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Political repression is the oppression or persecution of an individual or group for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing their ability to take part in the political life of society. Political repression may be represented by discriminatory policies, surveillance abuse, police brutality, imprisonment, involunatry settlement, stripping of citizen's rights, and violent action such as the murder, summary executions, torture, forced disappearance and other extrajudicial punishment of political activists, dissidents, or general population.

Where political repression is sanctioned and organised by the state, it may constitute state terrorism or genocide. Systemic and violent political repression is a typical feature of dictatorships, totalitarian states and similar regimes. In such regimes, acts of political repression may be carried out by secret police forces, army, paramilitary groups or death squads.

If political repression is not carried out with the approval of the state, a section of government may still be responsible. An example is the FBI COINTELPRO operations in the United States between 1956 and 1971.

In some states, such as the former Soviet Union, "repression" can be an official term and official legal policy of repression with respect to internal political opponents of the state.

• Amnesty International
• Death squad
• Dissident
• Forced disappearance
• Human rights abuse
• National security
• Police state
• Political killing
• Purge
• Secret police

Articles

• Understanding Covert Repressive Action: The Case of the U.S. Government against the Republic of New Africa (186kb PDF file) by Christian Davenport, Associate Professor, University of Maryland.

Books

• Donner, Frank J. (1980). The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America’s Political Intelligence System. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-394-40298-7
• Donner, Frank J. (1990). Protectors of Privilege: Red Squads and Police Repression in Urban America. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-05951-4
• Goldstein, Robert Justin. (1978). Political Repression in Modern America, From 1870 to Present. Boston, G. K. Hall, Cambridge, MA: Schenkman. ISBN 0-8467-0301-7
• Jensen, Joan M. Army Surveillance in America, 1775 - 1980. New Haven. Yale University Press. 1991. ISBN 0-300-04668-5. Book review retrieved April 3, 2006.
• Talbert, Jr. Roy. Negative Intelligence: The Army and the American Left, 1917 - 1941. Jackson. University Press of Mississippi, 1991. ISBN 0-87805-495-2. Book review retrieved April 3, 2006.

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