DGN vows to shut down weapons conference

national | miscellaneous | feature Wednesday September 22, 2004 21:37 by Dublin Grassroots Network grassrootsdublin at yahoo dot com

Event branded as 'torture trade fair'

The Dublin Grassroots Network (DGN) has called on the owners of the exclusive Berkeley Court Hotel in Ballsbridge, Dublin to cancel a major international weapons conference due to take place at the hotel on October 19th and 20th.

The 'Jane’s Less Lethal Weapons 2004 Conference - Critical Incident Intervention' conference is effectively a trade fair for tools of torture and political repression, according to the DGN, which is vowing to stop the event from going ahead.

Mick Dooley of the DGN said: "If the Jury’s Doyle Hotel group doesn’t cancel this conference, we will call on the public to come out and force it to be shut down."

"The weapons in question include electro-shock batons, stun guns, plastic bullets, Tasers, CR Gas, pepper spray and the new sonic-bombs that have been deployed to 'disperse' crowds in Iraq.

"Put simply, people who sell these tools of political repression and torture and people who want to buy them will be gathering at the Berkeley Court to do business," Dooley said. "Irish people will not tolerate that."

"The Berkeley Court conference is the first event of its kind ever to be held in Ireland," Dooley said. "Apparently this country is now being seen as a potential growth market for the arms industry. The nature of the event is extremely provocative, coming at a time when revulsion at the war machine and the arms industry is running high across the world."

Northern Ireland's appalling track record in plastic bullet deaths is being celebrated by the inclusion of Colin Burrows, a former RUC superintendent, as conference host and main speaker.

The speakers also include senior officers from the West Midlands Police, which framed the Birmingham Six and others, and from the LAPD, responsible for beating Rodney King. The CEO of Taser International Inc, a major supplier of weaponry to the occupation forces in Iraq, will also be speaking.

"Are these people being invited here to teach the Irish authorities how to brutalise people?" Dooley asked. "The organisers of this conference and the owners of the hotel need to get a loud and clear message from people in Ireland: we are not going to sit back and allow these people to peddle weapons that will be used against us in the near future."

The devices that are bought and sold by those due to attend the Berkeley Court conference are used as tools of torture in numerous repressive regimes around the world.

They are also used in the west, against striking workers, street protesters and in close quarters against prisoners and political detainees.

Here in Ireland, 'less lethal weapons' have already resulted in numerous deaths. Plastic bullets alone were responsible for at least 14 deaths in Northern Ireland in the past 30 years. All of these people would probably still be alive were it not for "less lethal weapons", as it’s unlikely the authorities would have used live rounds against them.

In other words, "less lethal weapons" bridge the gap between the conventional methods of hand and baton, which are slow and unreliable, and live ammunition, which is too costly in terms of damage to the legitimacy of the state.

These have been described as "the most universal modern tool of the torturers" by Helen Bamber, director of the British Medical Foundation for the Treatment of the Victims of Torture. Crude electronic devices, in wartime Europe, and electric cattle prods, in Latin America, were used as torture instruments long before the private sector took the idea up, commercialised it and mass produced electro-shock batons. They are extensively used and manufactured in China. British Aerospace sold 8,000 electro-shock batons to Saudi Arabia in the late 1980s as part of the multi-billion pound Al Yamamah arms deals.

CS GAS:
Causes respiratory irritation, pain in the nose and chest, a burning sensation in the eyes and on moist skin and with more extensive exposure coughing and vomiting. It accentuates illness when inflicted on sufferers of bronchitis, asthma, liver or kidney diseases and epilepsy, and according to the findings of an official committee set up after the 1969 Derry riots it can cause deaths from heart failure. It has also been associated with second degree burns and respiratory illness.

CR GAS:
Six times more potent than CS gas. High exposure produces temporary blindness. This was used in the townships in South Africa in the late 1980s, where it caused fatalities, particularly among children.

OC or PEPPER SPRAY:
The Los Angeles Times has reported at least 61 deaths associated with its use in the US in its first five years (1990-‘95). OC can cause temporary blindness, a burning sensation on skin, upper body spasms and coughing which inhibits breathing and speaking. It has been used as a torture instrument in US prisons. Pepper spray is widely used to suppress demonstrations, for instance in New York on February 15th, 2003, during the international day of protest against the Iraq war.

TASERS:
The M26 Advanced Taser is a handgun which fires two barbed darts up to seven meters, the darts are attached by wires to the gun, and along those wires a 50,000 volt electric shock travels to the victim. After firing the gun itself can function as an electro shock baton. They have recently been issued to British police. (Tom Smith Taser International Inc, will speak in Dublin on October 20th.)

KINETIC PROJECTILES:
These include rubber bullets, used in Northern Ireland until 1974/75, and their replacement, plastic bullets. In all 3 people were killed by rubber bullets and 14 by plastic bullets and thousands of people have been injured by them.

Other variations of the baton round include wooden bullets, used in the United States, rubber coated steel bullets used in Israel and the occupied territories, one version of which consists of, in each shot, 15 rubber balls each with a steel core which hit a target area 7 meters across. These are used to hit crowds indiscriminately.

A Belgian-manufactured weapon used in Switzerland fires metal and plastic containers of paint, which left one woman with fragments embedded in her face, which cannot be removed for fear of paralysis.

SCIENCE FICTION (weapons still in development):
-- Human capture nets, which can be electrified or laced with chemical irritant.

-- Foam guns, which stick the target to the ground.

-- Foam barriers, which can be laced with chemical irritant.

-- Sleeping-inducing chemicals.

-- Strobes, which pulse in the critical epileptic fit-inducing frequency.

-- Radio frequency weapons, which use microwaves to raise the victim’s temperature.

-- UV lasers, which enable an electric charge to be sent across some distance through the air.

MORE INFORMATION:
In-depth article with footnoted sources:
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=66325

Conference Programme:
http://www.janes.com/security/conference/llw2004/programme.shtml

DIARY DATES:
Sun 26th Sept, 4pm: Public meeting, Teacher's Club, Parnell Sq, Dublin

Sat 2nd Oct: Day of action at Jury's Doyle hotels.