Protest Suppression Quotes

The time to stop a revolution is at the beginning, not the end.

What is happening in Nigeria is an absolute atrocity.

The march is not conducive to the orderly flow of traffic and commerce within and through the state of Alabama. The additional hazard placed on highway travel by any such actions cannot be countenanced. Such a march cannot and will not be tolerated.

The Chinese people have been forced to forget the Tiananmen massacre. There has been no public debate about the event, no official apology. The media aren't allowed to mention it. Still today people are being persecuted and imprisoned for disseminating information about it.

Our suspicions are being confirmed that Nashi will serve as a cover for storm brigades that will use violence against democratic organisations.

There's a full-court press to put down an uprising around Ferguson, but no preparation for lifting up the people there.

The integrity of China was more important than [the people] in Tiananmen Square.

Whenever anyone challenges anything, the powers that be try to paint them as extremists or radicals or whatever. And I think that's actually nonsense.

It is impossible to preserve my friendship with people who are allegedly leaders when they are attacking their own people, shooting at them, using tanks and other forms of heavy weaponry.

This is an unlawful march. It will not be allowed to continue…. Troopers Advance!

If you were a real fascistic society and you had a vocal minority that was shouting, "Stop this, stop that, stop the other thing," what you would say is, "Let's give them all the drugs they want." In a lot of states, something very much like that happened. They lowered the drinking age to eighteen and said, "Get juiced."

I remember a time when you were protesting on the street together with your professors, with your union, with your school organizations. Everybody was in the streets. Now, everybody is kept alone in his box, in this fragile condition, afraid of losing tenure.

Vladimir Putin has to create foreign enemies, and he also has to justify... he has to claim... he can't acknowledge that there's a legitimate protest against his authoritarian rule, so he's got to blame it on Hilary Clinton.

Indiscriminate firing by police on people is absolute barbarism. Instead of solving their problems, the government is trying to suppress the people by force.

When counterterrorist policies are used to suppress peaceful protests and legitimate opposition movements, shut down debate, target human rights defenders, or stigmatize minorities, they fail, and we all lose. Indeed, such responses may cause further resentment and instability and contribute to radicalization.

Tear gas, rubber bullets, and I would have arrested all the leaders. Oh, only a disgusting drunkard like ex-President Yahya Khan could have sullied himself with an operation carried out so badly and bloodily.

There's no doubt that the Chinese government is waging a full-fledged crackdown on Demosisto.

This was a process of infiltrating left-leaning organizations and spreading information about the members so that they would lose their jobs…. They caused anti-war activists to be evicted from their homes, disabled their cars, intercepted their mail. Wiretapped and bugged their conversations, prevented them from renting facilities, incited others to harass them, and disrupted peaceful organizations

The use of water cannon could have changed the face of British policing; it would have made a huge difference to British policing.

From horrific incidents of police brutality and complicity in indiscriminate attacks by triads on citizens to arbitrary mass arrests and the banning of demonstrations, the government has employed nearly every weapon in its war chest to intimidate Hong Kongers into silence and to suppress their popular struggle for democracy and freedom.

Within the United States especially, the often violent response to nonviolent forms of youth protests must be analyzed within the framework of a mammoth military-industrial state and its commitment to war and the militarization of the entire society.

Your commanders have ordered you to storm the White House and to arrest me. But I as the elected President of Russia give you the order to turn your tanks and not to fight against your own people.

I think Robert F. Kennedy really, finally, cared; he realized that all of the rhetoric had to be put down into some form of action. That's perhaps the reason they killed him. They don't care what you say, you can say as much as you want to, provided you don't do anything. If you start to do something and your shuffling raises too much dust, they will disestablish you. That's what happened to Martin Luther King.

All those people who went out [to Occupy Wall Street] missed work, didn't get paid. Those were individuals who were already feeling the effects of inequality, so they didn't have a lot to lose. And then the individuals who were louder, more disruptive and, in many ways, more effective at drawing attention to their concerns were immediately castigated by authorities. They were cordoned off, pepper-sprayed, thrown in jail.

…allies such as Bahrain are liable to use their American made weapons against their own people.