Description
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.
