THE British government must call time on paramilitary policing, campaigners urged today, as a new report exposed the growing militarisation of police forces across Europe.

Published on the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s murder by US police, the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) study links the growing use of dangerous crowd-control weaponry to hypermilitarised policing in Europe, especially against ethnic minority communities, migrants and political protesters — including Black Lives Matter (BLM) and pro-Palestine groups.

The report highlights the widespread deployment of so-called “less-lethal” weaponry such as rubber bullets and tear gas grenades, which can cause life-changing injuries or death. 

It warns of the dangers of the US experience being replicated in Europe. 

In the first two months of the BLM protests in the US in 2020, 115 people were shot in the head by law enforcement officers, with at least 30 people suffering permanent eye damage as a result of crowd-control weaponry.  

In Europe, the IRR recorded 69 deaths of migrants, refugees and other racialised people by such weapons, most notably at the Spanish-Moroccan border, where asylum-seekers from sub-Saharan Africa were targeted. 

The report also detailed the policing of the 2023 urban disturbances in France following the police shooting of Nahel Merzouk, during which demonstrators were left with shattered skulls and explosive eye injuries from crowd-control weapons.

IRR director Liz Fekete said: “It’s politicians more than even the police who are responsible for ushering in hypermilitarisation, a model of policing that blurs the lines between military and police and does not accord with democratic values. 

“That is why we are calling on the UK government and the European Parliament to call time on paramilitary policing. 

“Instead of further arming the police and further limiting the democratic right to protest, we are calling on politicians to address the social crisis they have helped to create.”

BLM UK national organiser Kojo Kyerewaa said: “This report shows that policing in Britain is structurally racist. 

“For the past six years, plastic bullets were authorised exclusively against black-led movements: the Notting Hill Carnival — a celebration of black joy — and the 2020 BLM protests demanding justice for police murders. 

“Only racism can explain the British state’s fear of black people on the streets.” 

European Legal Support Centre’s Tasnima Uddin said the report “exposes a chilling reality,” adding: “This is political policing at its most insidious, a war on social movements that undermines democracy itself.”