Without a hint of irony:

"We are concerned about the number of people who were injured when police dispersed protesters in Istanbul's Gezi Park," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Saturday. "We believe that Turkey's long-term stability, security and prosperity is best guaranteed by upholding the fundamental freedoms of expression, assembly and association, which is what it seems these individuals were doing."

Hey, State Department, remember when the US "dispersed protesters" from parks and squares around the country, crushing the Occupy movement?

"Citizens have the right to dissent with the authorities, and there's no need to use public force to silence that dissension," [UN special rapporteur on the protection of free expression Frank La Rue] said.

"One of the principles is proportionality," La Rue said. "The use of police force is legitimate to maintain public order — but there has to be a danger of real harm, a clear and present danger. And second, there has to be a proportionality of the force employed to prevent a real danger."

Occupy encampments across the country have been forcibly removed by police in full riot gear, and some protesters have been badly injured as a result of aggressive police tactics.

New York police staged a night raid on the original Occupy Wall Street encampment in mid-November, evicting sleeping demonstrators and confiscating vast amounts of property.

The Oakland Police Department fired tear gas, smoke grenades and bean-bag rounds at demonstrators there in late October, seriously injuring one Iraq War veteran at the Occupy site.

Earlier this week, Philadelphia and Los Angeles police stormed the encampments in their cities in the middle of the night, evicting and arresting hundreds of protesters.

Protesters at University of California, Davis were pepper sprayed by a campus police officer in November while participating in a sit-in, and in September an officer in New York pepper sprayed protesters who were legally standing on the sidewalk.

Yeah, that was fun.