Sluka, quoting Nagengast: "Since 1945, state-sponsored violence toward ethnic and political groups has caused more deaths, injuries, and general human suffering than 'all other forms of deadly conflict, including international wars and colonial and civil wars'" (2)
"This rise in state terror is a direct corollary of the alarming rise in the number of authoritarian states during this period — variously characterized in contemporary literature as 'shakedown' (Chomsky and
Herman 1979), 'strong' (Ackroyd et al. 1980), 'national security' (Herman 1982), 'coercive' (Hillyard and Percy-Smith 1988), 'fearful' (Ali 1988), 'homicidal' (Amnesty International 1992), or "outlaw" (Taylor 1993) states —who routinely employ terror and other forms of mass intimidation against their own civilian populations" (2)
"terror practiced by authoritarian states has resulted in a couple of million 'disappearances' and other politically motivated murders, at least several million people tortured, many millions of political refugees, scores of millions of people threatened and intimidated by the use of direct and indirect state terror" (2)
"In scores of countries worldwide, the most fundamental human rights are being transgressed
by government-condoned terror involving the harassment, torture, and murder of political opponents of those in power." (3)
"In 1996, among 150 countries surveyed, 82 (55 percent) were guilty of torturing and 61 (41
percent) of murdering political opponents of those in power (Amnesty International 1997)." (3)