External resources relating to Repression of protest
(Jerusalem) – Israeli forces shot and wounded a research assistant working for Human Rights Watch on October 6, 2015, as she was observing a demonstration outside Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
She was observing the conduct of demonstrators and security forces, in the context of the current escalation in violence that began with the shooting death of an Israeli couple October 1. At least seven protesters were wounded at the same demonstration.
(Jerusalem) – Israeli security forces apparently shot to death a Palestinian boy during a demonstration near the West Bank town of Bethlehem on October 5, 2015. The shooting raises concerns about the excessive use of lethal force by security forces.
Security forces opened fire at the demonstration, striking 13-year-old Abd al-Rahman Shadi Mustafa Abdallah in the chest with a live bullet, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said. A statement from the Aida Refugee camp where Abdallah lived said he was returning home from school when he was shot, still wearing his school backpack.
A short time ago this evening, the Security Cabinet unanimously approved a series of decisions submitted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the framework of the fight against rock-throwing in Jerusalem...
Here in Canada and throughout the Americas, many governments have embraced resource extraction as the key sector to fuel economic growth, neglecting other sectors – or even at their expense. This is creating unprecedented demand for land and other resources, such as water and energy. In Latin America, economic dependency on intensive primary resource extraction has become known as ‘extractivism’.
Increasingly, when Indigenous and Afro-descendent peoples, farmers, environmentalists, journalists, and other concerned citizens speak out against this model for economic growth, particular projects and/or their impacts, they become the targets of threats, accusations, and smears that attempt to label and punish them as enemies of the state, opponents of development, delinquents, criminals, and terrorists. In the worst cases, this leads to physical violence and murder.
Guatemala, Peru, and Mexico provide examples of intensified criminalization, where there has been little pause in neoliberal deregulation of the mining sector since the 1990s...
(Ramallah) – The evidence in an Israeli colonel’s fatal shooting of a Palestinian boy on July 3, 2015, indicates that the shooting violated international standards on the use of lethal force in policing, and possibly also Israel’s own open-fire regulations. A recently released video supports witness accounts and forensic evidence that Col. Israel Shomer killed Mohammad al-Kasbeh, 17, while al-Kasbeh was fleeing, apparently contradicting the military’s initial statement exonerating the colonel on the grounds that he faced a “mortal danger.”
Israeli riot police have fired stun grenades and water cannon on thousands of ethnic Ethiopian Jewish citizens in an attempt to clear one of the most violent protests in memory in the heart of Tel Aviv.
The protesters, Israeli Jews of Ethiopian origin, were demonstrating on Sunday against what they said was police racism and brutality after a video clip emerged last week showing policemen shoving and punching a black soldier.
The domestic security bill prepared by Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has triggered fist-fights in parliament and stirred a popular debate in the country. After a five day delay due to the fights, the debate over the legal package finally started at the General Assembly late Feb. 20.
The AKP government is currently pushing the bill, which it has renamed as the "Legal Package To Protect Freedoms," after postponing parliamentary debate on the matter twice. The government says the police need more powers to preserve public order and the safety of citizens, particularly on the eve of elections scheduled for June. They claim that more peaceful protests turn violent with the increasing use of Molotov cocktails and are also concerned about the recent spread of bonzai, a synthetic drug.
Latin America is witnessing a steady movement toward the militarization of the police, with the armed forces taking over many of the day to day functions of community policing. But given Latin America’s past troubles with military governments, this development is raising serious concerns. In the 1960s and 1970s a spate of coups across the region brought harsh right-wing regimes to power, with the governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay deploying their militaries as internal security forces, purging their countries of domestic political opponents, real and imagined. Now many fear that we may be heading back toward the bad old days, with unbridled militaries running riot over the citizenry...
The Turkish government’s proposed expansion of police powers to search and detain and for the use of firearms would undermine human rights protections. A number of the proposals in a draft security bill would circumvent the role of prosecutors and judiciary in ways that directly undercut safeguards against the arbitrary abuse of power.
Across the hemisphere, we have recently seen violent clashes between protesters and militarized police forces. Tipping point events—such as the clashes in Brazil in the summer of 2013 and in Ferguson, Missouri last month—have provoked public outrage and calls for “de-militarization” of police forces. While the outrage is sometimes too fleeting to compel change, the events make the public and the media aware of conditions that affected populations have known for decades. While the roots of police militarization in Brazil differ from those in Ferguson and other U.S. cities, the consequences are the same...
A new report highlights Israel’s use of supposedly “non-lethal weapons” against unarmed Palestinian protesters.
The report – “Proven Effective: Crowd control weapons in the Occupied Territories” – was published by the group Who Profits and launched at a conference in Jerusalem on 10 September.
Focusing on tear gas, skunk water and “The Scream” (a high volume acoustic device strapped atop Israeli military vehicles), the report documents their regular use to violently crush unarmed Palestinian demonstrators throughout the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
The clouds of tear gas, flurries of projectiles and images of police officers outfitted in military-grade hardware in Ferguson, Missouri, have reignited concerns about the militarization of domestic law enforcement in the United States. But there has been another, little-discussed change in the training of American police since the 9/11 attacks: At least 300 high-ranking sheriffs and police from agencies large and small – from New York and Maine to Orange County and Oakland, California – have traveled to Israel for privately funded seminars in what is described as counterterrorism techniques.
When tear-gas was first fired into the streets of Ferguson, Missouri at people angry at the police killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown, Palestinian activists sent out messages on Twitter giving people tips for how to deal with tear gas’ effects.
And there was another direct connection between events in Missouri and the West Bank, as Palestinian activist Mariam Barghouti noted: the company that supplies the Israeli army with tear gas is the same company supplying the police in Ferguson.
FERGUSON, Mo. — For four nights in a row, they streamed onto West Florissant Avenue wearing camouflage, black helmets and vests with '
stamped on the back. They carried objects that doubled as warnings: assault rifles and ammunition, slender black nightsticks and gas masks.
They were not just one police force but many, hailing from communities throughout north
Their adversaries were a ragtag group of mostly unarmed neighborhood residents, hundreds of African-Americans whose pent-up fury at the police had sent them pouring onto streets and sidewalks in Ferguson, demanding justice for
(Jerusalem) – Israeli soldiers unlawfully killed two men who had participated in a July 25, 2014 protest in the West Bank against Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip, according to all available evidence. Official medical reports and medical sources indicated that they died of gunshot wounds caused by live ammunition.
BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Rubhiya Abd al-Rahman Darwish was taking a nap on the couch of her family home on Sunday when she was awoken with a start by the sound of shattering glass.
"I saw a burst of water breaking through the window, when suddenly an intense odor hit and I passed out from the smell, so they had to take me to the hospital," the 75-year-old woman told Ma'an during an interview in her small apartment in Bethlehem's Aida refugee camp.
(Jerusalem) – Video footage, photographs, witness statements, and medical records indicate that two 17-year-old boys whom Israeli forces shot and killed on May 15, 2014 posed no imminent threat to the forces at the time. The boys, who had been participating in a demonstration in the West Bank, were apparently shot with live ammunition, Human Rights Watch said.
The following report highlights three local and international companies that manufacture “non-lethal” crowd control weapons. These weapons are currently used by Israeli authorities and security forces, mainly to suppress non-violent demonstrations in the occupied Palestinian territories, in violation of the right to freedom of expression and association. Despite the fact that they are often labeled as “nonlethal” weapons, they have already been proven as potentially lethal in different incidents around the world, when the use of these weapons led to the death of demonstrators.
The report focuses on three types of weapons as case studies: tear gas canisters, which are produces and marketed by Combined Systems, Inc. (CSI) and M.R. Hunter; “the Scream”, manufactured by Electro-Optics Research & Development (EORD) and LRAD; and “the Skunk”, which is manufactured by Odortec, with the supporting companies: Man and BeitAlfa Technologies. The report will highlight the harmful consequences of these weapons, including their potentially lethal effects. The occupied Palestinian territories are being used as a lab for testing new civil oppression weapons on humans, in order to label them as “proven effective” for marketing abroad.
Police appear to have used tear gas manufactured by US and South African-based companies on the 3rd anniversary of Bahrain’s mass protests. Images received by Bahrain Watch show tear gas canisters identical to those manufactured by Federal Laboratories (US/UK) and Rheinmetall Denel Munitions (German/South African), apparently used on February 14, 2014. This follows a May 2012 special briefing by US Senior Administration Officials confirming that the US “has maintained a pause on most arms sales and licenses to the Government of Bahrain”. A similar statement was made in January 2012 by the State Department confirming a halt on ‘most security assistance’, including item sales that can be used against protesters, to Bahrain.
Hundreds of Palestinians took part in a funeral march today for Said Jasir, an 85-year-old man from the West Bank village of Kfar Qaddum.
According to Palestnian medical sources, Jasir died after the Israeli army shot tear gas into his house during a protest in the village on New Year’s Day. After inhaling tear gas, Jasir was evacuated to the hospital in Nablus, were he died a few hours later.
After the funeral, youth from the village marched to the area near the settlement of Kedumim, and clashed with the Israeli army.
On 30 May 2013, police cleared Gezi Park in central Istanbul of a small group of protestors opposed to its destruction. The denial of their right to protest and the violence used by the police touched a nerve and a wave of anti-government demonstrations swept across Turkey. The authorities’ reaction was brutal and unequivocal. Over the next few months, police repeatedly used unnecessary and abusive force to prevent and disperse peaceful demonstrations. This report by Amnesty International documents the human rights violations that have accompanied the crushing crackdown on the Gezi Park protest movement.
The Formula One race has gone ahead despite ongoing clashes between Bahraini police and anti-government demonstrators in the capital, Manama.
Police fired birdshot and tear gas on Sunday to contain simmering resentment at a deadly crackdown by the Sunni royal family on Arab Spring-inspired protests that erupted two years ago led by the kingdom's Shia Muslim majority.
Al Jazeera's special correspondent, reporting from Manama, said that Sunday's clashes had broken out at Al Jabrya secondary school, one kilometre from the centre of the capital...
Jabreya boys secondary school, located about a kilometre from the capital Manama, is once again the site of violence. On Tuesday, dramatic scenes unfolded as the school was attacked by police firing tear gas against students who were protesting the arrest of a fellow student the day before. Today, protests resumed.
Photos of used tear gas cannisters show that the tear gas used is likely to originate from South Korea and the United States.
AUGUSTA, Maine — The way law enforcement agencies in Israel work together to deal with threats is a model the United States can learn from, the chief of the Maine State Police said after returning from a weeklong training trip to the Middle East nation.