Assembly crackdown ratchet

Because mass protests hit multi-year highs, democracies widen anti-assembly enforcement. Rising demonstration volumes (ACLED, Global Protest Tracker) coincide with escalated tactics—campus threats, mass arrests, tighter permitting/curfew use—that normalize narrower protest rights and shift litigation and policing baselines. — It reframes civil-liberties debates by highlighting a cross-country trend where public-order tools incrementally constrict freedom of assembly as protest frequency grows, with implications for university governance, policing policy, and constitutional standards.