Tag Archives: non-lethal weapons

Latest Developments, October 22

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In the latest news and analysis…

Drone crimes I
Amnesty International has released a new report alleging that some US drone strikes in Pakistan may constitute war crimes:

“Contrary to official claims that those killed were ‘terrorists’, Amnesty International’s research indicates that the victims of these attacks were not involved in fighting and posed no threat to life.
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Amnesty International also documented cases of so-called ‘rescuer attacks’ in which those who ran to the aid of the victims of an initial drone strike were themselves targeted in a rapid follow-on attack. While there may have been a presumption that the rescuers were members of the group being targeted, it is difficult to see how such distinctions could be made in the immediate and chaotic aftermath of a missile strike.
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While the Pakistan government maintains it opposes the US drone program, Amnesty International is concerned that some officials and institutions in Pakistan and in other countries including Australia, Germany and the UK may be assisting the USA to carry out drone strikes that constitute human rights violations.”

Drone crimes II
Human Rights Watch has also released a new report on US drone strikes, which have allegedly “killed civilians in violation of international law”, this time in Yemen:

“The six strikes investigated by Human Rights Watch killed 82 people, at least 57 of them civilians.
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During targeting operations, the US may be using an overly elastic definition of a fighter who may be lawfully attacked during an armed conflict, Human Rights Watch said. For example, a November 2012 drone strike in the military town of Beit al-Ahmar killed an alleged AQAP recruiter, but recruiting activities alone would not be sufficient grounds under the laws of war to target someone for attack.
The six strikes also did not meet US policy guidelines for targeted killings that Obama disclosed in May 2013, Human Rights Watch said.
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Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the US government has carried out hundreds of targeted killings in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. In Yemen, the US is estimated to have conducted 81 targeted killing operations, one in 2002 and the rest since 2009.”

War on activism
The Financial Times reports that Bahrain’s use of 2 million tear gas projectiles since early 2011 is part of a growing global trend:

“The rise in global activism has spurred sales for non-lethal weapons as governments shift spending from counter terrorism to counter-activist policies.
‘It’s a cheap option when compared with other forms of crowd control,’ says Anna Feigenbaum, a lecturer at Bournemouth University whose research focuses on the use of tear gas.
‘Manufacturers are now bragging about how much tear gas they are selling, with promotional videos of uprisings and how much their products are needed,’ she says.
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Globally, demand for so-called ‘dispersal non-lethal weapons,’ including tear gas and pepper spray, is estimated at $368m this year, and is likely to rise to $490m by 2018, [research group Markets and Markets] says.”

Price of exclusion
The Globe and Mail reports that First Nations leaders are warning that last week’s anti-fracking confrontation with Canadian police was “just the tip of the iceberg”:

“The protest against shale-gas exploration near the village of Rexton, N.B., took place as some aboriginal groups across the country are expressing frustration over being excluded from consultations, especially when it comes to resource development.
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“We are not going to sit back, we’re not going to let the wealth leave our lands the way it has for the last 100 years, keeping us impoverished …” [Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Grand Chief Derek Nepinak] said, noting Prime Minister Stephen Harper is travelling the world “trying to sell Canadian resource wealth … and he’s doing that all in complete disrespect of the rights of indigenous people.””

Coherent future
The Guardian reports on the challenges that lie ahead for the UN diplomats assigned with designing the so-called sustainable development goals:

“To do this, [Kenya’s UN representative Macharia Kamau] and Csaba Kõrösi, his Hungarian counterpart, will have to bring together governments who disagree on issues such as women’s rights, diplomatically fend off demands from NGOs and campaign groups insistent that their issue takes priority, and grapple with country blocs and bureaucratic, inter-governmental processes.
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One challenge, says Kamau, is to ensure that various goals, targets and indicators proposed do not contradict each other. ‘We have to make sure that there is consistency between what we’re doing on one aspect, say macroeconomic policy, with what we’re aspiring to in another aspect, say climate change, or consumption,’ he says. ‘The sum of all these pieces must make a coherent whole that is consistent with our aspirations for sustainable development.’ ”

New angle
The Mail and Guardian reports on the emergence of “new, apparently damning, footage” of South African police actions during last year’s Marikana massacre of striking miners:

“[Filmmaker Rehad Desai] said this new footage ‘put paid’ to the argument that police had acted in self-defence and was more suggestive of premeditated action on their part.
Desai also noted that the new footage shows ‘the police taking out their pistols from their holsters well before the alleged attack and before the miners arrived on the scene’.
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The drawing and cocking of weapons, said Desai, was against police standing orders, which were explicit that guns should only be drawn in the case of ‘imminent danger’.”

Empty particpation
Lyndsay Stecher writes in Think Africa Press that the UN’s consultation process falls short of “genuine inclusivity” at the design stage of the post-2015 development agenda:

As [Participate’s Joanna Wheeler] puts it, ‘Citizen participation in the new global development framework is not just about a small global elite in the UN “hearing the voices of the poor”. Meaningful participation is about creating sustainable and long-term mechanisms for citizens to be involved in decision-making at all levels – from local to global’.
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Ultimately then, inclusivity is about more than just coming up with technically-effective and efficient ways of gathering information in remote areas. It is about more than taking polls of the poor that can be cited in faraway international meetings. It is about more than adding a few extra voices to the growing hubbub clamouring to shape the post-2015 agenda. Genuine participation of the poorest is about politics and power. And the imbalances that have so far stymied meaningful participation are arguably the same ones underpinning the main problems with the UN’s post-2015 High-Level Panel – a failure to address the root causes of poverty; a preoccupation with the market rather than unemployment and deprivation; and a failure to tackle the inequality in wealth, resources and, crucially, power.”

Latest Developments, November 23

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In the latest news and analysis…

A disturbing precedent
The UN News Centre reports three top officials have issued a statement calling on member states not to adopt a protocol they say would weaken the current ban on cluster munitions.
“‘The protocol that is being discussed will lower the standard set by the [Convention on Cluster Munitions] and fail to address the well-documented humanitarian and development threats posed by cluster munitions,’ [UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos, UN Development Programme Administrator Helen Clark and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay] stated.
‘If adopted, it will allow the indefinite use of cluster munitions produced after 1 January 1980 that meet certain technical requirements and that are prohibited by the CCM because of the unacceptable harm they pose to civilians.’
The adoption of this protocol would set ‘a disturbing precedent’ in international humanitarian law, creating – for the first time – a new global treaty that is actually weaker than existing international humanitarian law, they added.”

Tahrir ammo
Tree Huging Hoolah provides a “round-up” of weapons and ammunition allegedly being used against protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
“There seem to be a growing number people in and around the Square angry at being fired on by weapons supplied from countries making nice noises about democracy and restraint in Egypt, and are starting to document markings and specifications of what’s being used. It won’t help stop any violence, but I’m generally in favour of causing a modicum of embarrassment to those governments and companies which continue to supply tools of repression, usually for profit, to those who they well know will use them to violate human rights and repress their own citizens.”

Putting the “lethal” in “non-leathal”
Al Jazeera asks how dangerous the so-called non-lethal weapons being used against protesters around the world really are.
“With over 36 killed in Egypt since November 19, and medical sources citing ‘suffocation after inhaling tear gas’ as the cause of many of the deaths, the non-lethality of the weapons employed – as well as how they were imported – has come under serious question.
Khalid Abdala, an Egyptian actor and activist, told Al Jazeera from Tahrir that he held international governments ‘complicit in everything that is happening here’.
‘International governments have replenished the stocks of bullets that have been shot at people right now, and the tear gas that is clinging to my lungs,’ he said.”

E-waste exports
A new makeITfair report calls on the European Union to ensure revisions to its legislation on e-waste put an end to the export of such hazardous materials to poor countries.
“Electronics waste in industrialized countries is growing three times faster than regular waste – the result of the fast pace of technological innovation and the consequent short life of many electronic products. Up to 50 million tonnes of e-waste containing hazardous substances such as lead, cadmium and mercury are generated worldwide every year. A vast amount of the European e-waste is exported to developing countries such as Ghana, a major hub for European e-waste. This causes pollution and health problems because the country has no adequate infrastructure to deal with the hazardous waste.”

Let them eat processed food
The Guardian reports global food and drink companies are increasingly targeting the world’s poor whom they view as the primary “vehicle for growth” for processed products that increase the risk of diabetes and heart disease.
“As diets and lifestyles in developing countries change, their patterns of disease are following those seen in industrialised countries in the north equally rapidly. But for poor countries there is a double whammy: they have started suffering from high rates of [non-communicable diseases] before they have managed to deal with hunger and malnutrition. The double burden is devastating both their economic growth and their health budgets.”

Free trade impacts
Embassy Magazine reports an environmental assessment of a possible Canada-India free trade agreement will not examine Canadian exports of asbestos to the South Asian giant.
“Canada exported $40.3 million worth of asbestos-related products to India in 2010, according to Industry Canada, and the World Health Organization says asbestos causes an estimated 8,000 deaths each year in India—a phenomenon described in a recent Australian Broadcasting Corporation documentary as an ‘epidemic.’”

Enabling corruption
Global Witness’s Anthea Lawson argues banks in wealthy countries must stop playing an integral part in the corruption that is devastating poor countries.
“Three entrenched, repressive and corrupt regimes fell this year largely because the people they ruled were fed up with epic levels of corruption.
That kind of corruption cannot happen without a bank. Dictators cannot steal millions of dollars from the state, nor accept massive bribes, if the money has to be kept under the bed.
Payments for natural resources like oil and gas do not arrive in dollar bills, they are paid by bank transfer; increasingly, bribes and rake-offs from commercial deals are too. Plus it’s safer to keep money out of the country — away from opponents, and accessible if you’re ousted from power.”

Accounting advice
York University economist Fred Lazar suggests many governments could make their perceived financial difficulties disappear simply by reporting their finances in the same way as corporations currently do.
“For example, many government expenditures are investments – capital expenditures. Expenditures on infrastructure clearly are in this category. Some of the expenditures on training, healthcare, education, R&D (e.g. NASA and the Departments of Defense and Energy in the US), and the judiciary also should be classified as investments, for all of them contribute to enhancing the productive capacity of the economy.
Such expenditures should be excluded in the calculation of the budget balance – the equivalent of a company’s income statement – and instead be included in the government’s cash flow statement, as is the case with investment expenditures by companies. If these expenditures were treated in this manner, most government deficits would disappear immediately, replaced with budget surpluses.”