As reported below, the national assembly passed three bills on irregular work last week which were oppossed by both the KCTU and minor opposition party KDLP. There was a pretty heavy protest of the bill the following day, video from which you can see here. A union rally in front of the national assembly was met with a lot of police force, including water cannon in temperatures just below freezing.
(UPDATE: Dec 5th). Here's the link to a longer video on the protests, taken by a local video activist. The fighting looked pretty fierce. I noticed the police have been using this short distance gaseous substance, it seems to me that the use of this stuff has not been documented in the English press. There is suppossed to be a moratorium on the use of tear gas, but I wonder if this violates that. Similar gas was used at other big protests this year, notably the anti-fta protests in July and at other smaller events.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
"short distance gaseous substance" = just fire extinguisher... several times i made this f... stupid experience on s.k. demos..
ReplyDeleteBTW here (in the CBS video) you can see also 'our' side, using this stuff.. (aeh for what i know.. its the first time..^^)
since the 1990th, after several people were killed by tear gas grenades, s.k. cops don't use this anymore(aeh.. usually.. whith some exceptions..). sometime they use pepper.., but usually without no success.
I understand that the fire extinguisher gas is used quite often and I've seen it done, by both sides as you mention, but, this is something else, they used it on the FTA march, you can see the pictures on our post about that back in July. I'm aware of the moratorium, too, although the government has recently talked about re-introducing tear gas, basically this stuff approaches and expands too fast to be fire extinguisher, it also has a very very faint tear gas smell, say 4% potency, very faint, but it gets people running, and thus does part of the job. Would be good to talk to someone about this, i think it is just some weird tactical riot suppressing weapon, like stun grenades, electric batons, and other 'toys' that are popular in these post-Seattle days.
ReplyDeleteKeep in mind that the water cannon is usually laced with capsicum (pepper) spray.... this is all common practice in the west too...