2025 In Focus: Protesting Without Fear
By Renata Politi, Legal Advisor
Peaceful protest is one of the clearest expressions of public voice. Yet for many around the world, taking to the streets means risking torture, sexual violence, or disappearance. This year, the escalating oppression of protesters has shown just how dangerous it has become for many to demand change. In response, we have sought to expose abuses, secure accountability, and protect protesters from torture and police brutality.
In June, REDRESS and partners in the United Against Torture Consortium published a paper showing that incidents of police brutality during protests are often overlooked as torture or ill-treatment, even though they frequently meet this threshold—particularly when law enforcement misuses equipment or employs inherently abusive methods. Following our advocacy, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture cited the increasing use of torture during protests and against political opposition in her report to the UN General Assembly.
Together with consortium partners, we urged authorities in Kenya, Bangladesh, and Georgia to investigate allegations of police torture during protests, while continuing to highlight the use of sexual and gender-based violence as a tool of repression.
A groundbreaking report on Latin America, released in September by partners and REDRESS, was the first of its kind to document how State actors use forced nudity, rape, sexual harassment, invasive searches, and other abuses to punish and deter peaceful protesters. The findings reveal a disturbing regional pattern: sexual and gender-based violence is being systematically employed to suppress dissent.
In Belarus, we encouraged other States to support Lithuania’s referral of the situation in Belarus to the International Criminal Court for the persecution and forced deportation of dissidents. The International Accountability Platform for Belarus, which we co-lead, continues to document human rights violations and has collected testimonies from more than 3,200 victims and witnesses of state-led repression following the 2020 presidential elections.
Across all these efforts, REDRESS remains steadfast in protecting the right to protest; working to expose abuses, support survivors, and hold perpetrators accountable wherever torture and repression occur.
Photo: © Khaled Al Hariri/Reuters