Police-Brutality

By Saleh Hijaz / Amnesty International In the small hours of Sunday, more than 500 Israeli police surrounded around 130 Palestinian activists at a protest camp on the hills opposite the illegal Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, east of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank. The camp, which the activists called the village of Bab al-Shams (Gate of the Sun), was set up on privately-owned Palestinian land two days before to protest against the Israeli occupation and continued expansion of illegal settlements, which goes hand in hand with forced evictions in the West Bank. ...

By J. G. / Deep Green Resistance Great Plains Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin is a veteran community and anti-racist, anti-colonialist, and anti-prison organizer. He was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, The Black Panther Party, and is a founding member of the Black Autonomy Federation. Lorenzo is the author of the underground classic, Anarchism and the Black Revolution as well as many other essays and articles about fighting capitalism and white supremacy. A former political prisoner and political refugee, he currently lives in Memphis Tennessee and is working to bring attention to and combat rampant police brutality in the area including the murder of 15 year old Justin Thompson. ...

By Tar Sands Blockade Nine people sitting 80 feet above ground in tree platforms on the path of TransCanada’s Keystone XL construction enter their third day of sustained action to stop the toxic tar sands pipeline. The sitters are undeterred by TransCanada’s role in the torture of their fellow blockaders. Tuesday, Shannon Bebe and Benjamin Franklin delayed construction for most of the day when they locked arms around construction machinery, intent on protecting East Texas homes. The two were subjected to torture tactics by police only after TransCanada’s senior supervisors huddled with law enforcement to actively encourage the use of extreme pain compliance techniques on the peaceful protesters. ...

By the Committee in Defence of Life and Against Mining in San Rafael Las Flores, CODIDENA, the Parlamento Xinca, CALAS, and the MadreSelva Environmental Collective Following the events of September 17 and 18, 2012 in Mataquescuintla, Jalapa and San Rafael Las Flores, Santa Rosa, we wish to make the following statement: TIMELINE OF EVENTS: 1. On the morning of Monday, September 17, employees of the San Rafael Mining Company, accompanied by private security agents with anti-riot equipment, attack dogs, tear-gas cannons and rubber bullet guns, and escorted by the National Civil Police, turned up in Morales, Mataquescuintla, to connect high voltage electrical wires to the San Rafael mining site. ...

By Kanya D’Almeida and Bret Grote / Al Jazeera Russell “Maroon” Shoats has been kept in solitary confinement in the state of Pennsylvania for 30 years after being elected president of the prison-approved Lifers’ Association. He was initially convicted for his alleged role in an attack authorities claim was carried out by militant Black activists on the Fairmont Park Police Station in Philadelphia that left a park sergeant dead. Despite not having violated prison rules in more than two decades, state prison officials refuse to release him into the general prison population. ...

By the Associated Press A civilian was killed and a prominent anti-mining activist arrested in protests on Wednesday against Peru’s biggest gold mining project, further inflaming tensions after the government declared a state of emergency. Peru’s prime minister, Oscar Valdés, announced the civilian’s death at a news conference in Lima but did not provide further details. It was the fourth protest-related death in two days. Marco Arana, a former Roman Catholic priest, was arrested hours earlier in Cajamarca, one of three provinces where the state of emergency was declared. A video broadcast by a local TV channel showed riot police scooping him off a bench in the city’s central square and taking him away in a chokehold. ...

By Tania Branigan / The Guardian Thousands of anti-pollution protesters took to the streets of a south-west Chinese city on Monday, halting the construction of a multimillion pound molybdenum copper plant. Police used tear gas to disperse the crowds after rioters lobbed bricks at government offices in Shifang, Sichuan province, the English edition of the state-run newspaper Global Times reported. Other accounts said a dozen police vehicles were overturned or attacked. ...

By The Guardian A prominent Cambodian anti-logging activist, who helped expose a secretive state sell-off of national parks, has been shot dead by police in a remote south-western province while guiding journalists to the scene of illegal logging. A Cambodian human rights organisation, Licadho, said the confrontation occurred on Wednesday when Chut Wutty, director of the Phnom Penh-based environmental watchdog Natural Resource Protection Group, refused to hand over a memory card with photos taken in the nearby forest by him and two journalists from the Cambodia Daily newspaper. ...

By Jeremy Hance / Mongabay Locals protesting the destruction of their forest in Papua New Guinea for two palm oil plantations say police have been sent in for a second time to crack-down on their activities, even as a Commission of Inquiry (COI) investigates the legality of the concession. Traditional landowners in Pomio District on the island East New Britain say police bankrolled by Malaysian logging giant Rimbunan Hijau (RH) have terrorized the population, including locking people in shipping containers for three consecutive nights. The palm oil concessions belongs to a company known as Gilford Limited, which locals say is a front group for RH. ...

By Tania Branigan / The Guardian Rural residents protesting against land grabs have clashed with police in north and south-west China, according to accounts posted online, in the latest cases to be sparked by one of the country’s most potent sources of unrest. Villagers in south-western Yunnan province were arrested and injured when police broke up a a three-day blockade of a highway over the death of a rubber farmer who complained her land had been illegally seized, according to an account posted by an unknown user. ...