Culture of Denial

• Alverez 2010: recent years have seen the growing impact of international human rights pressure groups such as Amnesty International, pressuring states to improve their human rights. 
• Cohen 2006: states now have to make a greater effort to conceal or justify their human rights crimes, or relabel them as not crimes. Democratic states have to legitimate their actions in a more complex way than authoritarian states. 
• Cohen 2006 - ‘spiral of state denial’: 

  1. ‘It didn’t happen’ - state claims there was no crime. Victims and media show it did happen, ‘here are the graves; we have the photos’
  2. ‘If it did happen, “it” is something else’ - state re-labels the event as a not crime. 
  3. ‘Even if it is what you say it is, its justified’