Police brutality: Difference between revisions

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=== Poland ===

In the Polish People's Republic during the [[Cold War]], police brutality was widespread and was mostly perpetrated by the [[ZOMO]], which were paramilitary riot police. They gained the most of their infamy during the period of [[Military Council of National Salvation|martial law in Poland]]. During this time period their brutal actions against peaceful protesters often affiliated with the oppositionist Solidarity movement, and the subsequent lack of prosecution of those responsible for deaths of protesters, were major factors in bringing down the communist regime. Since 1990 several trials against former ZOMO members and their political leaders took place, most prominently in the case of the massacre in the Wujek Coal Mine (where nine people were killed and 21 wounded when Katowice's Special Platoon opened fire on the striking miners in 1981 in the bloodiest incident of the martial law era).

=== [[Nazi Party|Nazi Germany]] ===

Police brutality became common in Germany following [[Adolf Hitler]]'s rise to power, particularly when [[the Holocaust]] got underway. SS-''Reichsführer'' [[Heinrich Himmler]] established the ''[[Ordnungspolizei]]'' as the official police force of Nazi Germany, giving them nearly unlimited power to persecute ideological opponents and "undesirables" of the Nazi regime such as Jews, freemasons, the churches, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other groups defined as "asocial". The Nazi conception of criminality was racial and biological, holding that criminal traits were hereditary, and had to be exterminated to purify German blood. As a result, even ordinary criminals were consigned to [[concentration camp]]s to remove them from the German racial community (''Volksgemeinschaft'') and ultimately exterminate them.

[[Category:Evil vs Evil]]

@@ Line 33: / Line 33: @@
 === Poland ===
 In the Polish People's Republic during the [[Cold War]], police brutality was widespread and was mostly perpetrated by the [[ZOMO]], which were paramilitary riot police. They gained the most of their infamy during the period of [[Military Council of National Salvation|martial law in Poland]]. During this time period their brutal actions against peaceful protesters often affiliated with the oppositionist Solidarity movement, and the subsequent lack of prosecution of those responsible for deaths of protesters, were major factors in bringing down the communist regime. Since 1990 several trials against former ZOMO members and their political leaders took place, most prominently in the case of the massacre in the Wujek Coal Mine (where nine people were killed and 21 wounded when Katowice's Special Platoon opened fire on the striking miners in 1981 in the bloodiest incident of the martial law era).
+=== [[Nazi Party|Nazi Germany]] ===
+Police brutality became common in Germany following [[Adolf Hitler]]'s rise to power, particularly when [[the Holocaust]] got underway. SS-''Reichsführer'' [[Heinrich Himmler]] established the ''[[Ordnungspolizei]]'' as the official police force of Nazi Germany, giving them nearly unlimited power to persecute ideological opponents and "undesirables" of the Nazi regime such as Jews, freemasons, the churches, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other groups defined as "asocial". The Nazi conception of criminality was racial and biological, holding that criminal traits were hereditary, and had to be exterminated to purify German blood. As a result, even ordinary criminals were consigned to [[concentration camp]]s to remove them from the German racial community (''Volksgemeinschaft'') and ultimately exterminate them.
 [[Category:Evil vs Evil]]