By Patrick Barron
In Thailand and Philippines, it’s worth digging into the precise definitions of “terrorism.”
The 2015 Global Terrorism Index was recently launched by the Institute of Economics and Peace. The timing of the report, released just three days after the Paris attacks, was sadly opportune. The main message—that terrorism is on the rise and its reach is widening—chimes with a new assertiveness from political leaders who have competed to emphasize that the values of liberty must be preserved and, somewhat in contradiction, that terrorists should be rooted out by military or other means. This may portend an era of liberal interventionism, with participants including unlikely bedfellows such as Russia and China. The GTI, which ranks countries by their experience of terrorism, purports to point to those where anti-terrorist efforts should focus.
Problematically, this is based on a flawed understanding of what terrorism is, who does it, and what it looks like. The report employs a definition of terrorism that conflates many types of violence by many types of non-state groups, including sub-national secessionist movements, ideologically-motivated insurgents and political protesters. This, accompanied by inconsistencies in what is deemed a terrorist act and what is not, leads to misleading findings.
This is dangerous given how states, particularly since 9/11, have consistently used counter-terrorism rhetoric to repress dissent at the expense of finding political solutions to complex problems.
Read the full story at The Diplomat