Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity | Death Squads

In many civil and regional conflicts in the world since the 1950s, states, state agencies (most often the military or police), or semiprivate groups have formed special death squads in an effort to eliminate unwanted ideological, ethnic, or religious opponents. Death squads have been responsible for tens of thousands of deaths, and perhaps more, during this time. The phenomenon has been most commonly associated in the public mind with Latin American countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, but in fact, death squads have surfaced in many other countries and most parts of the world, including Indonesia, the Philippines, India, Turkey, Algeria, Uganda, apartheid South Africa, and Northern Ireland.

Death squads are clandestine and usually irregular organizations, often paramilitary in nature, that carry out extrajudicial executions and other violent acts (i.e., torture, rape, arson,...