Explaining disappearances as a tool of political terror

Despite the widespread use of disappearances as a central tool of terror in recent decades, little is known about the emergence of the phenomenon or its underlying rationale. We argue that growing international accountability norms, coupled with the improved quality of reporting human rights abuses, paradoxically reshaped the repressive strategies of certain regimes and pushed them to deploy more clandestine and extrajudicial forms of repression, predominantly disappearances. We also explore the timing of disappearances: when a state decides to deploy a particular instrument of terror can greatly benefit our understanding of why it was used. We show that repressive regimes tend to use disappearances in the first period after a coup, taking advantage of the general confusion and opacity to secure strategic benefits and protect the regime from external scrutiny and future accountability. Our findings contribute to the growing literature on human rights and political repression by highlighting an ‘unintended consequence’ of international accountability norms: repressive regimes turn to clandestine crimes

Fonctionnement des électrodes poreuses soufre-nickel

On prépare une électrode poreuse par compression de poudres de soufre et de nickel. On utilise cette électrode comme cathode dans une solution de potasse normale; le soufre est réduit électrochimiquement à la température ordinaire. Pendant l’électrolyse à intensité constante, le potentiel de la face antérieure de l’électrode est enregistré en fonction du temps. La courbe présente une partie rectiligne. La pente des parties rectilignes des courbes de décharge donne directement le rapport du facteur de tortuosité à la conductivité de la phase électrolytique de l’électrode. En mesurant par ailleurs le facteur de tortuosité on atteint la conductivité de la phase électrolytique

Torture:from Algiers to Abu Ghraib

The treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq focused worldwide media attention on the US practice of torture. Underlying such a practice was not only a self-serving debate in US political circles, academia and entertainment media on how a liberal democracy could justify such methods but also a history of counter-insurgency techniques which owed much to French warfare in Algeria. Yet while the lessons of the torturer have been assiduously learnt, what has been ignored is the recent open debate in France on the profound damage done by such institutionalised barbarity both to the victims and to the individuals and regimes that deploy it