15.4.3 State Instability and Human Rights Abuses

Many of the migrants arriving at the southern border of the United States are fleeing economic and political disorder in their home countries. This pattern goes back many decades. For example, many thousands of Salvadoran migrants have entered the United States each year, especially during and after the El Salvador Civil War (Figure 15.29). That war began in 1979 with a military coup supported by the United States, which feared that radical leftist elements in El Salvador were destabilizing the country and leading it in a direction contrary to U.S. Cold War interests.

By supporting the coup with money, military training, and the sharing of intelligence reports, the United States hoped to return stability to El Salvador, but the opposite occurred. Many in El Salvador felt the military government was illegitimate and staged protests and resistance. The military responded with violence of its own, such as a deadly attack on demonstrators in 1980. There were also rightist paramilitary groups, often referred to as “death squads,” fighting against leftist guerrilla forces in the countryside and committing murders and massacres. As the country descended into chaos, many left and found refuge in the United States. Today these immigrants number about 2.5 million.

A similar pattern of civil war and instability in other parts of Central America has also produced human rights abuses and an increase in migration to the United States. The Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996), for example, led to numerous human rights violations against Guatemalans. These included a reported campaign of violence and terrorism by the government against ethnic Mayans and peasants accused of supporting leftist guerrilla groups. Nicaragua has experienced destabilization since the 1960s as well. Leftist guerrilla organizations fought against the dictatorship of the Somoza family, which ruled until the late 1970s. Then, in 1979, one of the major leftist groups, the Sandinistas, took control. The Sandinistas were socialists, and within months they had opened diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and later accepted its economic and military assistance. This action alarmed the United States and led it to support resistance to the Sandinista government, which contributed to an escalation of the violence and a number of human rights abuses on both sides.

While violence in Central America has declined in the last few decades, it persists elsewhere. Venezuela, effectively a one-party state since 2007, has been accused by the United States of a number of human rights abuses. These include murder, imprisonment, torture, and government support of armed groups that commit violence against protestors. Similar accusations have been made against the governments in Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile. Chile’s government committed numerous human rights abuses against its people during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990). These included torture, execution, and sexual abuse of leftist political opponents. While Pinochet has since died, human rights organizations claim the abuses continue, particularly against Indigenous groups and those identifying as LGBTQ+.

Similar human rights abuses committed by authoritarian governments are also a persistent reality across much of Africa. Between April and July 1994, nearly 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda when an estimated 200,000 members of the Hutu majority sought to wipe out the minority Tutsi population and any Hutus who tried to protect them. Armed conflicts in countries like Liberia, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, and Somalia have also led to many human rights violations. In a number of countries, militant Islamic organizations have committed civilian massacres and targeted killings. These include attacks by Boko Haram, the Islamic State in West Africa, and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, which have been responsible for many hundreds of deaths over the last few years. In response, the governments in these countries have committed atrocities of their own. For example, in 2021, government forces in the Central African Republic attacked a mosque and killed fourteen people.

Governments across Africa have often used violence to break up anti-government protests. For example, in the small southern African country of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), government forces broke up a pro-democracy protest in 2021, killing eighty people and injuring more than two hundred. Many more who protested the regime of the Eswatini king Mswati III were arrested (Figure 15.30). Similar actions against protestors in Sudan that year led to the deaths of fifty-three people. And other government abuses across the continent have resulted in long prison sentences and even death for protestors, whistleblowers, and journalists who have challenged government policies.

In Asia, Myanmar and China demonstrate that human rights violations can emerge where racial and religious prejudices against minorities are pronounced. The Rohingya people, a Muslim minority living in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar, have faced oppression for generations, including being officially excluded from citizenship in 1982. Because they are a small minority and viewed with suspicion by the larger Buddhist population, they have long been vulnerable to attacks. In 2017, brutality against the Rohingya escalated dramatically and triggered a mass migration of more than 700,000 to neighboring Bangladesh. As of 2022, nearly a million Rohingya people were still living in large refugee camps there (Figure 15.31).

Another case of state-sponsored abuse against an ethnic minority is the oppression of the Uyghurs of China (Figure 15.32). The Uyghurs number about eleven million and are a mostly Muslim ethnic group of Turkic origin living in northwestern Xinjiang. The Chinese government has repressed them for decades, claiming that many hold extremist ideas about carving out their own Islamic state, which China views as a threat to its territorial integrity. Chinese policy has been to compel the Uyghurs to conform their religious beliefs more thoroughly to the state’s nationalist message and to eliminate separatist movements. Since at least as early as 2017, China has rounded up several hundred thousand Uyghurs and placed them in what it calls vocational training centers. Human rights groups, however, have described these as reeducation camps intended to compel the Uyghurs to renounce Islam and become loyal Chinese citizens. Relatively little is known about the many camps because the state controls information and denies that abuse occurs within them.

Women and girls often face the brunt of violence when instability reigns or when states sponsor oppression against minorities. Both Rohingya and Uyghur women have described sexual abuse perpetrated by the state or with its tacit approval. In 2014, the world condemned the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram’s attack on a girl’s high school in Nigeria and its kidnapping of 276 mostly Christian female students, many of whom were forced into marriages with Boko Haram members or sold into sexual slavery. Those who escaped have described beatings, sexual assaults, and torture. While this event captured global attention, including from First Lady Michelle Obama, many similar kidnappings have occurred before and since with almost no international coverage at all (Figure 15.33).

The situation of women in Afghanistan is particularly dire. Since retaking control of the country in August 2021 following the U.S. military’s departure, the Taliban has rolled back virtually all the once-protected civil rights of women and girls. Afghan women have been denied access to education, health care, and civil rights and the right to free expression, freedom of movement, and freedom of association. They are required to completely cover their bodies while outdoors and are routinely inspected by security officials to ensure they are properly clothed and in the company of a male relative. Because they are now restricted in the types of jobs they can hold, many Afghan women have found it difficult to earn enough money to support themselves or their families as they once did.