Day Of Action Against Less Lethal Weapons Conference

dublin | rights, freedoms and repression | event notice Wednesday September 29, 2004 14:26 by pat c - DGN

Dublin Grassroots Network are organising a Day of Action Against the Less Lethal Weapons Conference on 2 October.

The MEETING POINT will be 2pm at the kiosk at the junction of Lansdowne Rd, Northumberland Rd and Pembroke Rd. (Also people can meet at 1.30pm at the corner of Stephens Green nearest to the Shelbourne Hotel and walk together to Ballsbridge).Street Theatre and a protest meeting will take place outside the Berkley Court Hotel.

(Text of leaflet at end of article.)

HOOTERS (and whistles etc) should be brought along on 2 October, as noise will attract guests and staff out to see what the noise out front is all about.

-o- Email/text/phone groups and individuals you know in Dublin and other cities where there are Jurys Doyle Hotels and urge them to do something on the DAY OF ACTION, next Saturday, 2nd October from 2pm at Ballsbridge or at the Jurys in their particular city.

There are Jurys Inns in Belfast, Galway, Limerick and Cork. (Also, Britain has lots of Jurys Doyle Hotels and there are ones in Boston and Washington D.C.) It's easy to embarrass hotels by simply informing guests, staff, people coming in and out of the hotel and passers-by that this event will take place soon at a sisterhotel. This can be done with fliers and posters with pictures of the weapons. If necessary, make your own posters!

-o- Come along to a placard/banner-making and STREET THEATRE preparation
session at 7.30pm this WEDNESDAY 29th Oct at the LASC office at 5 Merrion Row (near the Shelbourne Hotel corner of Stephens Green).

FURTHER EVENTS:

- 9th or 10th Oct: DGN workshop at the ISF
- 16th Oct: some actions at hotels
- 19th Oct, 5pm: protest outside conference

DGN Leaflet
The Jane's Less Lethal Weapons Conference takes place in The Berkeley Court Hotel Ballsbridge on Tuesday 19th and Wednesday 20th of October.
(www.janes.com).

So called LLWs include electro-shockbatons, plasticbullets, Tasers, CR Gas and pepper spray. The manufacturers claim that they cut down on officer and crowd injuries during confrontational situations.

The reality of what a Taser does is quite horrific. The Taser is designed to send out 50,000 volts of electricity that disrupt not only the victim's central nervous system, but also the sensory nervous system and the motor nervous system, for up to 5 seconds at a time, disabling musclecontrol and
temporarily incapacitating the person.

Tasers have been responsible for numerous documented fatalities in America. In Washington State activists recently marked the one-year anniversary of thedeath of Stephen Edwards, a 59-year-old who died of a heart attack on November 7, 2002 after being "stunned" four times by a Taser. In Florida, Pembroke

Pines police tasered Kerry O'Brien fter he pounded on cars; O'Brien died at the hospital. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports that "Several other people in Florida have died in the past two years after being
hit withTasers." In Baytown, Texas a grand jury cleared an officer of criminal wrongdoing in October for using a Taser on a person suffering from epilepsy who was in an ambulance. In September, a grand jury did indict another Baytown officer for Tasering a 59-year-old disabled woman two times
(Houston Chronicle , October 27).

The New York Times, in its March 7
article, raised questions about the growing number of fatalties in Taser-related incidents (the February 11 Willamette Week puts that number at 37). The Times specifically cites William Lomax, 26, in Las Vegas in February, where witnesses and the police say Lomax collapsed after policeTasered him four or five times (Reports on Taser use from Portland Copwatch's website www.portlandcopwatch.org )

Then there are Shockrounds - according to their own web page they act "In a manner similar to stunguns and Taser technology, a ShockRounds(TM) round discharges an electrical shock upon impact and temporarily disrupts the nervous system incapacitating the target immediately ....ShockRounds(TM)
"electrified" standard roundss and rubberbullets will ....decrease legal liability and revolutionize the munitions industry" and " ..enable far better control and effective
enablement in aircraft, public places, arenas etc"

Here in Ireland, LLWs have already resulted in numerous fatalties. Plasticbullets 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 LLWs, as it's unlikely the authorities would have used live rounds against them.

Perhaps the organisers are trying to rub salt in the wounds by having ex-RUC superintendent Colin Burrows now working for Critical Intervention Services) as first speaker and host of the LLW conference.

What is the DGN ?

Dublin Grassroots Network is a network of activists and groups who come together to fight for a better future, based on a rejection of top-down organisation, solutions which involve ordinary people controlling their own lives, workplaces and communities, and arguing for a sustainable environmental and economic system. Many of us come from campaigns around specific issues
such as environmental issues, the anti-war movement, community work, housing conflicts, traffic campaigning, anti-racism, pro- choice activism etc; others got involved in the run-up to the MayDay events.

Some of us are anarchists, feminists, socialists, ecologists etc.; others have no
particular affiliation.

This conference is about two things.

Firstly making massive amounts of money for companies like Taser, Shockround and Critical Intervention Services. According to Amnesty International, in 2002, the US Department of Commerce approved 127 licences worth $14,773,542 for exports of discharge-type items (stunguns, shock batons, electric cattle prods and immobilization-guns and projectiles), according to the United States Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security Foreign Policy Report 2003. It denied only 3 export licence applications worth $124,000 for discharge type arms.

Secondly it is about the gradual attempt to militarise the handling of legitimate public protest and to portray and treat political activists as terrorists.

At the recent Republican National Convention in New York over 1800 protestors and ordinary shoppers were arrested. Despite widespread media reporting of entirely peaceful behaviour by the demonstrators police employed Tasers and electro-shock batons as well as battering men, women and
children with good old fashioned longarm batons into the bargain.

Is this the way we want dissent and protest handled in Ireland?

LLWs bridge the gap between the conventional methods of hand and baton, which are slow and unreliable, and live ammo, which is too costly in terms of damage to the legitimacy of the state. By design they are also highly suitable as instruments of tortre and have been employed in this fashion by numerous repressive regimes around the world.

Countries approved for the export of electric shock weapons in 2002 included Brazil where U.N. Special Rapporteur on Trture Sir Nigel Rodley concluded that trture was still widespread, systematic, and often deadly ...“Torture was reportedly practiced during every phase of detention: Initial questioning, temporary detention, and long-term detention. ...the most common forms being electric shocks, beatings, and threats." And Honduras where "The National Human Rights Commission and the Special Prosecutor for Human Rights accused prison officials of using excessive force against prisoners. Practices reported include beatings,isolation, threats,electric shocks, and immersion in water."

A total of eleven countries with wide spread documented records of tortureand abuse of prisoners were recorded as being granted export licenses for electric shockweapons by Amnesty International in 2002. (for more on this see the Pain Merchants Report produced by Amnesty International.
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGACT400082003

We call on Jurys Doyle Hotel Group to cancel this conference forthwith.

Put simply, people who sell these tools of political repression and people who want to buy them will be gathering at the Berkeley Court to do business. It's business we don't want. Join us to shut down thistorture fair!

Saturday October 2nd—Berkeley Court Hotel 2 pm


Saturday October 16th—Berkeley Court Hotel 2 pm

Tuesday October 19th—Berkeley Court Hotel 5 pm

Subject to time changes check : www.indymedia.ie

There will also be a series of targetted actions at Jury’s Group hotels throughout Ireland and internationally.

It’s ALL ABOUT the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$s!