International Day Against Police Brutality

The ironically unofficial and largely unacknowledged 'International Day Against Police Brutality' is a day of solidarity created in 1997 by the Canadian Collective Opposed to Police Brutality and the Switzerland-based Black Flag group. This initiative began with the purpose of providing an opportunity to educate, spread awareness and protest against police brutality. The date was set to March 15 following an alleged incident where the Swiss police force beat two young boys, by some reports to death. However, no evidence of this occurrence has been reported outside of anarchist sources, and the date was most likely chosen because it was initially a Saturday. Despite the days dubious connections with anarchism, its existence allows anarchists, victims and everyone else alike to address the issue together.

Police brutality is defined as the intentional and unprovoked use of excessive and unreasonable force by the police towards civilians. This abuse is usually physical in nature, but can also be verbal or psychological.

The prominent hindrance to even recognising, let alone solving, the issue of police brutality is the scarcity of statistical evidence, a fact acknowledged by the United Nations' Human Rights Committee. Whilst some statistics exist, they too are problematic as few sources are considered reliable which can lead to the severity of the issue becoming exaggerated or undermined. If the available statistics were to be taken at face value, the fact would remain that most are US (or Western)-centric, most likely due to the comparatively wider access to information under the Freedom of Information Act and its counterparts, alongside the fact that these countries give most of their citizens rights that therefore can be violated. Whatever the cause of this disparity, it means that even reliable statistics do not necessarily accurately reflect the issue.

Occasionally, however, a single incident arises which provokes both national and international outrage, thus bringing attention to the issue. In February of this year, video footage of a group of South African police officers harming a man spread across the world through the media. The footage shows the officers making a feeble attempt to force a slight young man (later named as Emido "Mido" Macia, a Mozambican immigrant and taxi driver) into a police van, before giving up and handcuffing him to the back of the vehicle. As the shocked crowd demands to know which crime the man is thought to have committed, the van drives away, inflicting Macia with internal bleeding and head injuries, which are thought to have caused his later death whilst in police custody. The investigation continues, albeit struggling with the lack of cooperation from the police officers concerned, who were denied bail as a cautionary measure in fear that they would influence witnesses.

Macia's story is unfortunately just one of many. South Africa alone, with its shocking history of apartheid, has had countless incidents of police brutality, notably the killing of 34 protesting miners in 2012 and the infamous death of Steve Biko, which further mobilised the anti-apartheid movement. Elsewhere, some victims of police brutality have become well-known both nationally and in social justice communities, such as Rodney King and Ian Tomlinson. The stories of these victims, whether through their own words or the media's, are indispensable to understanding and working to solve the issue of police brutality, especially considering the presumably large volume of untold stories.

Whilst the so-called International Day Against Police Brutality remains an event recognised almost exclusively by anarchists, the issue of police brutality affects and has the potential to affect anyone, regardless of whether they are a peaceful protester, law-abiding citizen or innocent bystander. The UN recognises the worldwide issue of human rights abuse annually on December 10, and also, more specifically, March 24 as the lengthily self-explanatory International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims.

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