2014 is shaping up as the year of the protest, with the headlines dominated by stories of mass demonstrations in Ukraine, Venezuela and elsewhere. The extensive coverage of mass citizen movements is a good thing, but the tendency to focus on large events leaves part of the story untold, writes UN Special Rapporteur Maina Kiai.

By Maina Kiai, UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association

2014 is shaping up to be the year of the protest, with the headlines dominated by stories of mass demonstrations in Ukraine, Venezuela and elsewhere. The extensive coverage of mass citizen movements is a good thing, but the tendency to focus on large events does leave part of the story untold.

Scores of smaller protests take place across the world each day. Few of them have revolutionary aims. Rather, they tend to be staged by people at the margins of society: the excluded, the disfavored, people whose voices have not been heard through more conventional means. Their aims are typically modest. They resort to protesting because they have to. The rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association are often their last recourse.

The plight of such groups is the subject of a report I presented to the UN Human Rights Council on 10 June. We have deemed them 'most at risk' of attacks and reprisals – an unfortunate label that can apply both in their daily lives and in the exercise of their assembly and association rights. These groups are persistently demonized and targeted across the world, from the global north to the south, with their assembly and association rights restricted by repressive legislation, harassment, violence and threats.

But most of their stories tend not to make headlines.

Of course, it’s hard to define exactly what 'at risk' means. It’s a moving target. Today it could be an obscure classification, based on religion, ethnicity, disability or sexual orientation. Tomorrow it could be broader – young or old, male or female. The next day it could be you.

The divide-and-conquer undertones behind targeting specific groups recall the final line of pastor Martin Niemöller’s World War II era poem: 'Then they came for me – and there was no one left.' Indeed, somewhat paradoxically, every single person reading this article will have fallen into one of the report’s at-risk groups at some point in their lives.

Were you young once? In Malaysia, people under 21 are prohibited from organizing a peaceful public demonstration. Children below age 15 cannot even participate.

Have you ever lived abroad? A disturbing number of countries explicitly divest non-citizens of all assembly and association rights. This includes Myanmar, where the stateless Rohingya – who some claim have been present in the country for centuries – have seen such rights entirely eliminated under the constitution.

Even if you don’t live abroad, you may be at risk if you exercise your assembly and association rights to protect your ancestral land. In Canada, for example, the government formed a special intelligence unit between 2007 and 2010 to spy on First Nations groups engaging in protest activities. A police spokesperson said in 2011 that the unit had been dismantled, but that they could not confirm further spying was still ongoing 'under another name or program.'

If you happen not to be heterosexual, you face an array of targeted restrictions on assembly and association rights across the world, particularly in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In Nigeria, for example, it is a criminal offense to register, operate, participate in or support “gay clubs, societies, organizations, processions or meetings.” In Russia, the law prohibits 'propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations' among minors, which effectively bans gay rights protests.

And if you are part of the roughly 50% of the population that happens to be female, you may be singled out for particularly vicious violence, harassment and intimidation. In Egypt, peaceful female demonstrators were sexually assaulted repeatedly in Tahir Square, largely due to the inaction of law enforcement authorities.

The rationales for targeting marginalized groups varies, but the underlying motivation invariably comes back to fear. On the government side, particularly in autocratic regimes, this typically means fear of seeing their authority undermined. But for ordinary people – and many restrictions documented in our report do have popular support – it usually comes down to fear of the unknown. Unfortunately, many governments are all too happy to leverage this fear for their own ends.

This fear is deeply misguided.

Assembly and association rights are meant as a backstop against tyranny of all forms: tyranny of the majority in democracy, tyranny of authoritarianism, tyranny of the status quo. They are about giving a voice to the disenfranchised. An individual’s status as a member of a marginalized group should never diminish these rights. If anything, there should be fewer restrictions: If people individual cannot vote, for example, peaceful assemblies and associations may be the only effective way to make their voices heard.

It’s time to cast aside our fear and embrace the broad social benefits that assembly and association rights embody – pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness – even when exercised by people who don’t look like us, act like us or speak like us.

The 'us vs. them' rhetoric is an illusion. A government that can silence one group is a government that can silence anyone. 

Maina Kiai is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association. For more information about the Special Rapporteur’s mandate and work, please see Maina Kiai's website at www.freeassembly.net, or follow him on Twitter (https://twitter.com/MainaKiai_UNSR) or Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/mainakiai.sr).