Catalonia’s referendum on independence was marred by dramatic scenes of violence on Sunday as Spanish police and Civil Guards burst into polling stations to try to prevent the vote taking place. Initial reports said 38 would-be voters were injured in the ensuing clashes, but by early evening figures were far higher. The Catalan government health department reported over 840 people had needed various degrees of medical attention, whilst Spain’s Ministry of the Interior said 12 police officers had been hurt.
External resources relating to Repression of protest
Dozens of people in Hong Kong say they were injured by the police during a mass demonstration in June against a contentious bill that would allow extraditions to mainland China. The New York Times reviewed hundreds of videos and photos posted online by witnesses, along with submissions to our WhatsApp tip line, to assess whether the Hong Kong police used excessive force. Experts at Amnesty International, a human rights group, helped examine the footage.
France’s interior minister has asked the Paris police chief to explain a controversial riot police operation to remove climate activists from a bridge, after a video of officers using pepper spray and dragging protesters went viral on social media. The interior ministry said the police operation to clear the demonstrators was “necessary to restore traffic circulation in the centre of Paris”.
Security forces in Sudan have used teargas and baton charges in an effort to break up a protest by tens of thousands of peaceful anti-government demonstrators
A gilets jaunes (yellow vests) demonstrator injured in the eye at a demonstration in Paris will be disabled for life, his lawyer has said.
Jérôme Rodrigues, a high-profile member of the protest movement, claims he was struck by a “flash-ball”, a launcher used by French riot police to fire large rubber pellets. They have been blamed for dozens of injuries, some serious, including the loss of an eye.
Thousands of people have taken to the streets in cities across Sudan, including the capital, where activists said a child and a doctor were killed in clashes between police and protesters calling for the end of Omar al-Bashir’s 30-year-old rule.
Indigenous protesters in Canada have called a growing police presence near their makeshift checkpoint “an act of war”, as tensions mount over a stalled pipeline project in northern British Columbia.
In defiance of a court order, dozens of protesters have gathered on a logging road nearly 700km (430 miles) north-west of Vancouver, to block the construction of a natural gas pipeline.
On the surface, Noor Noor and Terry Burns don't have much in common. The former is a 28-year-old student at Cambridge, getting a degree in environmental conservation that he plans to use back home in Cairo, Egypt. The latter sells lawn ornaments and homegrown vegetables out of her house in the rolling farmlands of Jamestown, Pennsylvania, population 617. They've never met.
But Noor and Burns are linked by the global trade in nonlethal weapons, a growing industry that burst into the headlines recently when the U.S. Border Patrol tear gassed asylum-seekers on the country's southern border. It's the most recent, high-profile incident in a decade that has seen rising use of tear gas around the world.
A tense calm has returned to Harare a day after three people were shot dead as soldiers and police fought running battles with hundreds of protesters, firing live ammunition, teargas and water cannon.
London-listed Vedanta Resources hopes to restart its copper smelter in a southern Indian city and still wants to double its capacity despite protests demanding its closure that killed 13 people this week, a company executive told Reuters on Friday.
Some distance from where the anti-Sterlite protesters were, a Tamil Nadu policeman in plainclothes had parked himself atop a police bus. He was armed with what appeared to be an assault rifle and had been seen in photographs, taking aim. On the road below, are a large number of policemen. Some of them wearing bullet-proof vests, some without protection in their khaki and some riot-control policemen. Then, someone decides to send another policeman to the roof of the bus. According to a video released by news agency ANI, he crawls the length of the bus in a few seconds like an expert commando, takes his position and the assault rifle.
In Nicaragua, what began as demonstrations against social security reforms have become a national outcry against corruption, censorship and overall repression.
In just five days of demonstrations, the government has carried out a violent crackdown. While state sources are reporting a death toll of 10, human rights and protest groups estimate that at least 25 people have been killed in protests, with many more injured, and dozens detained or disappeared.
The death toll from anti-government protests in Nicaragua has risen to 25 as the national police were accused of using live rounds against demonstrators.
Those killed include Ángel Gahona, a journalist who was shot dead while presenting a live broadcast on protests in Bluefields, a town on the country’s Caribbean coast.
According to human rights groups, 25 people have died since 18 April in unrest over social security reforms planned by the government of president Daniel Ortega. At least 67 people have been shot by the police with live rounds or rubber bullets, or beaten by members of the Sandinista Youth and other pro-government groups. A further 43 people were reported to have “disappeared” over the weekend.
Yesterday was Mother’s Day in Bahrain. And it was yesterday that my wife, Duaa Alwadaei, the beloved mother of my two children, was handed a prison sentence. Not because she committed any crime, but because I protested in London when the King of Bahrain visited Downing Street in 2016. She is not the only one to face reprisals because of my human rights activism in London. Her mother, brother and cousin all languish in Bahrain’s notorious prisons. Tortured and convicted after a flawed trial.
The police, prisons and courts that have done this to my family were all trained by Britain, in multimillion-pound projects funded by the UK taxpayer. Far from raising human rights standards in Bahrain, British-trained bodies have failed to investigate torture allegations – paving the way for Bahrain’s kangaroo courts to sentence people based on coerced confessions.
How did tear gas became the go-to weapon in riot control, what are its real health implications, and why should we trace the money when it comes to understanding the increase in crowd-control weapons around the world?
Activists in Honduras have been targeted in a wave of surveillance, intimidation and violence since the country’s security forces cracked down on a wave of social unrest prompted by last month’s disputed presidential election... Fernández and other activists have also accused the Honduran police and military – as well as armed civilians – of intimidating protesters who are still holding regular demonstrations over alleged fraud in the re-election of President Juan Orlando Hernández. A national strike was launched on Sunday ahead of Hernández’s inauguration this weekend. Thousands of security forces, including military police and elite Cobra riot officers, have been deployed since the election in late November.
On Friday afternoon, 08 December 2017, in excessive use of force, Israeli forces killed 4 Palestinians, including 2 civilians, and wounded 259 others, including 32 children and 4 women, in the Gaza Strip and West Bank in protests and airstrikes carried out by Israeli warplanes. This escalation occurred following the American President Donald Trump’s declaration that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, and the American Embassy will be moved to it, constituting a dangerous precedent and violating the international law.
This huge number of victims indicate that Israeli force continue to commit crimes and use excessive force against Palestinian civilians in disregard for their lives. The follow-up by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR’s) fieldworkers showed that most of the injuries in the eastern Gaza Strip were in the lower limbs in addition to the abdomen and back and also being directly hit with tear gas canisters. The Israeli forces also obstructed the medical crews’ work by targeting two ambulances in Khan Younis with rubber-coated metal bullets and tear gas canisters.
The ongoing demonstrations continue to call for Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez to step down, and for the National Elections Commission to finalize an announcement.
Honduran elite police, known as "Cobras", are now refusing to confront the protesters and are demanding an end to the crisis.
Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, using the specter of rampant crime and the drug trade, won extensive support from the American government to build up highly trained state security forces. Now, those same forces are repressing democracy.
The post-election situation in Honduras continues to deteriorate as Hernández, a conservative leader and stalwart U.S. ally in Central America, has disputed the result of last week’s vote while working to crack down on protests sweeping the nation.
The Honduran government has suspended constitutional rights to give the army and police more powers and imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew to contain unrest triggered by a contested election, a senior government official said on Friday...
A UK-registered mining company, which is now part of Glencore, is facing claims in a London court that it hired security forces to mistreat environmental activists protesting about a copper mine in Peru.... The copper mine in Peru was at the time owned by Xstrata Tintaya, a firm later renamed Companía Minera Antapaccay. Xstrata was alleged to have paid the equivalent of £700,000 for the services of about 1,300 Peruvian national police and provided them with weapons such as rubber bullets and teargas, as well as food and accommodation.
Security forces killed at least 28 people in rare protests in the Eritrean capital, an opposition group has claimed, raising concerns from human rights groups and activists.
The violence witnessed in demonstrations in Asmara on Tuesday also prompted a safety warning from the US embassy in Eritrea, which confirmed receiving reports of gunfire and advised people to stay away from areas where protests were taking place.
Kenyan police killed at least 33 people, possibly as many as 50, and injured hundreds more in some parts of Nairobi, the capital, in response to protests following the August 8, 2017 elections, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said in a joint report released today.
The 37-page report, Kill Those Criminals: Security Forces’ Violations in Kenya’s August 2017 Elections, documents excessive use of force by police, and in some cases other security agents, against protesters and residents in some of Nairobi’s opposition strongholds after the elections.
Researchers found that although police behaved appropriately in some instances, in many others they shot or beat protesters to death. Other victims died of asphyxiation from inhaling teargas and pepper spray, from being hit by teargas canisters fired at close range, or from being trampled to death by fleeing crowds.
...experience shows that this mode of policing and cracking down on sources of dissent, is gaining popularity across the western world. We shall not go here into the arguments for or against Catalonian independence. Following the Spanish police’s actions, that would in fact be besides the point, as it abandons the old principle of “policing by consent” instead “policing by domination”. The state’s “monopoly of violence” transforms into the ability to enforce political lines against opposition groups. At its root we find austerity and growing inequality, and the de facto militarisation of the police.
Israeli photojournalist Tali Mayer, 28, was shot by a black-tipped sponge bullet while reporting on a demonstration. This led to her project with the ACRI, a member of INCLO, photographing Palestinians injured by these crowd-control bullets.