Report finds that torture is global business

By Samanta Sen

London, Feb. 26 (IPS)— With more than 150 companies worldwide manufacturing tools of torture, selling such implements is now a rapidly growing business, says the global human rights lobby, Amnesty International in a new report.

Amnesty says that, during 1998-2000, “businesses in 25 countries were involved in the manufacture, distribution, supply or brokering of devices that are always or sometimes used to inflict torture.’’

Of these, the United States was on top with at least 74 companies involved in marketing electro-shock weapons, leg irons, shackles, thumbcuffs and other restraints. Of these, 42 companies produced or offered to supply electro-shock stun weapons.

A further 30 German companies made or marketed the weapons, as did 19 Taiwanese companies, 14 French, 13 South Korean, 12 Chinese, nine South African, eight Israeli, six Mexican, five Polish, four Russian, three Brazilian, three Spanish and two from the Czech Republic.

Companies have appointed agents to sell these devices in Austria, Canada, Indonesia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Philippines, Romania, Turkey and several other countries.

“In the 1970s there were only two companies known to market high voltage electro-shock stun weapons, and now there are over 150 worldwide,’’ said Brian Wood, one of the Amnesty International researchers who worked on the report.

“In the absence of stringent controls to prevent this equipment ending up in the hands of torturers, responsible governments must ban its export immediately,’’ he added.

Monday’s release of the report, titled ‘Stopping The Torture Trade’, is a new step in Amnesty International’s Stop Torture Campaign launched in October 2000.

The report reveals that manufacturers are increasingly selling devices that leave no permanent marks on the body though they can be crippling to physical and mental health.

One of the most widely sold devices is the stun belt developed in the United States. The development of the stun belt is ‘’one of the most disturbing development to emerge recently in the field of electro-shock technology,” Amnesty says.

Describing the effect, Amnesty says: “This high-pulse current enters the wearer’s body at the site of the electrodes, near the kidneys, and passes through the body. The shock causes incapacitation in the first few seconds and severe pain rising during the next eight seconds. The electro-shock cannot be stopped once activated. The belt relies on the prisoner’s constant fear of severe pain being inflicted at any time while held in a situation of powerlessness.’’

Amnesty quotes Dennis Kaufman, President of Stun Tech Inc, a US manufacturer of stun belts as saying: “Electricity speaks every language known to man. No translation necessary. Everybody is afraid of electricity, and rightfully so.’’

The immediate effects can include severe pain, loss of muscle control, nausea, convulsions, fainting, and involuntary defecation and urination, the Amnesty report says. The physical traces of electro-shock torture, such as skin reddening and scarring, usually fade within weeks.” However, more lasting effects which have been reported include muscle stiffness, long-term damage to teeth and hair, post-traumatic stress disorder and severe depression.’’

The technology is being used widely now in countries in Asia and Europe and in South Africa, Amnesty says.

The belts are known to have been set off accidentally, Amnesty says in its report.

Another ‘popular’ export by the torture traders is a device called ‘tasers’ which can shoot darts on wires into victims up to 30 feet away.

While the United States is the largest known manufacturer of torture devices, “now Taiwanese, South Korean and Chinese companies probably manufacture more electro-shock stun weapons than companies in the USA,’’ the Amnesty report says.

Stun belts have become a popular export item too. Their use is not allowed in Germany; but German companies are allowed to manufacture and export them. South African companies are selling these ‘belts’ busily to several countries, and also to the police in South Africa.

The Amnesty report also highlights the continuing trade in older torture devices such as fetters, chains and chemical sprays. British companies manufacturing tear gas and irritant ammunition have been allowed to export these ‘goods’, Amnesty says. US companies specialize in pepper gas missiles that are known also to have caused deaths.

Companies are not just selling goods but also ‘services’ by way of training police in other countries in torture methods, the Amnesty report says. It cites the US School of the Americas which trained hundreds of soldiers from Latin America, many of whom have been implicated in human rights violations in their home countries.

“Unless security training is strictly controlled and independently monitored, there is always a danger that it will be used to facilitate human rights violations,’’ the human rights group says.

The five permanent members of the UN Security Council are among the main providers of such military and security ‘assistance’, Amnesty says.

“Torture does not happen in a vacuum,’’ Amnesty continues. “The tools and techniques used by officials for deliberately inflicting physical suffering rely on a failure of political will. If the governments of the world had the will to stop torture, they could do so.’’

Amnesty has demanded a ban on the use of police and security equipment whose use is inherently cruel, inhuman or degrading. It has demanded immediate suspension of the international transfer of electro-shock, leg- cuffs, thumbcuffs, shackle boards, restraint chairs and pepper gas weapons pending the outcome of an independent review into the effects of these devices. It also wants governments to ensure that security training does not include training in torture.

UN officials round on Americans as ‘real villains’

By Stephen Farrell

Baghdad, Iraq, Feb. 21— A senior United Nations official in the Middle East has accused the United States of imposing unnecessary suffering on the Iraqi people for its own political ends.

Voicing a sense of anger and disillusionment that the UN’s humanitarian program has been undermined, the official said that he could not think of a single success of the policy “except in killing children” and believed that the only reason sanctions were still in force in their present form was because no one could be seen to back down.

Another said that while there were signs that Britain was prepared to ease the restrictions, the United States showed no signs of movement and consistently blocked even seemingly reasonable requests by Iraq to release money for humanitarian aid.

“The Americans are, I am afraid, the real villains in all this,” the source, who insisted on anonymity, said.

Pointing to the toleration of smuggling across Iraq’s borders into Turkey and Jordan and illegal shipments of Iraqi oil, he said that many believed the real objective was to maintain a weak but stable President Saddam Hussein in power and serve America’s main Middle East policy objective — to stop the emergence of any threat to Israel.

Officials at Turkey’s southern Zakho border crossing report that for every humanitarian aid lorry that they check, 200 pass through that they have no authority to control. No other international agency monitors them.

“Sanctions are ineffective because certain very clear and obvious weaknesses are allowed to exist and have been allowed to exist from day one,” one diplomat said. “Some are easy to explain: Turkey is allowed to take in all the oil it can smuggle because it provides the Incirlik base from which British and American planes patrol the northern no-fly zone over Iraq.

“The program is full of loopholes that the Americans choose to turn a blind eye to. They could easily blow out of the water many of these small tankers shipping illicit oil out of Iraq. You have to ask why they are not doing it and what it is about the status quo that the Americans like.

“The fact is that, as things stand, Saddam is in his box, he is strong enough not to allow the country to break up, he can keep Iran and the region’s oil-producing nations on their toes, but he is not threatening anybody and certainly not threatening their (the US’s) number one ally, Israel.”

Sanctions were imposed by the UN Security Council in August 1990 after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The threat of an impending famine in 1996 saw the introduction of the humanitarian “food for oil” program, by which Iraq is allowed to sell as much oil as it can produce in return for shipments of food and humanitarian aid.

These have to be cleared in advance by a UN sanctions committee and are checked at the Turkish, Syrian and Jordanian border crossings and Iraq’s Gulf port by UN inspectors. Iraq has long complained that the delivery of many essential items is blocked or held up by the sanctions committee. More than £2 billion in supplies are now “on hold.” The United States and Britain say that Iraq could easily spend more on food and medical supplies, but chooses to buy weapons instead.

Pressed on anomalies in the program, Benon Sevan, the UN’s executive director of the Office of the Iraq Program, conceded recently: “Don’t look for logic in the Iraq program. There is no logic.”

Iraq has confirmed it will attend next Monday’s UN talks aimed at breaking the sanctions stalemate and getting weapons inspectors back into the country, Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, said yesterday.

Source: The Times of London

Argentine unemployed march to capital

Buenos Aires, Argentina, Feb. 22— Thousands of unemployed Argentines marched for almost 13 hours on February 21 from the town of La Matanza outside Buenos Aires some 26 kilometers to the Labor Ministry building inside the capital to demand jobs and assistance for the unemployed. The march, which at times had more than 8,000 participants, was organized to pressure the government to fulfill its promises to dedicate more than $2 million to alleviating social problems; the government signed an agreement on November 4 after protesters had blocked a central highway for 15 days.

The marchers started at La Matanza because the municipality has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the country. Another group composed of homeless people from La Matanza blocked traffic on La Noria Bridge, which links the city of Buenos Aires to Buenos Aires province, to express solidarity with the march. The organizers had planned to hold a sit-in in front of the Labor Ministry if the government failed to meet their demands, but the demonstration, already much reduced by the long march, was unable to get past the police agents guarding the area, although it succeeded in creating a huge traffic jam. Leaders of the demonstration held talks with government officials for several hours, with no results. The protesters finally voted to end the action at about 7:30pm.

Source: Update on the Americas: www.americas.org

Strikes shut down northern cities in Dominican Republic

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Feb. 23— Civic strikes shut down most activities in a number of northern towns in the Dominican Republic from February 19 to February 21 as grassroots organizations pushed demands for public services and expressed opposition to a package of neoliberal economic adjustments — popularly known as the paquetazo — being implemented by the six-month old government of Hipólito Mejía of the social democratic Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD). The strikes led to the arrests of some 200 people, the wounding of a number of protesters and police agents, raids on dozens of homes, the militarization of several communities, and serious losses in the area’s economy, which is mostly agricultural.

The actions started as 48-hour civic strikes in Licey al Medio, Santiago province; Tenares and Salcedo, Salcedo province; and in a number of smaller communities in Espaillat province. The organizers, including the Broad Front of Grassroots Struggle (FALPO), the Collective of Popular Organizations and a large number of neighborhood groups and clubs, raised a variety of local demands for roads and road repair; potable water; elementary and high schools; raises for teachers; sewage systems; and electrification. The demands also addressed national issues, including rejection of the paquetazo; rejection of efforts to privatize social security; and removal and prosecution of national police chief Maj. Gen. Pedro de Jesús Candelier Tejada.

From the first day, the strike was effective, but marked by violence. Businesses and schools were shut down in the area while mixed police and military units battled protesters armed with homemade weapons. Three people were reportedly wounded in Tenares on February 19 when police agents fired in response to supposed attacks by demonstrators. Authorities reported that three police agents were hit by birdshot fired by protesters from homemade weapons in Tenares on February 20, while two agents were wounded on the same day in Nagua, María Trinidad Sánchez province, one of several communities that joined the strike during its second day.

Source: Update on the Americas: www.americas.org

Mexican activists bare all to protest globalization

Cancun, Mexico, Feb. 26— Mexican activists dropped their drawers Monday in a naked attempt to protest globalization, as bankers, industrialists and government officials discussed economic and social issues at the seaside resort of Cancun.

Chanting “death to capitalism” and other slogans supporting Palestinian activists and opposing the US-backed anti-drug Plan Colombia, about 200 protesters marched several kilometers along the main avenue under tropical heat.

Several of the anti-globalization activists dropped their pants as a handful of bemused tourists and a few hundred police watched on.

Later in the day, a dozen militants defied heavy security and staged an anti-globalization protest in front of the luxury hotel that hosted a two-day meeting of the World Economic Forum.

Police in full riot gear and armed with shields and batons were deployed around the demonstration, at times blocking traffic and causing consternation among busloads of foreign tourists.

The protesters placed human skulls on the ground to symbolize what one of them said were “the victims of globalization.”

“We are symbolically closing this event, because it is an illegal association of rich people who get richer as the rest get poorer,” said protester Eugenio Navarro.

As participants in the World Economic Forum held a first day of talks on poverty and economic development in Latin America, globalization foes held an alternative gathering to discuss similar issues from a radically different angle.

Some of the participants toured impoverished neighborhoods making up what they call “the other Cancun.”

Organizers said they planned to hold a large protest on Tuesday, but gave no details because of what they called “security reasons” — 1,600 riot police deployed across the city. They said they hoped to avoid the type of violence that marked similar events in Davos, Prague and Seattle, but they could not vouch for ultra-leftist students who traveled to Cancun from Mexico City.

They also said they had responded positively to an invitation to discuss their views with participants in the World Economic Forum. The meeting was scheduled for Tuesday morning.

Source: Agence France Presse