Europe’s increased use of weaponry against racialised minorities, migrants and protesters, signifies creeping authoritarianism – IRR new study finds
The new study, published on the fifth anniversary of the death of George Floyd, links the growing use of dangerous crowd control weaponry to the embrace of hypermilitarised policing in Europe.
The study focuses on the experiences of migrants and refugees, pro-Palestinian demonstrators, Black Lives Matter supporters, and those injured by so-called ‘less lethal weaponry’ during civil unrest.
- It warns of the dangers of the US experience being replicated in Europe. In the first two months of the Black Lives Matter protests in the US, 115 people were shot in the head, with at least 30 people suffering permanent eye damage as a result of crowd control weaponry.
- It records in Europe, 69 deaths of migrants, refugees, and other racialised people through the use of ‘less-lethal weaponry’ such as rubber bullets and tear gas grenades. Most involved asylum seekers from sub-Saharan Africa at the Spanish/Moroccan border.
- It highlights life-changing serious injury, caused by rubber bullets and tear gas grenades, such as explosive eye and loss of part of the skull, particularly in relation to the policing of the Summer 2023 urban disturbances in France.
In a major study, Paramilitary Policing Against the People: colonial continuities and the challenge from below, the IRR warns that paramilitary policing at borders, during civil unrest and against public protest now affects Europe’s citizens and non-citizens alike.
The anti-racist think tank reveals the nature of today’s ‘political policing’ which uses the law, the police, the intelligence services, immigration authorities and the military, to counter and contain political movements.
The study focuses on the growth in the use of so-called ‘less lethal weaponry’ in a variety of settings, with the use of this weaponry a material indicator of the move towards a paramilitary policing against the people.
Director of IRR, Liz Fekete said today:
“It’s politicians more than even the police who are responsible for ushering in hypermilitarisation, a model of policing that blurs the lines between military and police and does not accord with democratic values. That is why we are calling on the UK government and the European parliament to call time on paramilitary policing. Instead of further arming the police, and further limiting the democratic right to protest, we are calling on politicians to address the social crisis they have helped to create.”
Kojo Kyerewaa, National Organiser Black Lives Matter UK (BLMUK) said:
“This report shows that policing in Britain is structurally racist. For the past six years, plastic bullets — weapons that killed 17 people, including eight children, in Northern Ireland — were authorised exclusively against Black-led movements: the Notting Hill Carnival, a celebration of Black joy, and the 2020 BLM protests demanding justice for police murders.
Only racism can explain the British state’s fear of Black people on the streets.”
Tasnima Uddin, Advocacy Officer European Legal Support Centre said:
“The IRR report exposes a chilling reality: across Europe, Palestine solidarity movements are systematically targeted through hyper-militarised policing, protest zoning, and state-sanctioned stigmatization… This is political policing at its most insidious, a war on social movements that undermines democracy itself.”
The IRR calls on the
- European parliament: to initiate a comprehensive inquiry into hypermilitarised policing, centring the testimony of those maimed or bereaved by so- called ‘less lethal’ weaponry, and examining the role of the transnational trade in such arms in EU policy.
- All European governments: to uphold their international obligations, and support the civil society call for an international treaty (Shoreditch Declaration) to prohibit the manufacture and trade in inherently abusive equipment.
- All European states: to review laws, policies and political pronouncements that criminalise, stigmatise or diminish the democratic right to protest – particularly in relation to Palestine solidarity, Black Lives Matter, workers’ rights and environmental justice.