Secret police

A secret police is a special executive state organ in authoritarian or totalitarian states in which the activities of police and secret service are combined and whose purpose is to protect the political power of a dictator or military government by prosecuting opposition members as well as "political crimes" committed by them (see also police state). In this context, most secret police are de facto or even de jure outside the control of the rule of law. Similar tasks in theocracies are fulfilled by the religious police.

Their repressive methods range from intimidation to confiscation of property, censorship, arbitrary arrest or deportation, disappearances, disinformation, the operation of secret prisons and interrogation centres ­for political prisoners, torture and the killing of opponents (cf. state terror). Secret police can also be embedded as special units in organizations otherwise operating as intelligence services and thus not readily recognizable to ­outsiders. In most cases, they are responsible to only one executive body. Under certain circumstances, they can develop a life of their own without the knowledge of their actual leadership with regard to objectives and the demarcation of their areas of activity from other state agencies.

Known secret police organizations

Known secret police organizations were or are

• the Prussian Secret Police (see for example: Cologne Communist Trials)
• the ochrana of Tsar Alexander III. ,
• the Secret State Police ("Gestapo") in National Socialist Germany,
• the Ministry of State Security ("Stasi") of the GDR,
• the Political Police of the German People's Police ("Arbeitsgebiet I") in the GDR,
• the Office for Combating Communist Activities (Buró de Represión de Actividades Comunistas/BRAC) in Cuba under Fulgencio Batista,
• the Seguridad del Estado (State Security) of the Cuban Ministry of the Interior,
• the Ministry of State Security in the People's Republic of China,
• the State Security of Czechoslovakia (Státní bezpečnost, StB),
• the Służba Bezpieczeństwa (SB) in the Polish People's Republic,
• the Uprava državne bezbednosti (UDBA) in SFR Yugoslavia
• the Securitate in the People's Republic of Romania,
• the Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado (PIDE, International State Protection Police) in Portugal before 1974,
• the Gossudarstvennoje polititscheskoje uprawlenije (GPU/OGPU) and parts of the KGB in the Soviet Union
• the KGB in Belarus.

See also

• Political Police (Germany)
• Surveillance State