Have you read an article, listened to a podcast, participated in a debate about police violence you'd like to share? Please let us know by email at contact@obspol.be, we'll publish it here!
Minutes of a Disaster
For convenience reasons, dates are reversed. You may filter all columns by clicking the first cell of the column, or use keywords in the search field.| COUNTRY | CATEGORY | DATE | EVENT | LOCATION | LINK |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SWITZERLAND | ResistanZ | 2025.05.01 | May 1st Demos: Police violently stopped dozens Anarchists confront the police. | Zurich | Watch |
| TURKEY | ResistanZ | 2025.05.01 | May 1st Demos: Police violently stopped dozens of May Day demonstrators as they tried to reach Taksim Square. The authorities were enforcing a long-standing ban on demonstrations in the area, imposed after the 2013 Gezi Park uprising against the Erdoğan government. This year's May 1 protests follow the deepening economic crisis and the arrest of a senior opposition leader. Protesters called the arrest a “political coup” and accused the government of targeting dissent. Source: https://t.me/leperepeinard | Istanbul | Watch |
| PHILIPPINES | ResistanZ | 2025.05.01 | May 1st Demos: Demonstrators destroyed police barricades in Manila on May 1. Demonstrators also burned effigies of Xi Jinping and Donald Trump to protest foreign influence and imperialism in the Philippines. Source: https://t.me/leperepeinard | Manila | Watch |
| COLOMBIA | ResistanZ | 2025.04.30 | 2021 National Strike Anniversary: Molotov cocktails were thrown during clashes with riot police at the National University in Bogotá,The protests erupted on the anniversary of the 2021 national strike, one of the largest uprisings in Colombia's recent history, a movement that led to the establishment of the country's first left-wing government, under the presidency of Gustavo Petro. However, divisions have deepened between the government and the organizers of the 2021 protests, who mobilized against Colombia's socio-economic crisis. Many are calling for justice for the 169 people killed during the 2021 uprising. Petro promised accountability, but progress has stalled. Anger is also often directed at the notorious ESMAD riot police unit, which Petro promised to abolish, but failed to deliver. Students are increasingly disappointed by the government's failure to reform the education system. Despite the criticism, many members of the 2021 movement also recognize the political progress made under Colombia's first left-wing government. Source: https://t.me/leperepeinard | Bogotá | Watch |
| GREECE | ResistanZ | 2025.04.15 | In the early hours a group of anarchists palced an incendiary device at the entrance of the apartment building at 15 Kanari Street in Sykies, where the uniformed scumbag Konstantinos Gantatsios lives, who serves in the YAT team (khaki platoon of the riot police). They dedicated this attack to their anarchist comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris, but also to all the comrades who chose the difficult path and fell fighting all that we hate | Thessaloniki | Read |
| ITALY | ResistanZ | 2025.02.28 | 80th anniversary of liberation from fascism: at the end of the demonstration, anarchists attempted to disrupt the City Council meeting, which was subsequently suspended. Some anarchists from the anti-fascist demonstration broke away from the procession to reach the town hall and attempt to enter, which was prevented by police in riot gear. Source: Prima Linea | Lecco | Watch |
| DENMARK | ResistanZ | 2025.02.24 | Cut Ties with Genocide !: 600+ activists converge to block Maersk 's headquarters. Police are helpless and resort to useless burst of extreme violence in the most blatent show of incompetence. Activists are savagely batonned, dog-bitten, pepper-sprayed and tear-gassed. 20 people arrested | Copenhagen | Watch |
| IRAN | Death Toll | 2024 | Hanging: 31 Women executed in 2024, 107in drug-related affairs since 2010 | ||
| SPAIN | ResistanZ | 2024.12.22 | Prison Escape: 2 jailmates break the window bars, climbed down bedsheets and smash the gate lock | Picassent | Read |
| NEW ZEALAND | ResistanZ | 2024.11.18 | hīkoi march: thousands of Māori bill protesters reach New Zealand parliament | Wellington | Read |
| SENEGAL | ResistanZ | 2024.02.10 | projet « CartograFreeSenegal » : mettre des visages et des noms sur les morts de la répression pour retrace l’histoire et les circonstances de la mort d’une partie des 29 victimes recensées. | Read | |
| TUNISIA | Police/(in)Justice | 2024.02.10 | Arrestations d’opposants : un an après les premières arrestations de dirigeants politiques, les détenus sont toujours dans le flou quant à leur avenir judiciaire | Tunis | Read |
| USA | Death Toll | 2024.01.08 | 2023 saw record killings by US police. Who is most affected? | Read | |
| IRAN | Police/(in)Justice | 2022.10.02 | Repression: Security forces in uniform and plainclothes attacked student protesters at Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology | Tehran | Read |
| ECUADOR | ResistanZ | 2022.05.09 | Prisons: t least 44 people were killed during a prison riot near the capital. Over 100 others escaped after violence broke out. Relatives gathered outside the prison waiting for news of their loved ones. Human rights groups have denounced the horrid conditions of Ecuadorian prisons, which are dangerously overcrowded and rarely provide programs that help people rehabilitate. Hundreds have been killed in at least five separate prison riots in Ecuador since February of last year. | Quito | Read |
| COLOMBIA | ResistanZ | 2021.04.30 | National Strike: 169 people killed | Read |
09.11.2021 - Video footage emerges showing distressing police violence on migrants in Lybia
We condemn police brutality.
— Refugees In Libya (@RefugeesinLibya) November 9, 2021
The law must bring these perpetrators to justice ⚖️ pic.twitter.com/8guq2Ibpb4
Refugees In Libya posted a horrific video footage on Tweeter : police officers can be seen brutally assaulting people, throwing down a black man from his wheelchair, taking it away from him while one of the wheel went off the chair.
The policemen wrestled the disabled man to the ground, then try to twist his arms to turn him and lay him on his belly. In the background, another person can be seen face down on the ground with several policemen on his back and knee.
The day before, Refugee In Libya issued a press release :
“[…] In recent years refugees have seen and complained against the trajectory of Syrian refugees indulged and pampered by the UNHCR staff. Syrian Nationals or Arabs precisely do not take or wait in line when they come to the UNHCR office both at the door and in the sitting rooms. They are usually allowed to enter, and no security guards prevents them or stops them, UNHCR staffs & its security guards never told them stand in a line with the African refugees, we have been witnessing these racism since 2017 until now and it’s unnumbered how many times we have complained and reported these but went unanswered by the commission.These are the main reasons refugees are losing trust in the UNHCRLIBYA and the socalled humanitarian organizations or human rights organizations in Libya.
Discrimination and racism is very clear and plainly visible used in the offices, because of they’re ethnicity.
There is a secret door at the UNHCR headquarter in the registration main center and only Syrians are allowed to enter, so today refugees of African nationalities tried to enter this door, which is the secret door designated for Syrian nationality by UNHCR staff, so the security guards prevented them, and then this led to violence and the stabbing of a refugees by a security guard. We (Refugees) feels that the step taken by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is against humanity and human rights, and this is racism and discrimination between refugees and asylum seekers according to their colors, geography or religions. This must stop in all public institutions of the international organizations and the human rights organizations, because there’s no place for discrimination and segregation anymore in this era or in the 21st century, let us all stand against the attempting of reusing of RACISM. […] “
[Source: Refugees In Libya on Twitter]
20.10.2021 - Whistleblower leaks horrifying videos showing rape and torture inside a Russian prison
Sergei Savelyev, a 31-year-old Belarusian IT specialist gained access to footage stored in the prison’s computers that were shot in several prisons in the Irkutsk, Vladimir and Saratov regions between 2018-2020.
Sergei was a former inmate at the Saratov prison (he served 7,5 years for “drug trafficking“) who got a job as an IT maintenance officer, granting him access to the prison’s internal server and those of other jails, where he found several videos. Released in February, he saved them on USB sticks that he hid near the prison exit.
Serguei said he suffered abuse at a prison in Krasnodar to force him to “cooperate” — beaten “around once a week but not so hard as to leave too visible bruising.“
He fled the country on a long, tortuous and perilous journey, fearing kidnapping or even death. He said he had no choice but to speak up. “Psychologically, it’s very difficult to keep things like this to yourself. What else can you do once you know?” told AFP on on October 16 at Charles de Gaulle airport in France, where he intends to request asylum.
He then leaked the footage in March to Gulagu.net, an NGO tracking abuses in Russia’s prison system. Vladimir Osechkin, founder of the Gulagu.net rights group, who left Russia in 2015 and currently resides in France, explained he received “over 40 gigabytes of files showing widespread torture“. [Watch his video, in Russian]
Thousands of videos show, among other nightmares:
- inmates being tortured at a prison hospital in the Volga city of Saratov,
- prisoners being beaten and tortured at the prison hospital in Saratov and at prisons in the Belgorod and Kamchatka regions,
- several people using a broom stick to rape a naked man who is tied to a bed at the Saratov prison,
- prisoners urinating on other inmates
- graphic images of rape.
According to Serguei, the abuse was often doled out by fellow inmates, eager to please officers in the jail, typically to force inmates to confess or snitch on other prisoners. In some cases the abuse is filmed so the victim can then be blackmailed into cooperating with his handlers. Or it is used to blackmail inmates — if word of the assault becomes widely known, the victim slides down the rankings of the prison pecking order, reduced to a “petukh,” or rooster, a derogatory term in Russia.
Gulagu.net has also sent the videos to the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT). The website was blocked by Russia’s state media watchdog Roskomnadzor in July following requests from the Federal Security Service (FSB) and Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN).
Russian prosecutors said on October 5 that they had launched a preliminary investigation into the videos already released by Osechkin’s Gulagu.net, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov promised a “serious” probe if the incidents depicted in the clips turn out to be genuine. A day later, on October 6, the FSIN said it had fired five senior prison officials, including the director of the prison where the alleged abuse took place and the head of the regional prison service.
NGOs in Russia and worldwide have long alerted international institutions and the public about “systematic” torture in Russian prisons, and argue that conditions are little changed from the Soviet era. E.g., the following video from The Guardian dates back to 2012 :
11.03.2021 - Video montage showing Police violence in Germany
In Germany as well cops can get violent, as shown on this video montage, pointing in particular violence against young people and people of color.
We can see the same techniques in use, like kneeling on the victim’s neck, same way of shielding the scene, same passivity from colleagues, same kind of agressions on minors (15)…
[Source: Handbook Germany Deutsch sur YouTube]