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Although Lebanons new cabinet met for the first time on Wednesday, the country's tenacious protest movement hasn't seemed to lose momentum. As the countrys security forces are now accused of using excessive violence against demonstrators, including the misuse of tear gas and rubber bullets, FRANCE 24 took an inside look at their increasingly tough tactics.
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Human rights observers have been accusing security forces of the misuse of rubber bullets and tear gas, as some are being fired at close range or targeting delicate parts of protesters bodies, causing many injuries at the Beirut protests.
It took emergency personnel 56 stitches to reconstruct Jean-Georges Prince's lip and chin after he was shot in the face with a rubber bullet by riot police while protesting outside Lebanon's parliament on Saturday.
"I heard the first shot and I saw a guy fall to the floor next to me, then I took my hand off my face and realised it was extremely bloody,” he told FRANCE 24s Leila Molana-Allen. “A friend of mine was behind me, he looked at my face and he looked horrified. I'm a boxer, so I'm used to taking punches to the face. I never felt anything like that. It literally pushed me back three or four steps. You never expect to get shot in the face, you know," he added.
International guidelines say rubber bullets should only be shot at the lower body, and weapons experts recommend a minimum distance of 40 meters. Prince says the policeman who shot him was only 4-5m away. He wasn't the only one wounded: over 500 Read More – Source
