British police authorized to use rubber bullets on student protesters

Students protesting in central London on Wednesday will be taking a risk of getting shot by rubber bullets, British police confirmed Tuesday with the authorization. A police spokesman told Xinhua that rubber bullets and armored cars are in readiness, and will be used "only in the most extreme circumstances." Another 4,000 officers will be on duty to police the demonstration. The students are set to march from the university area around Bloomsbury to the financial area around Moorgate, covering about four kilometers, in protest at increased university tuition fees and government budget cuts. If the Metropolitan Police (the Met), London's police force, uses the rubber bullets, it will be the first time on the British mainland in dealing with riots. The Met had authorization to use rubber bullets during the widespread rioting of August 6-9, after losing control of parts of London and other cities in England, but did not use them. Rubber bullets have been used frequently by police and the British army in the province of Northern Ireland since the early 1970s, and have been a controversial weapon of crowd control, cited as the cause of death of at least one protester up to 1975 by the British Journal of Surgery and causing disability or deformity in 17 others. Despite changes in construction of rubber bullets over the years, the British medical magazine The Lancet published a report in 2001 linking them to the deaths of three Palestinian protesters at the hands of the Israeli security forces in early October 2000.