Police brutality

Police backed by riot squad raid communal house in IstanbulIstanbul police staged a morning raid on the Caferağa Neighborhood House in the city's Kadıköy district on Dec. 9, emptying the communal facility's library and confiscating possessions.

US celebrities called for a boycott to take place Friday -- one of the busiest US shopping days -- to protest a grand jury's decision not to prosecute a police officer who fatally shot a black teen.
      
A number of well-known figures, among them hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, have signed onto the action, under the Twitter hashtags #NotOneDime and #BlackoutBlackFriday.

Violent protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, on Monday after demonstrators learned there would be no criminal indictment of police officer Darren Wilson for the August shooting death of unarmed teen Michael Brown.

A prosecution witness told the trial of three ex-policemen accused of abusing non-Serb prisoners that detainees held in a student dormitory in Bileca in 1992 were beaten up.

Istanbul’s Üsküdar Municipality has decided to halt the construction of a small mosque next to the Validebağ grove, after activists continued to brave inclement weather by camping out on the site to prevent the cutting down of the grove's trees.

Mihajlovic: Excessive use of force cannot be permitted

BELGRADE -- Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Zorana Mihajlovic condemned any use of excessive force.

The month of May opened and closed violently in Turkey. No doubt it will be so for years to come. We had the May Day demonstrations that were repressed by excessive police force first, and finally the Gezi Park demonstrations that were repressed by police brutality, as the whole world saw over the weekend.

Human Rights Watch on February 21 said the authorities in Bosnia should investigate the excessive use of force by police during the protests in the country, as well as attacks on journalists.