US anti-protest bills ‘undemocratic’ & ‘alarming’ trend against free speech – UN
RT.com
1 Apr, 2017
UN rights experts have voiced concerns over bills recently introduced by a number of US states aimed at restricting the right to assembly, saying they are “undemocratic” and violate international human rights obligations adopted by Washington.
“Since January 2017, a number of undemocratic bills have been proposed in state legislatures with the purpose or effect of criminalizing peaceful protests,” the UN’s top experts on freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, David Kaye and Maina Kiai, said in a recent statement.
The proposed bills, if approved “would severely infringe upon the exercise of the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly,” the statement says, noting that it would be “incompatible with US obligations under international human rights law and with First Amendment protections.”
“The trend also threatens to jeopardize one of the United States’ constitutional pillars: free speech.”
According to the UN experts, since the presidential election in November, US lawmakers in at least 19 states have introduced legislation “restricting assembly rights by various degrees.”
This comes as the US has seen an unprecedented surge in mass protest movements, from Black Lives Matter demonstrations to mass protests against Trump’s migration laws, environmental and Native American protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline, and the Women’s Marches. The latter, for instance, was held across hundreds of cities and ended up as one of the largest demonstrations in US history, some estimates indicate.
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