Political violence can be analyzed through the “flip side of the coin” that is the field of “counterterrorism”. Numerous scientific studies demonstrate that there is a reciprocal effect between the violence (structural or direct) of state institutions and activism. This phenomenon is known as the “backfire effect”, which means that repressive or “counterterrorist” policies have a counter-productive effect, leading to long-term “security losses”. According to Lindekilde, there are two dimensions of “counter-terrorism policies” that can be counter-productive: one refers to “hard counterterrorism” instruments of state coercion, such as surveillance or preventive detention, and the other corresponds to “soft counterterrorism” instruments of sensibilization, through the use of the media or social…

The omertà of the “international community” is particularly surprising when it comes to the atrocities committed during and after the colonization of the Congo. In this regard, the massacres of “Ten million” of African by Belgium between 1884 and 1908, or the massacres of Congolese during the Second Congo War from August 1998 to June 2003, with more than five million civilians’ casualties, have received very little media coverage. Once again, as in colonial times, the tragedy of the Congolese people is overshadowed on the international agenda, with populations forced to flee their villages and take refuge in the forests. Let’s define the central concepts of this article entitled: “The…

According to Professor Adam Hochschild from the University of Berkeley: “It is an oversimplification to blame Africa’s [especially the Congo] troubles today entirely on European imperialism; history is far more complicated. And yet, consider Mobutu again. Aside from the color of his skin, there were few ways in which he did not resemble the [Belgian] monarch who governed the same territory a hundred years earlier”. Indeed, there is a colonial legacy that Mobutu perpetuated in the post-colonial era (from formal independence in 1960 to 1997). According to David Van Reybrouck: “Congo was independent, true enough, but the Belgians not only ran things economically, they also maintained a total grip…

“Ten million” of African perished in the (Belgian) Congo due to the King Leopold II of Belgium and his servants over the period from 1884 to 1908. According to the historian Adam Hochschild, professor at the University of Berkeley who graduated from Harvard, this number of “ten million” of African victims is an estimated figure. Indeed, the number of casualties is undoubtedly underestimated, to the point where researchers speak of a “Holocaust” perpetrated in Central Africa, and more precisely of a “Holocaust in the (Belgian) Congo”. In the 1880s, this Belgian monarch took possession “on a personal basis” of the tremendous wealth contained in the Congo River basin, which…

In this article, we will briefly present a state of the art on the factors leading to political violence applicable to various configurations of armed conflicts (terrorism, civil war, etc.) in the French and English-speaking scientific literatures. Let us start with the Francophone literature, which identifies four main factors leading to political violence. The first factor to political violence refers to the “general context” (Coolsaet, 2015) or structural context, such as socio-economic and political marginalisation. Thus, the majority of political violence are individuals in a state of precariousness (Khosrokhavar, 2014) and political exclusion (Burgat, 2016). The second factor corresponds to...