The Political Costs of Abusing Human Rights
The CIA seal. Photo courtesy of CIA.
By
As countries around the world continue to battle a deadly pandemic, another crisis has persisted: mass human rights violations perpetrated by the state. In 2020, human rights activists raised the alarm on arbitrary mass detentions and torture in Belarus, political imprisonment and crackdowns in Hong Kong, abuse of Uighurs Muslims in Xinjiang China, attacks on protestors by Nigerian security forces, and police violence toward black people and Black Lives Matters protestors in the US.
Policymakers and international relations scholars debate the political costs of committing human rights violations, and the conditions under which governments are more or less likely to be punished. But government attempts to cover up their bad behavior makes analysis of the issue difficult. To fill this gap, I’ve investigated the political consequences of international cooperation in CIA rendition, detention, and in