'It got worse': UNC Asheville faculty release annual Political Terror Scale

For almost 40 years, faculty at UNC Asheville have helped in the creation of the annual global Political Terror Scale. The report measures and codes human rights violations by countries across the globe.Mark Gibney is a professor at UNC Asheville and one of the principal researchers for the report. He said in general, things got worse in 2020. He told BPR he didn't believe it was necessarily pandemic related, but had more to do with the protests that followed the police murder of George Floyd in May 2020. Gibney says there was a worldwide ripple effect from the marches in the United States, which led to more confrontations between demonstrators and police and security forces in other countries. In particular, Gibney noted countries like Australia, Belgium, France, Peru, and Portugal - which previously had level 1 rankings - saw their political terror scale ratings drop in the past year.