'My Eye Exploded': New Amnesty International report on use of 'non-lethal weapons'

Amnesty Worldwide launched a new report immediately, entitled “My Eye Exploded”: The worldwide abuse of Kinetic Impression Projectiles, which paperwork using “non-lethal” anti-riot weapons by police throughout the globe.

The report discovered that the deployment of Kinetic Impression Projectiles (KIPs), a time period which encompasses a wide range of weapons together with plastic and rubber bullets, has led to “hundreds of accidents internationally – together with everlasting disabilities and scores of deaths”.

Together with 30 different organisations, Amnesty Worldwide referred to as for the creation of a “strong Torture-Free Commerce Treaty” to ban using “inherently abusive regulation enforcement tools”, and to limit the commerce of such weapons, given the “gaps” that exist in present laws.

After spending 5 years researching the influence of KIPs in over 30 nations, Amnesty Worldwide discovered that hundreds of protesters and bystanders have been injured, and dozens killed on account of authorities utilizing these weapons.

Amnesty Worldwide concluded that in lots of instances, KIPs have been used “as a instrument of intimidation and punishment towards peaceable protesters”, given the “waves of repression from police and navy forces” in recent times.

The NGO additionally examined the illegal use of tear fuel grenades fired into crowds, which it described as a “disturbing world development that has led to tons of of significant accidents and a few deaths”.

All through the report, Amnesty lists examples of accidents suffered by protesters, for instance, that of a demonstrator in Minneapolis, who instructed the NGO that their eye “exploded” and their nostril was dislocated after they had been hit within the face by a rubber bullet. They instructed Amnesty that they now have a prosthetic eye, so can solely see out of their proper eye.

This was one among a rating of accidents documented through the Black Lives Matter protests in Minneapolis in 2020, with hospitals logging 45 sufferers with rubber bullet accidents, 10 with eye trauma and 16 with traumatic mind accidents.

Steel pellets had been additionally discovered to have been utilized by some police forces internationally, and have been related to deaths and instances of blinding in Egypt, India and Iran.