Students again facing tuition increases protested in Montreal, Canada this week. The police responded by bringing out the riot gear and their assorted weaponry to use on the unarmed protesters.
Austerity is a mathematically unsupportable venture if you want a stable society. Unfortunately the governments of the world have not caught on to this even though their people have.
Again a peaceful protester is seriously injured by the police using excessive force on peaceful protesters.
Sorry my French is not up to par to begin to translate this. The video itself is compelling. The young man with the severe eye injury is also the same one playing the harmonica at the beginning of the video. His name is Francis Grenier and he is a student that was at the protests. He was leaving at police request but before he could leave the area the police deployed flash bangs into the crowd.
Student movement leaders are calling him a victim of police brutality and are accusing riot squad officers of overreacting after snowballs were launched during the afternoon protest on Sherbrooke Street.
Grenier said he was in front of the Loto-Québec headquarters Wednesday afternoon playing the harmonica when an officer told him to leave.
He said he was starting to leave the area when riot squad officers started launching stun grenades over the crowd. One grenade missed him, but a second detonated close to his face, he said.
He underwent surgery overnight for a detached retina.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Grenier said. “The police, they didn’t [give] us enough time to leave. That’s what happened.”
TVA also reports that apparently after Grenier ran from the scene badly injured to find help from a police officer, the officer refused to help him or to call him an ambulance. He was eventually helped to the hospital by fellow students.