when, unfortunately, the state prefers to demand obligations from young people, instead of giving them their rights.

Something that we are particularly concerned about at the moment is the situation in Buenaventura. Buenaventura is a city in the Colombian Pacific coast and, right now, they've been on strike, more or less, 20 days. Buenaventura is Colombia's main port where 60% of Colombia's GDP, Gross Domestic Product, passes through this port. Buanaventura's black, afro-descendant communities or the afro-descendant movements are fighting for education. They are fighting for an education, for health that, presently, they haven't had and it's paradoxical as it's the main port and there has never been social investment in that port. Currently - I don't have the exact figures - but we know that many people have been persecuted, brutalised, and there has been a lot of police brutality, lot of stigmatisation and I don't have the figures but right now we know people have died or gone missing.

And at this time, this is an expression of the militarisation and the militarisation of the police at the moment taking place in Buenaventura, and the treatment given to social protest after the peace agreements. Then, as conscientious objectors, we have the great challenge of instilling in Colombian society that the resolution of conflicts shouldn't be through violence.

We try to work using nonviolent direct action. To be able to encourage communication roads and bridges between social movements and other sectors of society in the hope that there will not be more militarisation its everyday life in the rural areas and in the cities.

Ok. In Buenaventura, right now, the way they are reacting to social protest is not just with the police. But also, according to the city's social movements, the Marine Corps, the navy and other special groups have also taken part. To discourage social protest through a group called the Mobile Anti-riot Squadron (ESMAD) that always uses certain dispersion gases. They have very strong implications for the health of the people when they are protesting.

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Countries

Colombia Israel

Theme

Police militarisation

Police militarisation theme

Racism and citizenship Repression of protest Equipment, training and tactics Blurring the lines between the police and the military Demilitarising policing Resistance Who profits?

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Moon Jae-in Vows to Dismantle Police Conscript Force

Sarah — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 15:55:51 +0000

Conscripted police line up to form a barricade in front of City Hall Subway Station, Seoul, during a protest against a joint military amphibious beach assault exercise conducted by U.S. Marines and the Republic of Korea Marine Corps

02 Aug 2017

Author(s)

Seohoi Stephanie Park

This article was originally published on 1st June 2017 in Korea Exposé. Reproduced with kind permission.

When young college students in Seoul went out to march through the streets calling for Park Geun-hye’s impeachment in a long streak of demonstrations that started last October, it wasn’t difficult to bump into an acquaintance blocking you — dressed in a navy military drab armed with combat gear. These policemen were some of the most visible — and the most silent — presences, patrolling the massive candlelight vigils that eventually contributed to Park’s ouster from office.

Who were all these policemen? No, not professional police officers, but young men in their college years, serving their 21 months of compulsory military service.

On Monday, Moon Jae-in vowed to dismantle the conscripted police force by 2023, the Korean National Police Agency confirmed with Korea Exposé. Around 26,000 conscripted policemen will be replaced by professional officers, which is expected to boost the job market, and add credibility to Moon’s campaign pledge to create 810,000 jobs before his presidency ends.

“I think it’s a good move, both efficiency and security-wise,” said Jeon U-yeol, a former conscripted policeman who finished his duty in Seoul last year. “In a broad sense, I believe there are more benefits [to this dismantling], in that the [police] unit will acquire a higher sense of duty, and receive more systematic training — which the conscripted policemen don’t often get.”

Jeon added, “I do feel sad that young men will have to suffer more elsewhere, because conscripted policemen had been deemed a relatively easy way to serve your [military] duty.”

Thanks to the division on the Korean peninsula, military service is mandatory for all able-bodied South Korean men older than 18. The police force is typically seen as one of the more desirable positions for young men to be assigned to, due to its frequent weekly leaves. (This was probably not as relevant during Park Geun-hye’s impeachment crisis, when tens of thousands of police were assigned on the weekends to watch over the massive civil demonstrations against the then-president.)

The conscripted police force has also been on a hotbed of social debate in South Korea over its alleged unconstitutionality; according to the Military Human Rights Center for Korea(MHRCK), it is a breach of law to use soldiers in their military duty as combat policemen.

“They are not just being mobilized to maintain public order, but are forced to suppress political demonstrations in the frontlines. This is all clearly out of the legal boundary,” said MHRCK in its press release in 2015. The organization argues that it is not part of the conscripted policemen’s original duty — “to assist in conducting public security affairs,” as the law vaguely states — to be mobilized in political demonstrations, where regardless of individual political will, young men are forced to confront and endure violent protests instead of formally trained police officers.

The history of the police force has had a turbulent past. The conscripted police force (euigyeong) was first introduced in 1982, as a part of the ‘combat police force (jeongyeong),’ which was established in 1967 to ferret out North Korean spies and maintain public order. Combat police is crucial to remember, because its absence today dicates the changing — and apparently unconstitutional — role of today’s conscripted police.

Under the Park Chung-hee(1963-1979), Chun Doo-hwan(1980-1988) and Roh Tae-woo(1988-1993) regimes, combat policemen were mobilized to brutally crack down on civilian democratization protests. During Chun’s presidency, students protesting against his dictatorship were forcefully sent to military service, who were then deployed to the combat police unit. There was even a name for this, called an afforestation campaign — to ‘greenwash’ the ‘Red bandits.’

This idea was actually pretty smart — it was assumed that the protesters would go easier on their friends in the police.

Baek Hyun-seok, a former combat policeman who served in the military under Roh, was one of the hundreds (some estimate thousands) caught during these vigils. Baek was forcefully drafted to serve as a policeman during his military service. “About 200 of us, out of the 400 who joined the army together… were sent to become a [combat] policeman. I was dispatched to the forefront down in Gwangju.”

In 2013, the combat police force was finally dismantled amid criticisms and lack of manpower. In its absence, conscripted policemen increasingly took charge of what the combat policemen used to do — to set up barricades and confront protesters out in the streets.

Former president Roh Moo-hyun initiated attempts to phase out the conscripted police force by 2012, but his plans fizzled out during the succeeding conservative administration under Lee Myung-bak.

Newly-elect Moon Jae-in, following the pursuit of his mentor/liberal predecessor Roh, is carrying on with the unfulfilled goal. Starting in 2018, the force will be reduced by 20 percent each year, and completely replaced with professional soldiers within five years.

Author information

Seohoi Stephanie Park is an intern at Korea Exposé and an undergraduate student at Yonsei Underwood International College, where she studies Political Science and International Relations.

Countries

Korea, South

Theme

Police militarisation

Police militarisation theme

Blurring the lines between the police and the military Repression of protest

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Cuarta Guerra Mundial

Sarah — Sun, 13 Aug 2017 22:24:07 +0000

A woman drinks a cup of tea amid a destroyed building

05 Oct 2017

Author(s)

Marcela Paz

When talking about militarism or demilitarisation, people immediately think of men in uniform, so when I say that I am anti-militarist, instinctively many people say: "but you’re a woman and you don’t have to do compulsory military service." True, but militarism is much more than military institutions or people in uniform. The military sphere has to do with the lifestyles that people adopt, their way of seeing the world, of understanding social relationships or how effective a society can be.

We assimilate military language in everyday life from many different quarters: through the commemoration of symbolic dates and the names of streets, squares, schools, etc. In short, militarism cuts across many aspects of life including those that could be thought of as being impervious to the military.1

Militarism has changed the way it acts to include areas that have not previously been considered military. Military institutions have responded to changes in society – including processes of individualisation, the "gender issue", job insecurity, economic and social vulnerability – increasing links with civil society, wage earners and the family.

This explains some of the reasons for women beginning to be integrated into the army, or into certain areas of power; each “step” taken generates lots of publicity in the press, on the radio and on television, expounding the idea that having women in the ranks makes the institution more democratic and modern, apparently in touch with society as a whole. But essentially, the intention of the military is for women to be integrated into organisations of power, perpetuating an authoritarian, hierarchical, xenophobic, misogynist and uniformed logic.

This militarisation could be labelled social, it is "social militarisation" because beyond the "modernising" changes made by Chile’s armed forces, the intention is to update the way militarism is described as a powerful presence, a way for the military to dominate and intimidate society, thus consolidating a new relationship between civil and military order.

Militarism has made war the basic organising principle of society, and politics is simply in one of its means or pretexts. We could think of ourselves as living through a Fourth World War, which can be triggered anywhere, at any time, in any circumstance and with the whole world at stake, and which becomes permanent. Civil peace only means the end of one form of war and the beginning of another, the Fourth World War.2.

We can trace the development of the phases of war as follows:

Initial phase: The First World War (1914-1918) centred in Europe, which, after a tumultuous interlude, led directly to the Second World War.
Phase two: The Second World War, with the German Army taking a major role in the world conflict of 1939-1945.
Phase three: The Cold War or the Third World War "which depended on the way the Americans perceived the intentions and politics of the USSR, and vice versa ... instead of undoing the war effort and dismantling the machinery of war, sadly the process of pursuing, encouraging and increasing preparation for war continued: instead of disarming, peace was sought through rearmament."3.

This rearmament gave way to a new type of global warfare that "introduced new elements, and was fought in numerous low intensity conflicts, simultaneously on different fronts around the planet"4, and began a transformation of defence, giving rise to our current state of civil war, leading to what we call "The Fourth World War".

Looking at this timeframe we can say that the First and Second World Wars, characterised by moving large numbers of people on the battlefields and powerful artillery exchanges, are confrontations of one power against another.

With the advent of the Cold War it is clear that "even a legal ceasefire"5, can’t mean the end of war, rather it only changes its form temporarily. This war found expression in East-West confrontation, then with the demise of the Soviet Union, "the break-up of the communist regimes of Eastern Europe and the subsequent territorial changes break the bipolar scenario on which the Cold War was built." 6.

In contrast, this Fourth World War does not take place in a specific scenario, rather there are many battlefronts with material elements, "war develops in connected scenarios, without apparent order and without visible lines of combat."7.

War is increasingly depersonalised, while it is unbelievably more devastating and dehumanising, it considers everything that prevents a human being from becoming a machine to produce and buy as an enemy.

Humankind itself has become the enemy, "a biopower in the most negative and most horrible sense of the word, a power that has death directly at its disposal: not only the death of the individual or of the group, but of humanity itself and perhaps the death of all living beings."8.

Within the new active and constitutive nature of war, it is increasingly hard to make a distinction between military and police activity. "In this way, war seems to have two opposing meanings simultaneously: on the one hand, it is reduced to police action; on the other, it rises to an absolute, ontological level through the technologies of global destruction."9.

So the big difference between defence and national security lies in the way the world sees and thinks about it. Defence used to refer to protecting a country's own borders, a more limited and isolated view, which was neither broad nor deep enough to include everything that was needed to protect ourselves, something bigger was required, on a par with the great effort and the victory of war. So the idea of national security was thought of at a world level rather than a strictly national one, with a tendency to extend the subjective security borders outwards, to more places, encompassing more geographical territory. This idea of national security also requires the country to be militarily prepared, in a state of constant alert. Therefore the idea seems to be that an actively configured world is a safe world, in fact, this active and constitutive character of security was already implicit in the various transformations of war we have analysed.

If war is no longer an exceptional situation, if it is part of the normal order of things, meaning we are already in a permanent state of war; undoubtedly war does not threaten existing power structure, nor is it a destabilising force, rather on the contrary it constantly creates and reinforces the current world order.

One of the tendencies that have marked the evolution of war in recent decades is that preparation for war and the right to wage war have tended to focus on national security, emphasising the idea of the enemy within.

The nation’s interests and responsibilities, as well as threats and battle-fronts, have no limits and are global. “Those who talk about defence, talk about a protective barrier against external threats; in contrast, those who talk about security, justify constant activity both at a national and an international level.”10.

Therefore “The nation and national defence must be in a state of permanent military preparation: war is no longer a military fact in itself, but it is a constantly developing phenomenon”,11,

it is taken for granted that a country’s security level is directly related to the numbers of weapons it has. The more weapons and weapon systems you have, the greater your security in a world which harbours potential aggressors. This assumption is highly dangerous and paradoxical.

“Firstly because it defines security only in quantitative terms of the capacity to inflict harm and defend oneself militarily. Secondly because the devastating capabilities of current weapon systems make defence and security impossible. Nobody can resist nuclear weapons. The only defence which current systems foresee is to take revenge. It is called mutually assured destruction. That means that if one power attacks with its nuclear weapons, the other is not able to ensure its own defence and survival, rather it can wreak reciprocal destruction on the first. Our security is this: knowing that if a nuclear bomb is dropped on us, the other will suffer the same fate. In other words, security is non-existent. We have to state categorically the falsity of these terms and hypotheses. What do words such as defence and security mean today? We have to expose its poverty as a concept based on the current system, and moreover show that the complete opposite is true. Thanks to our defence and security systems, we are living with insecurity as never before. That is to say that with ever more highly developed and more dangerous weapons, and with their ever increasing quality and quantity, the security level is going down, not up. Moreover: production itself, development and storage of weapons are counter-productive for security. Today, the existence of more nuclear weapons can only lead to less security.”12.

Faced with this disheartening scenario, there is continuing resistance. Domination can never be complete however many dimensions it may encompass; as long as there are anti-militarists who dare to challenge the established order, there will always be resistance, dismantling the processes of militarisation which keeps us in check, dominated and disciplined.

The invitation is to act, do, create, both reflecting and developing critical thinking with transformative goals that, if we put them into practice, can challenge the establishment, including what keeps us as we are now.

1 An example of this are the many examples from culture and consumerism, I’m referring to fashion trends, which sometimes show a military influence (Prussian, Soviet, etc.).

2 Talk given by Subcomandante Marcos to the International Civil Commission on Human Rights in November 1999.

3 LEDERACH, John. El abecé de la paz y los conflictos. Madrid. Catarata. 2000. 120p.

4 HARDT, M. NEGRI, A. Multitud: Guerra y democracia en la era del Imperio. Argentina. Debate. 2004. 46p.

5 HARDT, M. NEGRI, A. Multitud: Guerra y democracia en la era del Imperio. Argentina. Debate. 2004. 62p.

6 SAEZ, Pedro. Guerra y paz en el comienzo del siglo XXI. 2º Edición. Madrid. Centro de investigación para la paz. 2002. 63p.

7 i.b.

8 HARDT, M. NEGRI, A. Multitud: Guerra y democracia en la era del Imperio. Argentina. Debate. 2004. 40p.

9 Op. Cit 41p.

10 HARDT, M. NEGRI, A. Multitud: Guerra y democracia en la era del Imperio. Argentina. Debate. 2004. 43p.

11 LEDERACH, John. El abecé de la paz y los conflictos. Madrid. Catarata. 2000. 119p.

12 Op.Cit 133p.

Author information

Countries

Chile

Theme

Police militarisation

Police militarisation theme

Blurring the lines between the police and the military

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Police militarisation is global

Andrew — Tue, 29 Mar 2016 11:29:47 +0000

Heavily armed police in Bosnia

29 Mar 2016

Author(s)

Tara Tabassi (War Resisters League) and Andrew Dey (War Resisters’ International)

As antimilitarist activists, we are well positioned to see the power of police within wider weapons industries and militarist agendas. Understanding this police power as it plays out in different contexts around the world is critical in enabling activists against militarisation to keep the power of police in check within our communities. Police forces often act to maintain unjust 'status-quo' distributions of power in society, and tend towards hegemonic, 'power-over' approaches, and especially when the perception of threat is elevated - the police are a form of social control, and militarisation increases their power. Militarism is guns, armored tanks and drones, but it’s also a state of mind. Militarised mentalities have permeated many police forces and amplified dramatically the force of police violence against our communities.

“If one sees policing for what it is - a set of practices empowered by the state to enforce law and maintain social control and cultural hegemony through the use of force - one may more easily recognize that perhaps the goal should not be to improve how policing functions but to reduce its role in our lives."

Rachel Herzing, Oakland, U.S.

This article will set out examples of how police forces around the world are going through a process of militarisation. What is police militarisation? To become 'militarised' is as much a social and psychological process as a technical one – a militarised worldview perceives difference as a threat, and believes (often extreme) violence is a primary means of responding to a (perceived) threat. The discourse of 'counter-terrorism' and 'the war on drugs', which in various contexts have led to citizens of a state being treated in much the same manner as an external, state military enemy are examples of this; the lines between the role of the police and the military are blurred. Militarised mentalities mean that:

maximum escalation is always available as a solution;
police forces rely on control, use or the threat of force, and cultures of fear;
the poor, ethnic minorities of a country, or political activists are enemies and dehumanized;
police have extreme discipline, absolute hierarchy, anonymity, and patriotic hyper-masculinity.

Feeding this process, arms companies are developing new weapons and marketing approaches – there are now several international trade expos specifically aimed at bringing the arms industry together with police and security forces. Companies are international, as are their venues for vending, and this is reflected in our movement's resistance; after the militarised occupation of Ferguson’s Black communities in the United States in 2014, hundreds of Palestinians supported U.S. activists through social media with how to alleviate tear gassing or identify tear gas canister companies.

Militarised police in the USA respond to protests in Ferguson

As the stresses placed on populations by climate change, economic inequality, population growth, and conflict over resources increase, it is easy to see how states will increasingly turn to militarise their police forces as a 'response', through the militarisation of domestic police forces, paramilitary forces, national guard, border patrols or emergency preparedness institutions. As our movements demanding for economic, racial and gender justice continue to organise, we will continue to see the ever-militarising faces of police on the frontlines of protests as they attempt to suppress and control people power.

On the surface (and on the street) this militarisation is seen in the use of heavier weaponry and more extreme violence. The weaponry and equipment being used by police forces is an indicator of much deeper trends and practises of state repression and maintaining social hierarchies through brute force. As organizers who often face the force of police militarisation against our nonviolent actions and uprisings, we call on activists worldwide to question why policing is a part of our human life, what ideas of safety our societies have constructed that uphold police institutions, and to share how we are practicing alternatives to policing, where we de-escalate situations, where we transform violence, where our communities have created social fabric to keep ourselves safe.

United States

Police militarisation in the United States cannot be separated from the everyday brutality of beat cops in neighbourhoods across the country who are regularly and disproportionately harming and violating communities of colour with impunity. Police departments uphold the injustices embedded within the racist fabric of US society, for example, a Black person is killed by someone employed or protected by the police every 28 hours; trans and gender non-conforming people are far more likely to experience police violence than others; and, entire units of police departments are devoted to surveillance of Muslim people. These injustices depend on a climate of fear, where emergencies are always imminent – caused by anti-Black, anti-migrant, and anti-Muslim racism, compulsory gender normativity, criminalization and political reaction to freedom struggles - and the response must include SWAT tanks, tear gas and assault rifles.

While police militarisation as an industry and a practice of merging US domestic policing with the internationalised US military industrial complex has been in effect for decades (and some will argue that because the history of police in the US were created to “catch” escaped enslaved people, they were always an army), the phenomenon of police militarization as part of the war on terror is a fairly new industry & phenomenon. According to Professor Pete Kraska of Eastern Kentucky University’s School of Justice Studies there were 50,000 SWAT raids in 2015; SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactic) teams are dressed in military gear and weapons, assault a home and forcefully enter, often throwing grenades first - this estimates to be 137 raids a day nationally. As the number of SWAT teams has grown nationwide, so have the raids.

Police militarisation is a process that is directly funded from the federal government and military departments. For example, the Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI)--a federal grant program of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of almost $600 million, administers funding to cities around the US for trainings and weapons expos (such as Urban Shield), but also for police departments to obtain war toys, such as Chicago’s surveillance cameras, BearCat tanks in Fargo, ND and Keene, NH and Long Beach’s armored cars.

Israel / Palestine

A third of the police force in Israel is MAGAV (“Border Police”). This unit recruits via conscription, and is part both of the Israeli military and the Israeli police. While the name, “Border Police” infers they are responsible for securing the borders, MAGAV deal mostly with borders between populations - between Israeli-Jews and Palestinians - and also assists the riot police in “controlling demonstrations”, thus blurring the lines between “fighting terror” and “controlling demonstrations”. The MAGAV draws the line between the two by ethnicity rather than actual action.

Because the Israeli army isn't fighting a formal Palestinian military, the Israeli police and army do the same thing - control a civil population in the name of “security”. The main difference is the legal status of the population targeted, and whether they function due to military rule in the West Bank or according to state rule in Israel. The MAGAV have led raids on unrecognised villages such as Al-Arakib, which is inside the 1967 Israeli borders, in a similar manner to that of the army raiding villages in the West Bank. The law restricts the police from using the live ammunition and rubber bullets that are used by the army, but weaponry such as tear gas, skunk (a foul smelling liquid spray) and sponge bullets, often used by the army in the West Bank, are used to disperse demonstrations within the green line as well. This is mostly seen in east Jerusalem, at demonstrations of minority populations such as ultra orthodox, Israeli Jews of Ethiopian origin, and obviously, Palestinian citizens of Israel.

United Kingdom

In the wake of the 7/7 attacks,'London riots' in 2013 and the Daesh attacks in Paris in 2015, there have been increasing calls for more police in the UK to carry firearms, and for all police officers to be trained to use electric tasers. Politically marginalised communities are those most likely to feel the impact of police violence - as described by Betsy Barkas in a previous edition of WRI’s Broken Rifle magazine, "the UK’s Black and migrant communities have always suffered disproportionately heavy policing... there is a long and shameful history of the use of lethal force by the UK’s police officers."

Recently, several high-profile police training exercises have taken place, designed to test their response to an extremely violent "marauding" terrorist attack. These have been heavily publicised in the media.

The UK also hosts the annual “Security and Policing” trade show. According to Campaign Against the Arms Trade, the show is “a secretive annual event organised by the Home Office and the arms industry trade body, Air Defense Security Space (ADS).” The organisers promote Security and Policing as "the UK's premier security and law enforcement event". The fair hosts companies like BAE Systems, Heckler and Koch, the Gamma Group and The Hacking Team, who promote their wares to 66 countries, including those committing human rights abuses.

Turkey

Turkey has a history of military dictatorship, and the police are part of this history. The Özel Harekat Timleri (or ‘Special Operation Teams’) were established by the military government in the 1980s, and continue to be active. They are heavily armed, work alongside the military, and have been given extensive powers under a recent security bill, including powers to conduct strip searches and car searches, the power to detain (previously only the judiciary had this power), more autonomy on the use of firearms, and increasing the amount of time the police can run wire taps without the permission of a judge. After a bomb attack in Ankara in October 2015 - the deadliest in Turkey’s history - police used tear gas to prevent pro-Kurdish politicians and mourners from laying flowers at the site of the attack.

South Africa

After the end of Apartheid in 1994, there were moves to 'demilitarise' the police - during the years of Apartheid, both the police and the military were used to maintain the oppressive status-quo, and the police had far-reaching powers. During the transition from apartheid, new ranks were introduced to 'demilitarise' the police, and police were retrained to 'manage' rather than 'control' crowds. However, with high crime rates, there are growing calls for the police to extend their capabilities, and deal with crime with 'an iron fist'. Military rankings for the police were reintroduced in 2010, and the South African Police Service has been trained by French police, in techniques described as 'paramilitary' and reliant on shows of force. In the autumn of 2012, heavily armed police forces shot 34 striking miners in the now infamous Marikana massacre - the BBC reported that weaponry available to the police that day included a 40mm vehicle mounted machine gun.

Chile & Peru

The links between the police, militarisation and extractive industries were explored in detail in a previous edition of the WRI magazine ‘The Broken Rifle’; Cesar Pedilla described how the rejection of extractivism as an economic model by swathes of the population is leading to greater use of the police and military to enforce a failed economic model across the continent of South America. For example in Chile, the 'Special Forces' were dispatched to the village of Caiman to break up a three month nonviolent community blockade countering the impact of a mine. Similarly, the Yanacocha mine in Peru is infamous for the violence used by it’s private guards.

Brazil

In the preparation for the 2014 World Cup, and 2016 Olympic Games, the Brazilian government has relied heavily on Israeli arms, training and expertise in preparation for the ‘security’ apparatus surrounding these mega-events. The local Olympics committee has recruited the Israeli company International Security and Defence Systems (ISDS) to coordinate the whole security apparatus of the games, with a budget of $2.2million. A detailed write-up of this contract can be found here. In 2013, there were widespread protests in Brazil; “the unprepared and overreacting police forces responded in a way that shocked the largely middle-class protesters. The police, using “non-lethal” weapons like pepper spray and rubber bullets while dressed from head to toe in ninja-like full battle gear.” (Source: WOLA).

Afghanistan

As part of ongoing military occupation of Afghanistan, both the U.S. military & U.S.-backed Afghan police often use a tactic known as "night raids." Targeting homes in the middle of the night, these operations involving heavily armed troops barging into homes, detaining, assaulting, terrorising & sometimes murdering people. In a report from 2011, "[After his father and older brother were shot dead] 11th grader Abdullah was hooded, handcuffed & flown to prison, where he was detained for questioning & then released." Though leading to 100s of deaths over the last 14 years, and sparking outrage across Afghanistan, the U.S. Special Operations forces continue to carry out nights raids on homes suspected to be associated with Taliban, without any judicial process, and a high level of civilian casualties.

France and Belgium

Source: http://www.democracynow.org/2015/12/3/state_of_emergency_in_france_2

In the aftermath of Daesh’s attacks in Paris, 2,200 police raids were conducted throughout France, as well as 330 house arrests, the shutting down of 3 mosques and hundreds questioned. An additional three mosques were trashed (that were already under heightened surveillance) by French authorities. One such raid resulted in a six-year-old injured by shrapnel from police firing through the door. Under the state of emergency, French police can raid any home without judicial oversight. The vast majority of those targeted in the raids have been Muslim.

The attacks coincided with the planning of the COP21 event, when representatives of states from around the world would debate international responses to climate change. The state of emergencymeant that activists taking part in peaceful, nonviolent, and in many cases otherwise entirely legal protest actions were threatened with mass arrest and serious legal consequences - at the same time corporate events and christmas markets were given permission to go ahead.

Burundi

Mass protests in April 2015, in response to President Pierre Nkurunziza’s decision to seek a third electoral term resulted in political upheaval and widespread killings by the security forces and armed opposition groups. Police used excessive force and shot demonstrators indiscriminately. 20,000 people fled Burundi in fear of civil war returning. After July’s disputed presidential election that returned Nkurunziza to power, government forces, armed opposition groups, and unknown assailants killed hundreds of people. The government arrested hundreds of suspected opponents, often arbitrarily, as well as launching a crackdown against civil society activists and journalists, as well as banning protests. Source: https://www.hrw.org/africa/burundi

Mexico

While private possession of firearms is illegal for almost all individuals in Mexico, from 2010 to 2015--the most violent period in Mexican memory--the country’s military sold 255,712 non-military weapons of various kinds (pistols, rifles, shotguns, among others) to police agencies, private companies and the general public, including sport shooters, hunters, and for land and home protection. During the same period, the military’s income from these sales – through the Directorate for Weapons and Munitions Trade of the General Office of Military Industry – reached 570 million pesos [about US$34 million]. Income from these sales to the Mexican military more than doubled during the period, from 58 million pesos in 2010 to 127.6 million in 2014. More than 98% of weapons sold were imported by the Mexican military. Only 4,761 were produced in Mexico, and most were imported from the United States. Weapons sales to state police agencies show 156,419 arms acquired by local police, including 16,759 weapons to Mexico state and 10,846 to Michoacán (most of those in 2010).

Source: http://afsc.org/story/mexican-military-sold-255712-weapons-2010-2015

Heavily armed federal police

Egypt

Source: Issa, Ali. “Resistance and Persistence: An Interview with Aida Seif al-Dawla of the El Nadeem Center”, The Abolitionist #25, Winter 2016.

The uprisings of 2011 had anti-policing roots due to the history of police brutality in Egypt. The murder of Khaled Said in 2010, and the terrible photos of his murder as well as the determination of his family went viral on social media, making him an icon of the movement against torture and policing. This following the temporary withdrawal of the police from Tahrir Square in 2011 reinforced the feeling of triumph among protesters, and the challenge to police authority continued through the months following the ousting of Mubarak. In particular, the January revolt stands as a landmark due to the young women leadership present, who then faced virginity tests, arrests, media defaming and organized rape in Tahrir Square and other gatherings. Centers, such as El Nadeem, continue to work for psychological rehabilitation for victims of torture for both poor and marginalized people, as well as political activists. El Nadeem recognized torture as “rampant and used for a variety of reasons beyond forcing confessions- to induce terror, to punish, and to accentuate police power” and finds torture used in police stations, prisons, security kiosks, campuses, metro stations and state security headquarters. As Aida Seif al-Dawla stated, “torture maintains the power of the rulers.” (El Nadeem is currently facing the threat of closure by the Egyptian government but vowing to fight the order until the end!)

Source: Issa, Ali. “Resistance and Persistence: An Interview with Aida Seif al-Dawla of the El Nadeem Center”, The Abolitionist #25, Winter 2016.

Summary

In examples from all over the world, we have seen how the line between traditional state militaries and civilian police forces are blurred, and that the wars of states are being fought within their borders - often against their own people - by police forces. However, resistance against these processes is also growing - every time activists assert their rights to assembly and expression, and take part in protests for the social change we so deeply need despite the threat of extreme violence from the police, they are also resisting these processes of militarisation, declaring that they will not work. We would welcome more information on cases of police militarisation in other countries, greater discussion on its causes and impact, and stories of resistance against these processes.

Author information

Programmes & Projects

Front Page

Countries

United States of America United Kingdom Turkey South Africa Peru Mexico Israel France Egypt Chile Burundi Brazil Belgium Afghanistan

Theme

Police militarisation

Police militarisation theme

Repression of protest Blurring the lines between the police and the military Equipment, training and tactics Racism and citizenship Gender and sexuality Demilitarising policing Resistance What is the militarisation of policing? Border militarisation Who profits?

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War profiteer of the month: Tahoe Resources

Andrew — Wed, 17 Feb 2016 14:59:10 +0000

17 Feb 2016

Tahoe Resources is a Canadian mining company. In mid-2010, Tahoe acquired the Escobal mine in southeast Guatemala from Goldcorp; Escobal is a 'high grade silver' mine, and also contains gold, lead and zinc. Some analysts believe it to be one of the biggest silver mines in the world. The Escobal mine is approximately 40km southeast of Guatemala City, and 3km from San Rafael los Flores.

Tahoe Resources hired International Security and Defence Management (ISDM), (a company set up and run by veterans of the US military) to develop a security strategy, and with ISDM's help Tahoe hired the Golan Group to administer security at the Escobal mine. Golan Group was founded in 1983 by members of the Israeli special armed forces. Luis Solano, a local investivgative journalist writing in 2015, said “From the outset, Tahoe Resources hired a US security and defence contractor that boasts experience with corporations working in war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan to develop a security plan that treated peaceful protest and community leaders as if they were armed insurgents."(Mining Watch Canada).

The mine has been met with community resistance and protest since from the outset, and several local referenda have demonstrated wide-scale opposition to it's construction. 55,000 people from seven different municipalities have voted against the silver mine. All of these ballots were dismissed by the Guatemalan government, and the project was forced on the communities using private security, police and the military. In 2013, the Guatemalan government commenced a pilot initiative in San Rafael Los Flores called an “inter-institutional project" which framed opposition to mining as a threat to national security. Guatemalan activists called the initiative “a military intelligence operation”.

Protests and repression escalated in April 2013, as the Guatemalan government granted Tahoe it's final mining permit. A peaceful protest camp was evicted from private property close to the mine, leading to 26 arrests (all of whom were released due to lack of evidence.)

On 27 April 2013 security guards at the entrance of the mine shot at a group of men holding a protest, injuring at least ten people. Albert Rotondo, Tahoe's head of security, was arrested trying to flee the country a few days later, accused of attempted murder for his role in the 27^th April attacks. Though Tahoe claim only rubber bullets were used, a local activist pointed to the fact that one of the men still has a bullet inside his body that doctors felt it was safer to leave rather than attempt to remove it as evidence that more lethal ammunition was used.

In May 2013, a 30 day state of siege – similar to martial law – was declared by the Guatemalan government in four municipalities surrounding the mine, under the pretext of combating drug trafficking and organised crime. Over 3,000 police and soldiers were brought into the area, and prominent community activists were targeted with house raids and arrests. The state of siege meant constitutional freedoms and rights were suspended, including the right to assembly and movement. Ramírez Juárez, a local anti-mining activist, said “When the state of siege was established here, for us it wasn’t a state of siege; it was a state of war.” As the military mobilisation in the area began, local activists from the Xinka People's Parliament released a statement saying “We fear for the lives of our leaders. We’re returning to the 1980s, with the persecution of leaders, extrajudicial execution and forced disappearance.”

In 2014, a year after the imposition of the state of siege, thousands of residents of Mataquescuintla marched in opposition to the ongoing militarisation of the region. A few days later, Topacio Reynoso, a 16 year old girl and leader of the youth movement against mining was murdered in an armed attack – it is believed that the motive for the attack was her opposition to the mine.

Though many soldiers left after the 2013 state of siege, some remained; two military outposts continue to flank the community of San Rafael Los Flores.

Sources

www.cmi.no/publications/file/5630-by-the-gun-or-by-the-bribe-firm-size.pdf

http://tahoeontrial.net/the-bigger-picture/

http://miningwatch.ca/blog/2015/4/10/how-quasi-military-project-was-created-protect-tahoe-resources-escobal-mine

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/06/01/guatemalan-region-militarized-following-dispute-around-canadian-owned-mine.html

Programmes & Projects

War Profiteers

Countries

Guatemala Canada United States of America Israel

Theme

Military bases Mercenaries Civil disobedience/NVDA Extractive industry Police militarisation

Police militarisation theme

Who profits? Repression of protest Resistance Threat perception Blurring the lines between the police and the military

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The Business of Militarized Borders in the European Union

HBrock — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 14:34:07 +0000

01 Sep 2015

Theodore Baird1

A number of scholars, journalists, and activists have argued that we may be witnessing the development of a ‘security-industrial complex’ in Europe which resembles the earlier ‘military-industrial complex’ of the Cold War. The border security-industrial complex refers to the relations between military, security, and private industry within a global market for the design and implementation of border security technologies. The main actors are governments, suppliers of security technologies, and security forces demanding use of new technologies for controlling and managing state borders. The types of industrial actors which supply border security technology range from general and specialized equipment providers (small and medium enterprises primarily) to larger systems integrators (transnational defence firms such as Thales, Finmeccanica, Sagem, Airbus, Indra Sistemas, BAE Systems, among others). The larger companies have experience as defence firms working to develop military and aerospace capabilities. Customers are primarily governments (and their associated security apparatuses), as the industry is dependent on economies of scale (from smaller, local economies of police or gendarmerie units to larger, regional economies such as the European Union). Many companies re-purpose military technology for use in border control and surveillance, even when the effect of such ‘dual-use’ technologies on civilian mobile populations is unknown.

The global market for border management (including only land and maritime borders) was worth approximately 29.33 billion USD in 2012, with North America possessing the highest expenditure.2 The European market for land border security had an estimated value of 4.5-5.5 billion EUR in 2009, while the aviation and maritime security sectors of Europe have a market value of approximately 1.5-2.5 billion EUR each.3 The scale of the market for border security is expanding in Europe and the world, with total growth expected to exceed 56.52 billion USD for land and maritime borders by 2022.4 Even with the growth in markets for border security, the social effects of such practices and technologies are underexplored, raising a number of political and ethical concerns.

Transparency and Deliberative Democracy

As the industry for border security expands, and EU integration continues, relations between the EU institutions, EU Member States, academia, consultancies, industry, and industrial lobbyists are being forged into policy networks. Security industrial lobbies such as the European Organization for Security (EOS) are expending resources to influence the EU institutions, and large defence corporations may be having an impact on migration politics in ways which we must be critically aware of.

A major political question surrounding the border management industry has been the question of transparency and accountability of democratic institutions tasked with designing security, establishing norms, and executing law. With recent accusations that Airbus has engaged in corrupt dealings in their border surveillance contracts in Romania and Saudi Arabia, we must be attuned to the lack of transparency of industry in their dealings with states and the potential distortions this causes to democratic politics and European integration.

Accountability and Rights Protections

In parallel, a number of questions are raised concerning the accountability of private industry when abuse against migrants is committed. The functions of deterring migration at the border, interning migrants in detention centers, and deporting migrants have each been partially or fully privatized. A number of abuses involving private contractors have been recorded in detention centers (e.g. Yarl’s Wood in the UK) and during deportation (the case of Jimmy Mubenga and G4S).

Militarizing and privatizing EU borders has little effect in deterring migration, but has important consequences for human rights. In an environment of limited transparency and emerging legal norms, it may be difficult to hold abusive actors accountable for abuse. The privatization of migration control means distancing the state from liability for harms and abuse against those subject to control functions. “Lifting the corporate veil,” by creating institutions tasked with monitoring corporations and holding them to account for human rights abuses, may provide us a first step at increasing accountability for harms and abuse.5

Other abuses may occur at the border – such as push-backs and violations of the principle of non-refoulement – which may involve technologies or practices of military defence firms – raising questions about the accountability of private companies who produce technology for border control but may be distant from abuse at the border. Recent missions in the Mediterranean (such as Mare Nostrum or Operation Triton) and ongoing anti-human smuggling operations raise some of these questions.

Militarizing the Prohibition of Migrant Smuggling

In early May 2015 the European Union asked the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) to approve a multi-phase military mission to ‘combat’ migrant smuggling networks in Libya. The so-called EUNAVFOR Med mission is modelled on anti-piracy missions in the Gulf of Aden, which is a strategic error: migrant smugglers are not pirates, and are not organized nor act as such. Both of Libya’s competing governments (the Tripoli-based General National Congress and the Tobruk-based Council of Deputies) are opposed to the EU’s proposal. The Libyan Air Force (controlled by the internationally recognized government in Tobruk) has even warned that EU vessels entering Libyan waters will be targeted by airstrikes.6 Rather than search for protection solutions or peaceful alternatives to migration, the EU is trying to heat things up through aggression.

In mid-June 2015 the EU launched the first phase of EUNAVFOR Med, which involves surveillance and does not need approval from the UNSC, but sets the stage for future combat. The shared costs of EUNAVFOR Med are around 12 million EUR for the first two months and lasting for a 12 month mandate.7 A number of military assets will be used, including five warships, two submarines, three reconnaissance planes, three helicopters, and two drones.8 Militarizing anti-smuggling operations is unprecedented, as most anti-smuggling operations are led by civilian police forces. Actively engaging smugglers with military practices and technologies will have unknown and paradoxical effects which will likely be harmful to migrants and local fishing communities on the Libyan coast, and may escalate into outright conflict with the two Libyan governments.

Resisting the EU Border Security Industrial Complex

The EU’s response to increased migration in the Mediterranean has been to prevent migration and attack migrant smugglers with the support of technologies and systems designed by a robust and growing border security industry. However, those displaced by conflict or climate change will continue to be forced to migrate to safer areas, and the militarization of migration control will only serve to exacerbate problems of forced displacement rather than ameliorate them. Rather than investing in new security and surveillance technologies or taking an aggressive, militant stance against migrant smugglers, the EU should devise new legal avenues for migration and create innovations in protection solutions which value human dignity, rights, and sustainability over surveillance, industrialized control, and aggression.

Theodore Baird is a postdoc at VU University Amsterdam. He currently researches issues of border security and surveillance in Europe as part of the project "The Human Costs of Border Control." You can read his current commentaries published at openDemocracy here: https://www.opendemocracy.net/author/theodore-baird

1 Some parts of this article will appear in Italian in inTrasformazione in October 2015. http://www.intrasformazione.com/index.php/intrasformazione

2 Frost & Sullivan (2014) Global Border and Maritime Security Market Assessment, by Frost & Sullivan. M965-16, February 2014. Available online at: http://images.discover.frost.com/Web/FrostSullivan/GlobalBorderandMaritimeSecurity.pdf. [Last accessed 27.05.2015]

3 Ecorys Research and Consulting (2009) Study on the Competitiveness of the EU security industry, Framework Contract for Sectoral Competitiveness Studies – ENTR/06/054, Client: Directorate-General Enterprise & Industry, Brussels, 15 November 2009. Available online at: http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/security/files/study_on_the_competitiveness_of_the_eu_security_industry_en.pdf. [Last accessed 27.05.2015]

4 Frost & Sullivan, supra

5 Gammeltoft-Hansen, T. (2013) “The rise of the private border guard: Accountability and responsibility in the migration control industry,” in T. Gammeltoft-Hansen & N. N. Sorensen (eds.) The Migration Industry and the Commercialization of International Migration, Routledge: Abingdon and New York.

6 Reuters (2015) “Libya’s air force warns Europe over naval plan for migrants,” Reuters, 23 June 2015. Available online at: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/23/us-europe-migrants-libya-idUSKBN0P312B20150623. [Last Accessed 24.06.2015]

7 Council of the European Union (2015) “Council launches EU naval operation to disrupt human smugglers and traffickers in the Mediterranean,” Press release 482/15, 22 June 2015. Available online at: http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2015/06/22-fac-naval-operation/. [Last accessed 24.06.2015]

8 Neuger, J. (2015) “EU to Deploy Drones, Warships Against Human Traffickers,” BloombergBusiness, 22 June 2015. Available online at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-22/eu-to-deploy-drones-warships-against-mediterranean-traffickers. [Last accessed 24.06.2015

Programmes & Projects

Front Page

Countries

Europe

Theme

Police militarisation

Police militarisation theme

Border militarisation Equipment, training and tactics Who profits? Blurring the lines between the police and the military

Companies

THALES Leonardo (Finmeccanica) INDRA British Aerospace

Institutions

European Union (EU)

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Organizing for border justice and against the militarization of US-Mexico border communities

HBrock — Tue, 11 Aug 2015 12:10:29 +0000

11 Aug 2015

Pedro Rios

On May 28, 2015, in San Diego, California, hundreds gathered for an evening rally and march to commemorate the National Day of Action to Stop Border Brutality. The San Diego activity was part of a coordinated set of non-violent actions where organizations at nine cities across the United States convened various events to raise their voices against increased impunity by border agents who have been implicated in at least 39 deaths since 2010. Led by the Southern Border Communities Coalition, comprised of over 65 organizations working along the US-Mexico border, the coordinated rallies, marches, and film screenings also highlighted the 5^th year anniversary of the death of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas, a father of five who in 2010 was tortured to death by over a dozen border agents at the San Ysidro Port-of-Entry in San Diego.

Coincidently, May 28 also marked the 91^st anniversary since the US Border Patrol was established in 1924. Since its foundation, no documented case exists of any Border Patrol agent being held accountable for incidents where their actions have resulted in loss of life. In recent years, these incidents include the shooting of unarmed individuals, including minors, in their back, shooting across the border into Mexico, Tasering and beating people to death, and placing themselves in dangerous situations to justify the use of lethal force. In most cases, public scrutiny is adamantly discouraged or obstructed, allowing border agents to get away with murder.

The deaths of people at the hands of border agents is part of a larger historic and complex problem, one that involves a process by which communities along the US-Mexico divide have undergone a systemic militarization process, and that increasingly debilitates constitutional protections and exacerbates violations of human rights. The Migration Policy Institute found that as of January 2013, $187 billion has been spent on immigration enforcement since 1986. The Border Patrol has seen a quadrupling of its force since the 1990s, reaching over 21,000 agents, largely concentrated along the border with Mexico. Anyone driving through roads along the borderlands will be forced to drive through a Border Patrol checkpoint and questioned about their immigration status, sometimes beyond the 100-mile threshold that regulates where agents can operate.

The exaggerated build-up of enforcement resources designated for border communities follows an alarming trend whereby policies of war have defined border priorities for the US-Mexico border region. Irrespective of party affiliation, the war framework conveniently permits policymakers to scapegoat over 6 million people living in the States of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas for their political and economic gain. Over the past four decades, the war framework has guided policy structures in the borderlands under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. Often the policies include extensive coordination with the Department of Defense. Multi-agency taskforces have included formal agreements between local and federal law enforcement agencies, focused initially on drug interdiction programs and enforcement of immigration laws, but also that respond to the national security industrial complex.

In the 1980s, President Reagan permitted modifying the Posse Comitatus statute by expanding the role of the US military in domestic affairs as part of the effort to combat the War on Drugs. In 1997, a platoon of Marines involved in a covert drug interdiction program shot and killed 18 year-old Esequiel Hernandez in Redford, Texas, one mile from the US-Mexico border. The four marines who stalked Esequiel before they shot him were never indicted for criminal conduct. In the aftermath of the grand jury investigation, documents revealed that every resident of Redford, Texas was considered a threat. It was during the Reagan years that border enforcement agencies acquired a surplus of military equipment, including magnetic ground sensors, infrared night-vision scopes, Javelin missile sights, Black Hawk and Huey helicopters, and Humvees.

In the 1990s, border and immigration policies capitalized on the War on Drugs by changing course and targeting lower-income communities in a “tough on crime” approach to social policy. Though crime rates were down in the 1990s, criminal penalties became increasingly punitive and promoted a “war on crime” outlook on immigration issues. California’s anti-immigrant Proposition 187 state ballot initiative, which sought to deny social, medical, and educational services to those “suspected” of being undocumented, galvanized hate groups that would hold “Light Up the Border” rallies along the border. Those crossing the border in search of jobs were deemed criminals, and responses from white supremacist organizations included a youth group dressed in military garb and armed with pellet guns that would “hunt for illegals” in the marshlands of the western-most edge of the San Diego border with Tijuana.

The anti-immigrant fervor in California went national and in 1996, President Clinton signed into law a retroactive and punitive immigration law that criminalized migrants. Two years prior, his Administration adopted border-wide militarization measures that sought to push migration flows into hostile mountainous and desert terrain. Consequently, since 1994, over 7000 men, women, and children have perished in the borderlands in their attempts to enter the US without inspection. The context for this is that the US liberalized trade under a neoliberal free-trade policy that destabilized local economies in Mexico, further generating conditions for people to migrate.

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US, the “War on Terror” led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and a new set of policies under a new mandate focused all of immigration enforcement priorities on preventing terrorist acts on US soil and interests. “Every migrant is a potential terrorist” was a common refrain from DHS spokespersons, and on-the-ground operations demonstrated a general disregard for civil rights protections, and a surge of interests in militarizing border communities even further.

Congress passed policies to erect hundreds of miles of border walls at the expense of dozens of labor, environmental, and civil rights regulations and treaties. Contracting agencies have included Boeing, and Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and General Dynamics have vied for contracts to construct border walls. The Israeli company Elbit Systems, responsible for building the apartheid wall in the occupied West Bank, was contracted by DHS for $145 million to erect surveillance systems to monitor crossings along the US-Mexico border.

The panorama has not changed significantly under President Obama. Record deportations have already tarnished President Obama’s integrity on his commitment for favorable immigration policies. With over one thousand daily deportations, border enforcement priorities continue to focus on failed border policies that push people to remote areas where they succumb to the elements and die horribly. Many of these individuals were long-time US residents, despite not having proper immigration status. However, human rights organizations and communities along the US-Mexico border continue to shift the narrative with some advances. It is not as easy for policymakers to pass on as truth the tired and erroneous story that the border is open terrain for militarization projects. Border residents continue to organize, to demand justice, and to speak truth to power in courageous and creative ways, despite what at times might appear as an insurmountable challenge. Ultimately it is a vision for de-militarizing their communities what border residents strive for, where there dignity is respected and where basic human rights are upheld.

***

Pedro Rios is director of the American Friends Service Committee's US/Mexico Border Program, based in San Diego California. He oversees a program that documents abuses by law enforcement agencies and accompanies migrant families in organizing for self-determination. Pedro has published essays on how border militarization impacts border communities in various publications.

Countries

United States of America Mexico

Theme

Police militarisation

Police militarisation theme

Border militarisation Resistance Threat perception Blurring the lines between the police and the military Equipment, training and tactics Who profits? Racism and citizenship

Companies

Boeing Lockheed Martin Northrop Grumman Raytheon General Dynamics Elbit Systems