{"id":58036,"date":"2015-05-11T14:17:43","date_gmt":"2015-05-11T13:17:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=58036"},"modified":"2015-05-11T14:17:43","modified_gmt":"2015-05-11T13:17:43","slug":"countries-around-world-are-revoking-freedom-of-assembly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/05\/countries-around-world-are-revoking-freedom-of-assembly\/","title":{"rendered":"Countries around World Are Revoking Freedom of Assembly"},"content":{"rendered":"

Faced with mounting unrest and unwilling to offer reforms, democratic governments are rolling back traditional rights.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"headlineImage.adapt.1460.high.freedom_of_assembly_a.1430843076903<\/a><\/p>\n

4 May 2015 – <\/em>On March 26, without much fanfare or attention from U.S. media, the Spanish government ended freedom of assembly. In the face of popular opposition (80 percent of Spaniards oppose it), the upper house passed the Citizens\u2019 Security Law. Under the provision, which goes into effect on July 1, police will have the discretionary ability to hand out fines up to $650,000 to unauthorized demonstrators who protest near a transport hub or nuclear power plant. They will be allowed to issue fines of up to $30,000 for taking pictures of police during protest, failing to show police ID or just gathering in an unauthorized way near government buildings.<\/p>\n

The law doesn\u2019t technically outlaw protest, but it\u2019s hard to see what difference that makes in practice. Imagine if the NYPD, without judicial oversight, could give $650,000 fines to every Black Lives Matter protester participating in die-ins at Grand Central. Never mind that they could never pay: Would anyone return day after day, racking up millions of dollars in fines?<\/p>\n

Spain is only the latest \u201cdemocracy\u201d to consign freedom of assembly to the dustbin. While earlier eras of protest and riot sometimes wrested concessions from the state, today the government\u2019s default response is to implement increasingly draconian laws against the public exercise of democracy. It raises the question: How many rights must be abrogated before a liberal democracy becomes a police state?<\/p>\n

In Quebec, where student strikes against austerity once again disrupt civil society, marches are being declared illegal before they\u2019ve even begun<\/a>. At the height of the last wave of student strikes in 2012, the Quebec legislature passed Bill 78<\/a>, which made pickets and unauthorized gatherings of over 50 people illegal and punished violations with fines of up to $5,000 for individuals and $125,000 for organizations.\u00a0Similar fines are once again imposed on protesters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last October a law was passed in Turkey<\/a> allowing police to search demonstrators and their homes without warrants or even grounds for suspicion, allowing for a much looser definition of and harsher punishment for resisting arrest and making covering one\u2019s face at a protest or shouting particular slogans crimes punishable by years in prison. This February in London police forced climate protest organizers to hire private security for marshaling a rally<\/a>, making protesting not a free public right but an expensive private expense.<\/p>\n

The list goes on: France banned Palestine solidarity demonstrations<\/a>; police in Australia gained the power<\/a> to bar protesters from appearing in public spaces for a year, even if they work or live there; and Egypt<\/a>, Ukraine<\/a> and Russia\u2019s<\/a> governments have outlawed protest entirely. Mexico\u2019s Congress approved la ley antimarchas<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>which, if ratified by the states, will modify the constitution so that any unauthorized gathering would be illegal \u2014 the constitutional end to freedom of assembly. All of this in 2014.<\/p>\n

The politicians and the governments have made their choice: stability and continuity, by any means necessary.<\/p>\n

And the United States is hardly doing better. In Baltimore\u00a0many of those who protested Freddie Gray\u2019s death were held without charges for over 48 hours.<\/a> Cells designed for one or two people were crammed with dozens, and prisoners haven\u2019t been allowed phone calls, blankets, pillows or any contact with lawyers or anyone from the outside world. In 2012, H.R. 347 made protesting near government buildings, political conventions or global summits \u2014 except in heavily policed and encaged \u201cfree speech zones\u201d \u2014 a federal crime. After the Black Lives Matter movement subsided in New York City, Police Commissioner William Bratton demanded a new force of 1,000 police, armed with machine guns, specifically to monitor protests and sought to turn resisting arrest into a felony.<\/p>\n

The right to freedom of assembly is guaranteed in the United Nations\u2019 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and appears in almost all democratic constitutions, including the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The freedom to speak out and protest were often at the heart of Cold War claims that the \u201cfree world\u201d was superior to the \u201cevil empire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, even in democratic countries, the police and the courts have a long history of shutting down genuinely threatening gatherings or political meetings. The First Amendment didn\u2019t stop the state from imprisoning Eugene Debs for an anti\u2013World War I speech or from shooting black student protesters at Orangeburg and Jackson State during the black power era.<\/p>\n

But if the promise of free assembly is often and easily broken, why would a democratic state go so far as to officially revoke it? Why, in 2014, did we begin to see the de facto power of state repression made de jure?<\/p>\n

In Spain the answer is clear. Seven years after the financial crisis and the collapse of the housing market, unemployment remains near 25 percent (and more than 50 percent for youths.) The Spanish state has proved unwilling and unable to address massive structural problems, and the European Union continues to impose austerity on its fourth-largest member economy. As a result, Spanish people have grown almost completely disillusioned with the possibility of change coming through government. They are increasingly turning to mutual aid, social movements and direct action to get things done.<\/p>\n

It might be argued that Spain\u2019s repressive gag law reflects the country\u2019s relatively recent transition from dictatorship to democracy, which began only in 1975. But there was no Generalissimo Francisco Franco in Quebec or Australia. And New York City has technically been a democracy for hundreds of years, no matter how closely it has come to resemble heavily policed city-states such as Singapore and Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

The appearance of anti-protest laws in so many countries reveals a general trend in the way governments envision the future. As the state\u2019s utter failure to assist those most hurt by the ongoing economic crisis becomes impossible to ignore and as even the recovery from crisis proves hollow for most people, protests and riots are spreading worldwide, with no sign of slowing down. The politicians and the governments have made their choice: stability and continuity, by any means necessary.<\/p>\n

These new laws suggest that the ruling elites are preparing themselves for protracted conflict. Rather than genuflect before the idols of democratic freedoms \u2014 or, God forbid, actually attempt to alleviate such widespread social problems as inequality, racist violence and ecological collapse \u2014 governments are giving themselves new weapons to crush those who demand change. But once nonviolent marches are punished just as harshly as rioting, will protesters stick to mere demonstrations? Or will they take the streets with more radical ideas about what\u2019s required to win justice?<\/p>\n

___________________________<\/p>\n

Willie Osterweil is a writer and an editor at <\/em>The New Inquiry<\/a>\u00a0and the frontman of the punk band Vulture Shit<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 aljazeera.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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