201–210 of 530 posts
https://www.reddit.com/r/serbia/comments/1jchks6/novi_snimci...
Please take into account that this occurred during the fifteen-minute silence observed by the protesters in memory of the fifteen victims of the accident, which the protesters blame on the government corruption and which was the very reason for the start of the protests.
Serbia had the LRAD systems on hand, after buying them in 2022, most likely from Genasys, but possibly from HyperSpike. https://genasys.com/lrad-products/ It's a legal gray area in Serbia where the use against civilians isn't explicitly forbidden, so they're playing fast and loose and moving fast to crush opposition. It's better than troops just gunning people down, but for a modern, supposedly civilized country it's…
You are aware that these LRAD systems have been used against US citizens, aren't you?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are chemical irritants preferable, then? Or just LEOs in riot gear with rubber batons? There's no amount of pushback or repercussion that a rioter will feel is fair or humane, and the mindset of "I'll turn violent and/or destructive if my participation in civil unrest is punished" is a perfect justification for these systems to exist.
>Are chemical irritants preferable Absolutely. You can heal from those. LRADs are maiming weapons designed to cause permanent damage. Under any reasonable legal system their use would be considered a war crime.
There hasn’t been much research on long term health impacts, but it’s not a tool to maim people.
https://phr.org/our-work/resources/health-impacts-of-crowd-c...
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> If you were at a protest that was starting to get a bit rowdy and somebody used one of these on you, what would you do? Leave. The moment it turns into a riot you’re doing damage to your cause. (If you’re in a protest and see hooligans, restrain them.)
That's good advice, but I mean what do you do when you get home? Now that your right to assemble has been effectively revoked, what's your next step?
Right to assemble is not a blank check for violent action, or even to assemble wherever and whenever your want.
Even without knowing the background of those protests: It is heartbreaking to see a crowd of peaceful people (seemingly during a moment of silence) being attacked by their own country and fleeing in panic and pain.
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Police also regularly use tear gas against US citizens. These are weapons that would violate the Geneva convention, but we're okay with them to disperse a crowd.
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> "Tear gas is bad because it violates the Geneva convention" makes as much sense as "MLK is a bad person because he's a criminal".
Not really, no. The Geneva Convention has specific reasoning and rationale for making tear gas illegal during warfare, which does apply to tear gas and make perfect sense.
That's not the same thing as saying taxation is theft, or MLK is bad.
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I believe you have misunderstood this (extremely dumb) article. The idea and significance of the proper noun 'The Geneva Convention' is a much different class than just a noun like 'criminal' or 'murder'. The point of invoking it is not to hide behind an abstraction, but in fact to appeal to something specific. Unless you just read that article as "how to be uncharitable," your point does not make any sense.
What is it appealing to then? When you say "violates the Geneva convention", I'm thinking of things like genocide, killing of civilians, and soldiers in trenches choking to death because they couldn't put their gas mask in time. None of that applies to tear gas.
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Yes, but polarization is a possibility. You can't know you're the majority, so until violence is used against you, you don't necessarily have a reason to turn the thing into a civil war.
You're using whataboutism to conflate the Serbian government with an imaginary counter faction. Civil war requires 2+ factions that cannot or will not express their grievances through political means. This simply isn't the case.
Basically, I'm saying that if one is attacked, the one can do as one likes, but if one is not attacked, then one can leave things to democracy; and it is difficult to know whether ones position, in the absence of an election, has popular support.
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>Are chemical irritants preferable Absolutely. You can heal from those. LRADs are maiming weapons designed to cause permanent damage. Under any reasonable legal system their use would be considered a war crime.
LRADs are not designed to cause permanent damage. They are explicitly designed under the intention of being a way to disperse a crowd without long term harm. There hasn’t been much research on long term health impacts, but it’s not a tool to maim people. https://phr.org/our-work/resources/health-impacts-of-crowd-c...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but polarization is a possibility. You can't know you're the majority, so until violence is used against you, you don't necessarily have a reason to turn the thing into a civil war.
Something like 1.6 million people across Serbia were protesting across the country, last I heard. They're the majority.