riot control equipment. But after footage emerged of the equipment in use, the Spanish Minister of Interior admitted it was used, but claimed that it was deployed in such a way as to avoid hitting any of the people who were in the sea. However, survivors told Spanish nongovernmental organisations that some of them were hit by rubber bullets when they were in the sea and that the tear gas fired by the Civil Guards made it difficult for them to see and breathe.274 Turkey Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and Turkish legal, medical and human rights organisations have documented the widespread excessive use of force by Turkish police in response to the Gezi Park protests, which began in May 2013. This included firing kinetic impact projectiles directly at non-violent demonstrators at close range, resulting in many injuries. One interviewee, a 19-year-old recent high school graduate who did not wish to be identified, described being at Gezi Park in Istanbul on 16 June 2013: “The police were 50 to 60 meters from us and were shooting rubber bullets and tear gas canisters at our heads…. I was trying to protect my head. I was behind a car and was trying to go into a house. A rubber bullet hit me in my left eye. I fell to the ground…. People said that the police wouldn’t let ambulances through to help me, and if the ambulances came they would bring in tear gas canisters to the police. So, they got a taxi and carried me to the hospital.” The plastic bullet hit his lower orbital bone and went up through the eye. At the time of PHR’s interview, it was not known whether vision could be restored in the affected eye. 275 Ukraine During its 2014 visit, the CPT’s delegation received numerous allegations and gathered other evidence of a widespread pattern of ill-treatment of “Maidan” protesters by members of Internal Affairs special forces at the time of actual apprehension and/or shortly afterwards in the course of the public order operations in Kiev of 19-23 January and 18-21 February 2014. This included shooting with kinetic impact projectiles (rubber bullets) at close range. Some persons interviewed also claimed that, once apprehended, they had been hit with batons whilst being forced to run through a “corridor” formed by members of Internal Affairs special forces or had been initially asked by law enforcement officials to choose with which “special means” they would like to be “dealt with” (e.g. being shot at with a rubber bullet gun or receiving baton blows). The aim of the various types of alleged illtreatment was apparently to inflict the maximum possible pain or damage to the health of the apprehended persons.276 274 Amnesty International & Omega Research Foundation, Tackling the trade in tools of torture, ACT 30/6998/2017, October 2017. 275 Physicians for Human Rights, Contempt for Freedom: State Use of Tear Gas as a Weapon and Attacks on Medical Personnel in Turkey, September 2013, p. 14. 276 CPT, Report to the Ukrainian Government on the visit to Ukraine carried out by the CPT from 18 to 24 February 2014, 13 January 2015, paragraph 11. 55