secret police

Definition of secret police

: a police organization operating for the most part in secrecy and especially for the political purposes of its government often with terroristic methods

Examples of secret police in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web The detention of the escapees also has evoked the experience of Simon Cheng, an employee of the British Consulate in Hong Kong who participated in protests and said he was tortured by China’s secret police while detained last fall in Shenzhen. — Wenxin Fan, WSJ, "China Signals It Will Put 12 Fleeing Hong Kong Residents on Trial," 30 Sep. 2020 The secret police were exuberant practitioners of the bait-and switch. — New York Times, "They Came for My Father Nearly 30 Years Ago. It Still Haunts Me.," 6 Oct. 2020 There was skepticism of anonymous reporting, a possible holdover from when secret police operated in the country, said Kurt Michels, Volkswagen’s chief compliance officer who joined the car maker in April 2017. — Mengqi Sun And Jack Hagel, WSJ, "Volkswagen Tries to Change Workplace Culture That Fueled Emissions Scandal," 30 Sep. 2020 Within months, secret police killed 10,000 real or imagined enemies of the regime. — National Geographic, "Can we salute 'essential workers'?," 7 Sep. 2020 What had been characterized as secret police tactics were, in fact, just police tactics. — Melissa Gira Grant, The New Republic, "All Police Can Be Secret Police," 30 July 2020 Under the East German regime, his outspokenness put him under close observation by the Stasi, the infamous East German secret police. — Jasper Bastian, Smithsonian Magazine, "Hatred in Plain Sight," 21 Sep. 2020 In the late 1970s, Iranian Shias faced a repressive monarch in Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a shah driven by personal interests in power and wealth and all too willing to brutally censor his own people with secret police and military crackdowns. — Jason Schlude, Star Tribune, "A Minnesota scholar shows how we could find common ground with, and through, Shia Islam," 18 Sep. 2020 According to Bloomberg, al-Sadhan was working in his office in Riyadh in 2018 when Saudi Arabia's secret police took him into custody. — Timothy B. Lee, Ars Technica, "Report: 2015 Twitter breach targeted Saudi dissidents, led to arrests," 19 Aug. 2020

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'secret police.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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Last Updated

22 Oct 2020

Cite this Entry

“Secret police.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/secret%20police. Accessed 24 Oct. 2020.

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