MANILA, Philippines — An activist health group said the police “outdid themselves,” injuring 123 persons during their bid to break up Monday’s protest against the visit of U.S. President Donald Trump.
A series of scuffles broke out between marching protesters and anti-riot police, backed by firetrucks, who blocked their path at the intersection of Taft Avenue and Padre Faura in Manila.
Aside from truncheons and blasts from water cannon, the Health Alliance of Democracy said security forces also deployed a “sonic weapon,” the LRAD, or long range acoustic device, apparently for the first time.
Although the device’s manufacturer, the LRAD Corporation, takes pains to stress it “is not a weapon” but a “highly intelligible long-range communication system,” it also describes it as applicable for “escalation of force” situations as a “safer alternative to kinetic force” such as “tear gas projectiles, rubber bullets, pepper balls, Tasers, and flash bang grenades.”
A recent New York Times report also took note of this (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/nyregion/sound-cannon-protest-lawsuit-long-range-acoustic-device.html):
“The police have often used LRADs to issue commands in an extra-loud voice. But the devices also have what the manufacturer calls a “deterrent” function. That was used during protests in Midtown Manhattan after a Staten Island grand jury declined to indict a police officer who had placed Eric Garner in a chokehold, killing him.”
Gabriela Women’s Party Representatives Emmi de Jesus and Arlene Brosas also blasted the use of the LRAD, calling it a “new level of state violence as there was an intent to harm the protesters during the skirmish along Taft Avenue.”
Brosas noted that not only protesters but the police as well risked injury from the LRAD and worried that patients of the Philippine General Hospital near where Tuesday’s clashes happened might have been affected as well.
“The latest anti-people weapon of the PNP must be probed and opposed,” she said.
De Jesus called the LRAD’s use “a desperate attempt to drown the legitimate calls of women and the people for the pullout of US troops and junking of one-sided trade and military agreements” but predicted that it would fail because “lalo lamang lalakas ang mga panawagan ng mga mamamayan para sa tunay na pagbabago (the people’s call for genuine change can only intensify).”
HEAD said aside from the scores hurt Tuesday, some 20 protesters were also hurt Sunday.
The group said the most severe case it documented was a 24-year old woman who “took a water cannon blast directly on her left ear, added with four head contusions as policemen hit her with their truncheons multiple times.”
“She lost balance and started vomiting” and had to be taken to the Philippine General Hospital for treatment.
HEAD said the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit signaled “the death of Duterte’s independent foreign policy, while these imperialist countries feast on its corpse. On simpler terms, he has sold the interests of the masses, along with his promises and the people’s aspirations, to foreign imperialist interests.”
