Anti-austerity demonstrators in Europe have suffered excessive police violence, Amnesty International said Thursday in a report urging European Union (EU) governments to protect the right to peaceful protest. The rights group said people rallying against government spending cuts, tax rises and job losses in countries hit by the eurozone crisis and elsewhere had sometimes been seriously injured by police or had had medical treatment witheld. “People demonstrating peacefully in EU countries have been beaten, kicked, shot at and wounded with rubber bullets and sprayed with tear gas,” Amnesty said.
“Yet excessive use of force by police goes uninvestigated and unpunished.”
The Amnesty report, entitled “Policing demonstrations in the European Union”, described several cases where police had severely beaten protesters in Greece, Spain and Romania.
