-Caveat Lector-
* News Release Issued by the International Secretariat of Amnesty
International *
26 February 2001
ACT 40/009/2001
30/01
Torturers are arming themselves with increasingly sophisticated
equipment, and -- according to a new report released today by
Amnesty International -- the trade in these devices is growing.
The equipment includes high voltage electric shock stun weapons
and chemical crowd control devices, while torturers continue to
abuse old-style equipment such as restraint devices.
Amnesty International's report, "Stopping The Torture
Trade", reveals that the international trade in high voltage
electro-shock batons, shields, stun guns, and stun belts has been
expanding throughout the 1990s. This includes 'tasers', which can
shoot 'fishhook' darts on wires into victims up to thirty feet
away, and stun belts, which are strapped to prisoners and
operated by remote control devices. The belts have been known to
set off accidentally thrusting about 50,000 volts through the
prisoners' kidneys for up to eight seconds. This technology began
in the United States, and has spread to Asia, Europe and South
Africa.
"In the 1970s there were only two companies known to
market high voltage electro-shock stun weapons, and now there are
over 150 world-wide," said Brian Wood, one of the Amnesty
International researchers who worked on the report.
"In the absense of stringent controls to prevent this
equipment ending up in the hands of torturers, responsible
governments must ban its export immediately," he added.
In the last two years, over 150 companies operating in 22
countries have been making or marketing electro-shock weapons.
Now, Taiwanese, South Korean and Chinese companies probably
manufacture more electro-shock stun weapons than companies in the
USA. German, French and Israeli companies are also amongst the
key manufacturers, and recently Polish, Russian, Czech, Mexican,
Brazilian, and South African firms have joined in. The German
government does not allow the weapons to be used in German
prisons or by German police on German residents, but allows
German companies to market and sell them for use abroad. The
South African government is now actively promoting the sale of
electro-shock belts in Asia, as well as using them on prisoners
at home.
In one case cited in the report, Mohammed Naguib
Adu-Higazi was arrested in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1997 by a State
Security Investigations officer. While held at the SSI office,
he was stripped of his clothes and given electro-shocks from a
"cylinder-shaped stick with a spiral metal wire." He was
reportedly deprived of food for three days, kept blind-folded
throughout his nine-day detention, and threatened with sexual
assault. Between 1997 and March 2000, the United States approved
the export to Egypt of shock batons, stun guns and optical
sighting devices valued at more than $40,000.
"Stopping the Torture Trade," one of a series of reports
to be released in Amnesty International's year-long campaign to
Stop Torture, also highlights the trade by more than 40 companies
in more conventional security devices that can be used for
serious abuse of human rights, such as mechanical restraints and
chemical sprays. A British company, Pains-Wessex, made tear gas
grenades used on peaceful demonstrators -- many of them women
and children -- in Zambia in 1997. Despite this, the UK
Government's most recent annual report on arms exports reveals
that in 1999 the UK granted licences for the export of CS
grenades and tear gas/irritant ammunition to Zambia. When UK
tear gas was misused in Kenya and its supply was suspended, the
Kenyan police were supplied from France. Some chemical weapons
such as pepper gas sprays have been associated with many deaths
in the USA and their international transfer must be suspended
pending proper independent tests. A US company has supplied
police with bursting pepper gas projectiles, used for the first
time on protesters in Seattle in 1999.
Military, security and police expertise taught
internationally has also been used for torture, according to the
new report. Hundreds of graduates of the US School of the
Americas have been implicated in human rights violations in South
America. This military school is one of over 150 centres in the
USA and abroad where foreign officers are trained. Public
information on the human rights content of the training is
minimal.
Amnesty International's report also cites French security
training used in Togo for torture and intimidation of the
civilian population. A high-ranking officer in the Togolese
gendarmerie, accused by Togo's National Commission for Human
Rights of ordering the torture of four people in August 1990, was
subsequently awarded the decoration of the National Order of
Merit by the French government. In another case, Israeli
security officers paid and trained the guards and interrogators
in the notorious Khiam detention centre in southern Lebanon until
it was closed in May 2000, and the Israeli officers then used the
information extracted under torture.
" Unless security training is strictly controlled and
independently monitored, there is always a danger that it will be
used to facilitate human rights violations," said Amnesty
International.
"There is a crying need for concrete changes to be made
to the way governments licence and monitor the manufacture,
transfer and use of security equipment and know-how," added the
organization.
In particular, Amnesty International calls upon governments to:
1) Ban the use of police and security equipment whose use is
inherently cruel, inhuman or degrading. Ban the manufacture and
promotion of this equipment and its trade to other countries.
This should include leg irons, electro-shock stun belts and
inherently painful devices such as serrated thumb-cuffs;
2) Suspend the international transfer of electro-shock,
leg-cuffs, thumbcuffs, shackle boards, restraint chairs and
pepper gas weapons pending the outcome of a rigorous and
independent review into the effects of these devices. Suspend the
use of high voltage electro-shock weapons pending the outcome of
this review;
3) Ensure that the training of military, security and police
personnel of another country does not include the transfer of
skills, knowledge and techniques likely to lend themselves to
torture.
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