Petition against taser:
Open Letter To:
Rt.Hon.Andrew George, Member of Parliament for St.Ives & Scilly. 22.5.’13
Re: ANDREW
PIMLOTT / ARTICLE 22
UNITED NATIONS CONVENTION AGAINST TORTURE
Dear Andrew,
To recap, I have written to you numerous times
on the subject of stun guns (tasers).
Although the
United Nations, the former British Government, the Green Party, Mebyon Kernow,
Amnesty International, and a host of Human Rights groups have ruled the use of
taser to comprise an illegal act of torture – you have repeatedly declined to
state whether you believe the taser to be legal or illegal. Since the UNCAT views taser use as torture, I
will use their terminology from now on.
I’m sure you will have heard that Andrew Pimlott, a 32 year old man
from Plymouth burnt to death in April
2013 having been taser-tortured by Devon & Cornwall police whilst soaked in
fuel and holding a naked flame and a fuel can.
This in spite of ACPO Ltd.
guidelines warning about using these weapons around gas fumes or
spillages.
I had corresponded
with the previous Chief Constable, Stephen Otter, pointing out to him that taser
violates both UNCAT and UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights.) His basic response was that a challenge to
the legal status of taser could only come from “ministerial level”. However, if you, as my official representative, would not even state your position on the
legality of tasers, how could I possibly
open democratic channels to initiate a
dialogue? Standard letters from the
Home Office, promoting the idea that taser is safe and legal are of no
relevance and do not constitute dialogue as they do not engage with the
questions asked.
When Stefan Naumczyk threw a bottle in a Falmouth street, he was
tasered, handcuffed, knelt on and tasered again – on camera, in front of a
large crowd. When Penzance police
refused to record a complaint of torture, I approached the UN High Commissioner
for Human Rights, in Geneva. They told
me something very interesting. They
told me that they could not look into the complaint because although Thatcher
signed the UNCAT in 1985, she did not sign Article (catch?) 22. As I expect you knew, Article 22 provides a
mechanism for the implementation of
the UNCAT. Until Article 22 is signed,
the Convention quite simply can not be
put into practice in this country. Therefore,
for a nation to sign the UNCAT, but not sign up to Article 22 is a very cynical
and deceptive thing to do, as it gives the impression
at home and abroad, of Britain being a champion of Human Rights and Freedom,
whilst actually giving itself license for sordid and secretive acts of
barbarity and callousness.
Well,
the CAT is out of the bag now, and the public are rapidly learning the truth
about catch 22. The public are learning
that every government since ’85 has been going along with a deception, giving
the people a false idea that we were protected from inhumane, degrading, cruel
treatment, punishment and torture. The
public are also learning that Article 22
is the key to initiating the UNCAT and banning all torture instruments,
including tasers, from this nation, and
others nations. The ordinary people have
been fooled for years, because we don’t have time to comb through the small
print of international humanitarian legal agreements - we expect our
politicians to do that for us. The Tory
and New Labour parties are both guilty of failing to act on this when in
power. Don’t the Lib Dems pride
themselves on standing up for real justice?
Would it not be a wise politician who grasped this reality and became a
genuine champion of Article 22? Who
fulfilled the promise of the
Convention Against Torture, rather than going along with this 28 year old
deception, this mockery of the Rule of
Law?
In
summary, Andrew Pimlott is dead, the fifth taser-related death in Britain. So far 779 have died in North America and
many more around the World. Today the
police in Britain will torture 3 more people with stun guns.
I ask you as my representative to make a
strong commitment to the movement towards getting Britain to sign Article 22 of
the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
I ask you to state clearly your legal position on taser. Please take a stand, before someone else is
killed in the street by a taser.
With best wishes,
Yours sincerely, Jeremy
Schanche, RESIST CARDIAC ARREST.
(Since sending the above
letter, four more people have died in USA after being struck by tasers.)
A List
of the Tasered-Dead:
email: savetheholyheadland@yahoo.com
nature, democracy, free speech
