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59-834: The Hitler Youth conspiracy was a case investigated by the Soviet secret police during the Great Purge in the late 1930s. It resulted in the arrest of numerous adolescent Germans, some in their twenties and beyond. They were accused of having been fascist, anti-communist members of the Hitler Youth , who were working against the Soviet Union . Teenagers from the Karl Liebknecht School , from Children's Home No. 6 , and adults from factories and elsewhere were arrested, tortured, and imprisoned. Many were executed or died in custody. Some were

118-614: 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 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

177-589: A branch of the Hitler Youth . All three were executed three weeks later. Ahrendt was also from the Karl Liebknecht School, where he was a leader of the Young Pioneers . Those arrested were tortured and often confessed quickly to alleged crimes, either to try to bring the torture to a halt or because they were advised by those longer in custody that it was their only hope for relief from the beatings, which could last for hours. A number of those arrested were

236-572: A campaign of purges and mass repressions within the Soviet Union began, which also included purges of the Communist Party, both within the Soviet Union and abroad. The number of those who were charged with being counter-revolutionary or fascist increased substantially during these waves of persecution. In his " Secret Speech ", Nikita Khrushchev said that between 1936 and 1937, the number of arrests for counter-revolutionary crimes grew ten times. At

295-489: A leader of the Young Pioneers , who was executed three weeks after his arrest. By the time the purges subsided, 25 teachers and 40 pupils and former pupils had been arrested, as well as many parents. Many never returned. The school was closed in 1938 after it was decided that schools for national minorities were not in sync with the communist party line . When the school was closed, children were sent to local Russian schools, to which not all children adapted well. There

354-671: 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 the Truman Doctrine , Mexican president Miguel Alemán Valdés created DFS to combat communist opposition. The agency

413-420: A network of provincial and local State Security Bureaus, integrated with local Public Security Bureaus which make up part of 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

472-472: 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, 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

531-497: A template, devoid of other evidence. Some 70 teenagers and adults were arrested between January and March 1938, primarily the children of German and Austrian foreign workers and exiles, but also a few Russians. Some of those arrested were not members of the Hitler Youth; 20 were over the age of 30 and one was 62. Others were students at local technical schools or workers in factories. There were 13 pupils and two teachers arrested from

590-475: 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: Karl Liebknecht School The Karl Liebknecht School (German: Karl-Liebknecht-Schule ), named after Karl Liebknecht , was a German-language elementary school in Moscow . It was established for the children of German refugees to

649-677: 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

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708-653: The Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) was the secret police of President Robert Mugabe who 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

767-691: 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 the US State Department reported that Cuba's Ministry of the Interior utilizes

826-732: The Executive Committee of the Communist International reported that there had been 842 arrests. As early as 1930, the Soviet secret police, the Cheka (later the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs or NKVD), investigated teenage Germans suspected of being members of the Hitler Youth , but these investigations preceded the Great Purge and those arrested were not given the harsh sentences of later years. Most were released before 1934. As

885-557: 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 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

944-759: 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,

1003-674: 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 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

1062-1003: 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 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

1121-561: The Karl Liebknecht School and a number from Children's Home No. 6. There were seven people, most adults, from the Left Column theater troupe, including Helmut Damerius , a close friend of Wilhelm Pieck 's son, Arthur, also an actor and Bruno Schmidtsdorf, the lead actor in Gustav von Wangenheim 's 1935 film, Kämpfer . Schmidtsdorf was arrested on February 5, 1938, with fellow troupe members Kurt Ahrendt and Karl Oefelein, all charged with founding

1180-769: The Middle East , located in Baghdad. Shurta was one of the most both powerful intelligence and secret police organizations of 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

1239-680: 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 , 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

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1298-674: 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 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

1357-564: 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 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

1416-547: The Soviet Union . It opened in 1924 and was closed in 1939. A number of students and teachers were caught up in the Great Purge and the so-called Hitler Youth Conspiracy , many of them executed. After the October Revolution , communists in other countries were encouraged to come to the Soviet Union to help build the world's first communist state. Germany under the Weimar Republic was in turmoil, particularly during

1475-504: The between 1919 and 1923 , and had a large Communist Party. Numerous members went to the Soviet Union, both for training and as refugees from persecution by political enemies. The Karl Liebknecht School was founded to educate the children of German refugees in the German language, however some Russians also sent their children there. The school acquired a nickname, Shkola Nashikh Mechtei ("the school of our dreams") and had an orchestra, which

1534-419: 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

1593-590: The 3rd Department of the Main Directorate of State Security , was charged with mishandling prisoners and fabricating charges. He was tried at an NKVD troop tribunal in August 1939 and was sentenced to death, a sentence confirmed by the Supreme Soviet . After Stalin's death, a re-examination of the case revealed that the charges were baseless. Survivors were released from detention in 1954 and 1955. Gustav Sobottka, Jr.

1652-548: The February–March 1937 plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), there was a renewed call to purge the party of Trotskyite elements, unleashing a wave of mass terror in the summer of 1937. The term "counter-revolutionary fascist groups" came into use within the Soviet secret police in 1938, as they carried out these purges. At a meeting on April 28, 1938, German members of

1711-537: The Great Purge swept up communist activists in massive arrests, their spouses and children were also persecuted. Some were banished to a gulag , some children were put in orphanages and in some cases, older children were themselves arrested and charged with anti-revolutionary activity and forming anti-revolutionary groups. International communists living in the Soviet Union were hard hit, especially Germans, who were there in large numbers, fleeing Nazism. While German parents were rounded up and accused of espionage, this charge

1770-556: The Hitler Youth and were planning acts of sabotage and assassination. They were also accused of praising Adolf Hitler . Department 4 of the Main Directorate of State Security under the NKVD handled secret political affairs and took care of the administration of the case while Department 7, which handled foreign intelligence, implemented the orders. Those carrying out the arrests were directed to reach quotas for both arrests and confessions and were given deadlines. An interpreter who served during

1829-764: 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 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

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1888-759: 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

1947-438: The children of leading communists. Within years, the investigation was found to have been faulty and a number of the investigators were also arrested, with sentences ranging from imprisonment to execution. In the 1950s, following the death of Joseph Stalin , a new examination of the files revealed many of the accusations to have been baseless and a number of the victims were rehabilitated . With Stalin's seizure of power in 1927,

2006-529: The children of prominent communists, such as Hans Beimler, Jr., son of Hans Beimler ; Max Maddalena, Jr., son of Max Maddalena ; and Gustav Sobottka, Jr. , the son of Gustav Sobottka . Of those arrested, 6 were released, 20 were sentenced from five to ten years, 40 were executed, two were returned to Germany and the Gestapo under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact ; and one died in prison. The first execution

2065-565: The colony. The National Security Department in the current HKSAR is a secret police agency created after 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

2124-612: 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 , 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,

2183-478: The dynasty's secret police until the collapse of Ming rule in 1644. Originally, their main functions were to serve as 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

2242-405: 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

2301-595: 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 the former fascist police headquarters and used it to torture and execute state opponents. In the Fascist Italy (1922-1943) and

2360-401: The help of headmistress Elsa Weber, the school moved into a proper school building on September 1, 1928. During the 1934-1935 school year, there were 750 pupils at the school and a new headmistress, a Hungarian named Sophie Krammer. The previous headmaster was Helmut Schinkel, who had begun working there in 1932, but had made political mistakes. For the final five months, the headmaster

2419-594: The imperial family. In 1420, a second secret police organization run by eunuchs, known as 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

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2478-617: The interrogations, Rudolph Traibman, later said that when he complained to his superior, he was threatened with arrest. According to another contemporary, Leonid M. Sakovsky, "When Sorokin and Persitz ordered G. Yakubovich to sign arrest warrants, Yakubovich laid his wristwatch on the desk and said, 'Look how many arrest warrants I can sign in one minute.' And then he began to sign the warrants, without reading them." The investigations produced completed arrest reports that, according to one historian, are hardly worth reading; they report no details other than personal identification. Instead, they followed

2537-519: 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

2596-609: 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

2655-481: 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 was responsible for suppressing opposition groups to Nasser and his successors (Sadat and Mubarak). Torture

2714-451: 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 a constituent part of Zersetzung methods, although this is not definitely proven. The House of Terror museum in Budapest displays

2773-414: 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 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

2832-509: 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 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,

2891-414: Was a Russian, named Antip Vassilyevitch Brukov. The Soviet–German relations worsened following the coming of the Nazis to power in Germany in 1933, which seriously affected the school. In the middle of the school year, a group of pupils were deemed by the NKVD to be a fascist group. The pupil determined to be the leader, in the ninth grade, and another child were arrested, along with one teacher. Each

2950-428: 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

3009-552: 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 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

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3068-408: 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

3127-439: Was later sentenced. In 1936, the NKVD determined that among the teachers was a "counter-revolutionary, fascist-Trotskyite group". Other cases took place both inside and outside the school. In one case in 1936, a married couple was driven to suicide and in 1937, a number of pupils were executed. Two teachers, Kurt Bertram and Rudolf Senglaub, and thirteen students were arrested in the Hitler Youth Conspiracy, including Kurt Ahrendt,

3186-412: 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.

3245-402: Was not plausible for foreign children who had not been outside the Soviet Union in years. Instead, they were charged with having formed a branch of the Hitler Youth . Investigations regarding NKVD Order Number 8842 - the Hitler Youth conspiracy - began in January 1938. The commissar of the NKVD gave an order to find and arrest a group of young people who were alleged to have formed a branch of

3304-458: Was on February 20, 1938, at the Butovo firing range ; an additional 39 people were executed there between March and May 1938. Mikhail Persitz was ousted from the NKVD and arrested in April 1939 and indicted with three paragraphs of Article 58 . He was tortured and confessed his guilt, though he later recanted. An NKVD troop tribunal tried Persitz and found him guilty of all charges. He was shot on February 2, 1940. Ivan Sorokin, who had been head of

3363-418: Was popular with local Muscovites. Hans Hauska , a member of the German Theater's Left Column , led the choir. In the first years of the school, as was the case in early Soviet education, there was no history taught. Also, common to other schools employing ideas of progressive education , there no tests or grades, however some by 1935, some practices were "denounced as Trotskyite " and were abandoned. With

3422-400: Was rehabilitated postmortem in 1956. 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 the 1952 coup , the State Security apparatus was reformed and reorganized to suit

3481-445: 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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