Physicians for Human Rights Preliminary Findings: Portland Oregon In Advance of August 4 Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution Hearing entitled The Right of the People Peaceably to Assemble: Protecting Speech by Stopping Anarchist Violence
"For more than three decades PHR has investigated and documented the health effects and harms caused by so-called 'non-lethal' or 'less than lethal crowd-control weapons' (CCWs). PHR has conducted investigations of injuries and deaths caused by these types of weapons around the world since the 1980s and has reviewed cases upon cases of serious injuries disability and death attributed to CCWs. We have also documented and advocated against excessive use of force by police and other security agents on almost every continent over the decades. We have seen how deployment of such force poses a grave threat to fundamental human rights that are foundational in the United States: the rights to freedom of expression and assembly. "