‘I thought my head was exploding’: How eye injuries have become a gruesome global punishment for protest

With the rise in ‘less-lethal’ weaponry across the world, more and more demonstrators are paying a terrible price for speaking up, as Naomi Larsson and Charis McGowan report from Santiago, Chile

A protester hides her right eye during an occupation of Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok International Airport in August, 2019 (EPA)

When she hit the ground, Nicole Kramm remembers thinking to herself: “Not my eye”. The 29-year-old photographer was in central Santiago in Chile on New Year’s Eve, documenting as well as celebrating alongside others in a plaza that had been the heart of months-long protests.

Since 18 October, Chile’s uprising had been brutally repressed by police and the military. Human rights groups have accused the state of deliberately injuring protesters using crowd control weapons like tear gas and rubber bullets.

By New Year’s Eve, 359 people – including protesters, bystanders and journalists – had been shot in the eye with these so-called “less-lethal” weapons and two people were blinded completely. As the months went on, the number of eye injuries rose to more than 460.