Dozens killed and thousands maimed by police misuse of rubber bullets * Police misuse of rubber bullets and other less lethal weapons against peaceful protesters is increasingly routine, leading to more injuries and deaths, a new report shows * Increasing availability of rubber bullets and other less lethal weapons has led to a rise in the use of force against protesters, resulting in a huge increase in permanent injuries * A global Torture-Free Trade Treaty is urgently needed to regulate the trade in policing equipment, and to help protect the right to protest Security forces across the world are routinely misusing rubber and plastic bullets and other law enforcement weapons to violently suppress peaceful protests and cause horrific injuries and deaths, said Amnesty International today, in a new report calling for strict controls on their use and a global treaty to regulate their trade. The report, My Eye Exploded, published jointly with the Omega Research Foundation, is based on research in more than 30 countries over the last five years. It documents how thousands of protesters and bystanders have been maimed and dozens killed by the often reckless and disproportionate use of less lethal law enforcement weaponry, including kinetic impact projectiles (KIPs), such as rubber bullets, as well as the firing of rubberized buckshot, and tear gas grenades aimed and fired directly at demonstrators. “We believe that legally-binding global controls on the manufacture and trade in less lethal weapons, including KIPs, along with effective guidelines on the use of force are urgently needed to combat an escalating cycle of abuses,” said Patrick Wilcken, Amnesty International’s Researcher on Military, Security and Policing issues. Amnesty International and the Omega Research Foundation are among 30 organizations calling for a UN-backed Torture-Free Trade Treaty to prohibit the manufacture and trade of inherently abusive KIPs and other law enforcement weapons, and to introduce human rights-based trade controls on the supply of other law enforcement equipment, including rubber and plastic bullets. “A Torture-Free Trade Treaty would prohibit all production and trade in existing inherently abusive law enforcement weapons and equipment, including intrinsically dangerous or inaccurate single KIPs, rubber-coated metal bullets, rubberized buckshot and ammunition with multiple projectiles that have resulted in blinding, other serious injuries and deaths across the world,” said Dr Michael Crowley, Research Associate at the Omega Research Foundation. Misuse of less lethal weapons is causing devastating injuries worldwide The weapons have led to permanent disability in hundreds of cases and many deaths. There has been an alarming increase in eye injuries, including eyeball ruptures, retinal detachments and the complete loss of sight, as well as bone and skull fractures, brain injuries, the rupture of internal organs and haemorrhaging, punctured hearts and lungs from broken ribs, damage to genitalia, and psychological trauma. According to an evaluation by Chile’s National Institute for Human Rights, police actions during protests which began in October 2019 resulted in more than 440 eye injuries, with over 30 cases of eye loss, or ocular rupture. At least 53 people died from projectiles fired by security forces, according to a peer-reviewed study based on medical literature between 1990 and June 2017. It also concluded that 300 of the 1,984 people injured suffered permanent disability. The actual numbers are likely to be far higher. Since then, the availability, variety and deployment of KIPs has escalated globally, furthering the militarization of protest policing. The report finds that national guidance on the use of KIPs rarely meets international standards on the use of force, which states that their deployment be limited to situations of last resort when violent individuals pose an imminent threat of harm to persons. Police forces routinely flout regulations with impunity. In April 2021, Leidy Cadena Torres, then 22, was walking to a protest over tax reforms in the Colombian capital Bogota, when she was hit in the face by a rubber bullet fired from close range by a riot police officer. She lost an eye. “I didn’t understand what was happening so I took out my phone and took a picture of myself, but I couldn’t see it,” she told Amnesty International. “They try to injure you in a visible way, such as losing an eye, in order to scare people, so they don’t go out [and protest].” Leidy Cadena Torres’s experience of being blinded has been repeated with alarming regularity in similar circumstances in south and central American states, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the USA during recent and current protests. Gustavo Gatica, a 22-year-old psychology student, was blinded in both eyes after being hit in the face by rubber-coated metal pellets fired by police during inequality protests in Chile’s capital Santiago on 8 November 2019. To date there has been no accountability. He recently told Amnesty International: “I felt the water running from my eyes … but it was blood.” He hopes his injuries will inspire change, to stop this happening to others, saying: “I gave my eyes so people would wake up.” In the USA the use of rubber bullets to suppress peaceful protest has become increasingly commonplace. One demonstrator hit in the face in Minneapolis, Minnesota on 31 May 2020 told Amnesty International: “My eye exploded from the impact of the rubber bullet and my nose moved from where it should be to below the other eye. The first night I was in the hospital they gathered up the pieces of my eye and sewed it back together. Then they moved my nose back to where it should be and reshaped it. They put in a prosthetic eye – so I can only see out of my right eye now.” In Spain, the use of large, inherently inaccurate tennis-ball-sized rubber KIPs has led to at last one death from head trauma and 24 serious injuries, including 11 cases of severe eye injury, according to Stop Balas de Goma, a campaign group. In France, a medical review of 21 patients with face and eye injuries caused by rubber bullets noted severe injuries including bone fragmentation, fractures and ruptures resulting in blindness. Amnesty International has also documented cases of tear gas grenades being aimed and fired directly at individuals or crowds in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Gaza, Guinea, Hong Kong, Iran, Iraq, Peru, Sudan, Tunisia and Venezuela. In Iraq, security forces deliberately targeted protesters with specialist grenades which are 10 times heavier than typical tear gas munitions, causing horrific injuries and at least two dozen deaths in 2019. In Tunisia, Haykal Rachdi, 21, died after he was hit in the head by a tear gas cannister in January 2021. In Colombia security forces have deployed VENOM, a 30-tube grenade launcher, originally developed for the US Marine Corps, to launch volleys of tear gas grenades at protesters.
For International Women’s Day, Universal Music Group’s Mercury Studios announced a new feature documentary, FANNY: THE OTHER MENDELSSOHN, directed by the unheralded composer’s great great great granddaughter, BAFTA-winning filmmaker Sheila Hayman. Take a celebrated musical genius, some sibling rivalry, an unknown manuscript, a dash of sass and one sensational revelation and what have you got? Fanny: The Other Mendelssohn – revelatory new feature documentary starring global Decca star, Isata Kanneh-Mason.
Anyone who has been to a wedding has enjoyed the soaring musical genius of Felix Mendelssohn. His Wedding March may be the best-known classical composition of all time. But Felix was not the only genius in the family. His sister, Fanny was also a brilliant composer. Yet most people have never heard of her, and even now only a few of her 450 works are published or performed. Fanny was equal to any of her contemporaries, male or female; technically brilliant and boldly ground-breaking. Yet not until she was 40 did she dare to defy Felix’s disapproval and publish her music under her own name. Tragically, the resulting joy and recognition were short-lived. Less than a year later, Fanny died, and shortly afterwards Felix too – his already poor health exacerbated by grief.
Over a century later, in 1971, the famous pianist Eric Heidsieck was contacted by a record company and asked to produce the first recording of Mendelssohn’s Easter Sonata. It was presumed to be the work of Felix. But in an amazing plot twist, captured as it happened in this extraordinary film, it is once and for all proven definitively to be Fanny’s own piano masterpiece, written when she was only 22. Fanny’s music is brought to life by the gifted virtuoso pianist, Isata Kanneh-Mason, recipient of the 2021 Leonard Bernstein Award and 2021 best classical artist at the Global Awards. And as she discovers the Easter Sonata, the parallels between her life and Fanny’s – including the challenge of being a pioneer with few role models in classical music – become clear.
As moving as it is joyous, this is the story of a very modern woman – who just happened to live 200 years ago.
Alice Webb, CEO and Co-President of Mercury Studios, comments, “Although Fanny Mendelssohn is a woman of the 19th century, her story is unbelievably modern and more relevant today than ever. Mercury is proud to shine a light on her, especially through the lens of Fanny’s great great great granddaughter, Sheila Hayman. And witnessing Isata Kanneh-Mason, one of today’s brightest new artists, interpret Fanny’s work for the screen is thrilling. I suspect FANNY: THE OTHER MENDELSSOHN will inspire whole new generations of music lovers.”
“In telling the story of an enormously gifted woman whose talents were suppressed and marginalised by a male establishment, it seemed obvious that we should work, as far as we could, with female crew,” director Sheila Hayman adds. “This decision turned out to deliver some of the most joyous, productive and harmonious shoot days of my career. As we left Buckingham Palace, exactly on schedule and having accomplished everything we set out to do in the short time we had there, the PR woman said to me: ‘We’ve never had an all female crew here before. They’re very good, aren’t they?’ To which the only answer was, ‘But of course!'”
Hayman directs FANNY: THE OTHER MENDELSSOHN, with Mercury’s Alice Webb, Marc Robinson and Steve Condie, and Annabel Hobley and Maureen Murray serving as executive producers. Sheila Hayman is the producer; Evie Franks the editor. The film was shot in locations including Berlin, New York, London, Oxford and Buckingham Palace.
