RESTRICTIVE LAWS Across Europe and Central Asia, restrictive laws were passed. Drawing inspiration from similar legislation adopted in Russia in 2012, Hungary adopted a law on the transparency of organizations funded from abroad, which forced NGOs receiving more than EUR24,000 direct or indirect funding from abroad to re-register as a “civic organization funded from abroad” and to put this label on every publication. The move was accompanied by highly stigmatizing government rhetoric. Similar legislation was tabled in Ukraine and in Moldova, but was withdrawn in Moldova due to objections from civil society and international organizations. In November, there were protests throughout Poland when MPs voted on two legislative amendments threatening the independence of the judiciary and placing the right to a fair trial and other rights at risk. President Andrzej Duda vetoed the amendments in July, but subsequently redrafted and submitted them to Parliament in September. FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION AND ASSEMBLY In Eastern Europe and in Central Asia, the authorities clamped down on peaceful protesters. In Russia, during mass anti-corruption protests across the country in March, police used excessive force and arrested hundreds of overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrators in the capital, Moscow, and well over a thousand across the country, including opposition leader Aleksei Navalny. Hundreds of people were again detained and ill-treated during anti-corruption protests across the country in June, and on 7 October, President Vladimir Putin’s birthday. In Kazakhstan, organizing or participating in a peaceful demonstration without the authorities’ prior authorization remained an offence. Police in Kyrgyzstan disrupted a peaceful demonstration in the capital, Bishkek, organized to protest against deterioration of freedom of expression, and arrested several participants. The Belarusian authorities violently suppressed mass demonstrations against a tax on the unemployed. A discriminatory amendment to a law in Poland led to bans of certain demonstrations and favoured pro-government assemblies. People participating in demonstrations against the government policies were prosecuted, harassed by law enforcement officials and political opponents, and prevented from exercising their right to freedom of peaceful assembly. In several countries of Western Europe, public protests were met with a range of restrictive measures and abuses. In Germany, France, Poland and Spain, governments’ response to public assemblies against restrictive policies or human rights abuses included sealing off public spaces, excessive use of force by police, containment of peaceful protesters or “kettling”, surveillance, and threats of administrative and criminal sanctions. France’s government continued to resort to emergency measures to ban public assemblies and to restrict freedom of movement to prevent individuals from participating in demonstrations. In October, Spanish security forces that were ordered to prevent the holding of the Catalan independence referendum used unnecessary and disproportionate force against demonstrators, injuring hundreds of them. This included evidence of police beating peaceful demonstrators. COUNTER-TERROR AND SECURITY In Western Europe, a raft of disproportionate and discriminatory counter-terrorism laws continued to be rushed through. The adoption of the EU Directive on Combating Terrorism in March looked set to lead to a proliferation of such measures in 2018, as states were to transpose the Directive into domestic law. 48 Amnesty International Report 2017/18