The right to protest endangered in Europe, Amnesty International reports

Stephen Kapos, 87, a Holocaust survivor, stands in solidarity with students at UCL and SOAS protesting against genocide in Gaza. [image Alisdare Hickson CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DEED]

Global civil rights organization Amnesty International has published a new 209-page report entitled “Under Protected and Over Restricted: The state of the right to protest in 21 European countries”.

In this comprehensive report, Amnesty has analyzed the state of the right to protest, using a questionnaire taken between December 2022 and September 2023 in Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.

“Peaceful protest is a powerful and public way for people to make their voices heard. It has long been a vital means for advancing human rights around the world. However, in Europe, the right of peaceful assembly is increasingly coming under attack, with state authorities stigmatizing, impeding, deterring, punishing and cracking down on those organizing and participating in peaceful protests.” – Amnesty International

It reports a generalized trend towards government violations of basic human rights. In particular, among many other dreadful behaviors, it documents a “stigmatizing and negative rhetoric towards peaceful protesters by state authorities and politicians and scrutinizes the disproportionate and discriminatory impact of specific laws.” The report also details the use of excessive force against protesters, arbitrary arrests and prosecutions, discriminatory restrictions, as well as the abuse of surveillance means, including the unwarranted storage of data, and intimidation using face-recognition systems.

The report is structured in nine chapters, each providing detailed case studies and concrete examples of events including protests during the Covid19 pandemic, or in support of Palestine, together with a list of recommendations for the countries. The chapters cover the right of peaceful assembly, notification and authorization requirements, excessive burden imposed on demonstrations’ organizers, restriction of content of protests, policing of protests, accountability, civil disobedience, children at protests, and surveillance.

Amnesty makes several important recommendations to European countries, with this one being particularly relevant:

“States should view peaceful assemblies and protesters not as threats that must be ‘monitored’ or ‘controlled’ – for example through intrusive surveillance – but as embodiments of the exercise of a human right that the authorities, including law enforcement, have a legal obligation to protect, respect, and facilitate.”

Countries that portray themselves as free and democratic should not simultaneously present serious threats to basic human rights, such as the key tool to express dissent in peaceful protests, despite having ratified key international and regional human rights instruments. We concur with Amnesty International in being deeply concerned about the right to protest in Europe.

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