External resources relating to Repression of protest

Since then, every corner of St. Louis has erupted in protests. In response, St. Louis’ law-enforcement community has engaged in a no-holds-barred effort to thwart the protests by any means necessary. Venturing outside the normal boundaries of policing and public safety, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department has used questionable tactics to attack, criminalize and intimidate activists into silence and compliance.

With the continuation of the construction of the Ilisu Dam and Hydroelectric Power Plant on the Tigris River in December 2014, the dam construction site has been militarized intensely.

The world was stunned when rifle-toting police officers in masks and body armour rolled up in Ferguson, Missouri, in armoured vehicles, to stop the 2014 street protests over the police shooting of black teenager Michael Brown.

Following the public backlash, then-president Obama signed an executive order in 2015 limiting police access to equipment that belonged "on the battlefield".

Fast forward two years to Donald Trump. This week the US President promised to make it legal again for surplus military equipment, including grenade launchers and tanks, to be passed on to law enforcement agencies.

Indonesian paramilitary police have shot and killed one person and wounded a number of others at a protest in a West Papuan village, according to human rights groups and local witnesses.

On Friday afternoon, 28 July 2017, in excessive use of force against demonstrators protesting the latest Israeli measures in Jerusalem and al-Aqsa Mosque, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian child and wounded 10 civilians, including 2 children, in an area near the border fence with Israel in the Eastern Gaza Strip.  This crime indicates that Israeli forces continue to commit more crimes and use excessive force against Palestinian civilians in disregard for the latter’s life.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns in the strongest terms the Israeli authorities’ escalation of the measures taken against al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem.  Those measures included closing the Mosque; banning prayers; and establishing metal detector gates at its Gates.  PCHR also condemns the Israeli authorities’ use of excessive forces against civilians performing prayers at the Noble Sanctuary’s gates and those participating in protests throughout the Palestinian cities against the Israeli measures.  Those protests resulted in the killing of 4 Palestinian civilians, including 2 children, and injury of dozens; most of their condition was described as serious.

Riot police detained demonstrators during opposition rallies in central Moscow and St Petersburg on Monday. The protest was one of several being held on Monday in cities across Russia spearheaded by Alexei Navalny, who has become the Kremlin’s most prominent critic. The politician and anti-corruption campaigner was arrested outside his home en route to the Moscow rally

On 13 December 2015, at least nine Palestinian students of the Palestine Technical University-Kadoorie in Tulkarm were shot by soldiers of the Israeli Occupation Forces. About 7,000 students receive their higher education at the University, which has been exposed to increasing attacks by the IOF, particularly since autumn 2015. Despite the fact that the University’s land is within Area A, as defined in the Oslo Accords, putting it under full Palestinian Authority, about 23 dunums of the land are used by the Israelis as a military training area. As a consequence, soldiers are continuously present on campus, which is leading to frequent violence against Palestinian students. Mohannad Youssef is a 18-years old resident of Nur A-Shams refugee camp, located about 3 kilometers east of the city of Tulkarm, who is one of the victims of December 13.

Mohannad used to study at the Industrial Rehabilitation Center of Tulkarm to become a blacksmith and was visiting friends at Kadoorie University on the day of the shooting. When he was about to leave the University, he was hindered by the escalations taking place between Palestinian students who were throwing stones at the Israeli soldiers, who reacted with live fire. “I just wanted to get back home to have dinner with my family, but there were stones and bullets everywhere so I tried to stay out of the fire and waited for the incident to stop”, Mohannad describes. Standing there, with his arms folded and waiting for the violence to end, the at the time 16-years old boy was approached by a soldier when he suddenly felt pain in his eye. When the paramedics present at the scene saw that Muhannad was injured on his eye, they immediately took him to the public hospital in Tulkarm. “I was so scared, I was under shock and did not realize what happened”, Mohannad explains.

A protest of a planned coal-fired power plant in Bangladesh turned sour on Thursday, when police reportedly confronted marchers with tear gas, rubber bullets, and water cannons in the capital city of Dhaka. Injuries have been reported, varying from five to more than 50.

A protest of a planned coal-fired power plant in Bangladesh turned sour on Thursday, when police reportedly confronted marchers with tear gas, rubber bullets, and water cannons in the capital city of Dhaka. Injuries have been reported, varying from five to more than 50.

According to police estimates reported by Reuters, around 200 protesters had gathered to show their opposition to the Rampal power plant, which critics say will disrupt the nearby Sundarbans mangrove and endanger the health of thousands of local residents. Organized by the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports, the protest was reportedly intended to be an eight-hour event.

This week, activists across the world celebrated as the Army Corps of Engineers announced that it would not grant the permit for the Dakota Access pipeline to drill under the Missouri river. This followed campaigning efforts from local Standing Rock Sioux tribe and thousands of Native American supporters from across North America and further afield, who argued that if the pipeline was approved, their spiritual lands would be compromised and local waters would be contaminated, threatening their livelihood. With a message that resonated with indigenous rights activists and environmentalists everywhere, campaigners were successful in forcing officials to back down...

Police tactics at the Dakota Access Pipeline protest grew dramatically more aggressive last week, with law enforcement using tear gas, rubber pellets, sound cannons, and other controversial methods to clear activists from a road and a nearby encampment. The latest clashes followed a complaint from Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault, who warned of an “overall militarization of law enforcement” at the pipeline protest and requested an investigation by the Department of Justice...

Morton County, ND – Over two hundred multi-state law enforcement and National Guard personnel attacked water protectors gathered on unceded 1851 Oceti Sakowin treaty land just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in the late morning of Thursday, October 27th.

Video below shows police attacking Oceti Sakowin Treaty Camp with pepper spray, less-lethal rounds used at close range, batons, LRAD, and tasers (VIDEO).

North Dakota police with military-style equipment surrounded Native Americans gathered in prayer against the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline on Wednesday, disrupting their plan to cross sacred and treaty-protected land in protest of a project they fear will destroy their livelihood.

This report analyses political developments and human rights violations in West Papua by the Indonesian state in response to the West Papuan people’s aspirations for self-determination.  It covers the period between January 2014, when a delegation of Melanesian Spearhead Group Foreign Ministers’ visited the territory, and 15 July 2016, the day after Melanesian Spearhead Group Special Leaders meet in Honiara and decided to defer a decision on the United Liberation Movement for West Papua’s application for full membership. That decision will now be made by MSG leaders in Port Vila, Vanuatu before September.

PLEASANTON — A gathering of more than 5,000 law enforcement workers next week at the Alameda County Fairgrounds also is expected to draw about 1,000 protesters.

Urban Shield, billed as an emergency preparedness exercise, is set to take place Thursday through Sept. 12. at the fairgrounds in Pleasanton. The event, hosted by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office since 2007, will this year also include national police from Mexico and Taiwan, said Alameda County Sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Ray Kelly.

More than two years since the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) staged a coup in Thailand, the military regime continues to justify its grip on power by running the systematic militarisation of law and the judicial process against its critics, political dissidents and ordinary citizens, according to a recent report by the Thai Lawyers for Human Rights. In doing so, the military has created its own versions of law and manipulated the entire justice process, depriving civilians of their rights to fair trial and violating their rights to freedom of expression...

Bangkok: Theerawan Charoensuk never thought posting a photo of herself on Facebook holding a red water scoop with greetings for next week's Thai New Year would result in her being charged with sedition and facing up to seven years' jail.

The bowl had a message from Thailand's former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a divisive figure who lives in exile to avoid jail on corruption charges.

"Although the situation is heated, it's hoped that brothers and sisters will be soothed by the water in the bowl," it read.

After Theerawan, a 57-year-old housewife from the northern city of Chiang Mai, was taken to a military base for questioning, military spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd warned that Thailand's military-led regime is running out of patience with those it sees as creating conflict, as south-east Asia's second-largest economy enters an uncertain transition from strict military rule to what ruling generals describe as "Thai-style democracy"...

El Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, a leading voice in Egypt's struggle against police violence since 1993, is facing imminent threat of closure by the government. According to the independent Egyptian website Mada Masr: 'The state justified the [closure] decision by claiming the center's clinic issues reports "condemning police violations against terrorist groups," said Suzanne Fayyad, a doctor at Al-Nadeem.' They are fighting the threat though telling Mada Masr: "Ideas don't have licenses," Magda Aly from the center said defiantly. "Even if the center is shut down, efforts to combat torture will never cease."

This interview with Executive Director Aida Seif al-Dawla of the El Nadeem Center was conducted over e-mail in the Fall of 2015 and originally published in January of this year in The Abolitionist, a publication of Critical Resistance.

The Ugandan elections are scheduled for Thursday 18 February and demonstrations have been taking place in the capital, Kampala.... In the lead up to election day, the Ugandan police received 35 CS/VP3 personnel carriers   from the Chinese company, Poly Technologies. The vehicles were spotted at the Kenyan port of Mobasa on 4 February, preparing for transit to Uganda.

Over the last four decades, there have been many in working class mining villages, in black and Asian communities, amongst numerous protest movements and in the north of Ireland who would profoundly disagree. Nevertheless, it is a comforting and prevailing fiction – even if it is hard to reconcile with the fact the police in this country are apparently in a permanent state of war.

The use of riot control agents (RCAs) as a method of warfare is prohibited under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). The Convention, however, permits the employment of such chemicals for law enforcement including domestic riot control purposes, provided they are used in “types and quantities” consistent with such purposes.

Whilst CWC States Parties are prohibited from developing RCA munitions for use in armed conflict, they may manufacture, acquire and utilise delivery systems to disseminate appropriate “types and quantities” of RCAs for law enforcement. However, there is continuing ambiguity as to the nature and specifications of those means of delivery that are prohibited under the Convention. This ambiguity has potentially dangerous consequences, allowing divergent interpretations, policy and practice amongst States Parties to emerge.

Of particular concern – given the current research and development of unmanned systems - are the implications for the regulation of “remote control” RCA means of delivery. These are dissemination mechanisms incorporating automatic or semi-automatic systems where the operator is directing operation of the platform and/or RCA delivery device at a distance from the target. Certain “remote control” devices incorporate target activated mechanisms triggering automatic RCA dispersal, without realtime operational control, whilst others employ a “man in the loop” system, requiring human authorisation before the RCA is released.

This report highlights the ongoing development, testing, production and promotion by a range of State and commercial entities of a wide variety of “remote control” RCA means of delivery including: indoor fixed installation RCA dispersion devices; external area clearing or area denial devices; automatic grenade launchers; multiple munition launchers; delivery mechanisms on unmanned ground vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles.

This infographic uses news stories from September and October 2015 to highlight key examples of excessive use of force by Israeli soldiers and police against Palestinians in the latest escalations across the OPT.