Police use tear gas at an Umbrella Movement protest in Hong Kong in 2014. Image: Studio Incendo/Flickr. Some rights reserved.
This article is part of Right to Protest, a partnership project with human rights organisations CELS and INCLO, with support from the ACLU, examining the power of protest and its fundamental role in democratic society.
In recent years, there has been a rise in the number of popular protests around the world. In many cases, police and security forces have responded to these protests in ways that profoundly undermine the fundamental rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of expression, often leading to escalations in violence through unwarranted, inappropriate or disproportionate uses of force. Law enforcement throughout the world is increasingly responding to popular protests with crowd-control weapons (CCWs).
