The North African and Middle Eastern uprisings and revolutions over the past two and a half years have certainly contributed to a new boom in the global tear gas market. According to industry sources, the Middle East's internal state security market grew 18 per cent in 2012, reaching an estimated value of USD 5.8 billion.
Most tear gas canisters and grenades recovered from Gezi Park, the streets of Istanbul and other Turkish cities where mass demonstrations have been taking place were also made by three US companies: NonLethal Technologies, Defense Technology and Combined Tactical Systems, as well as the Brazilian company Condor Non-Lethal Technologies. According to media reports, between 2000 and 2012 Turkey imported 628 tons of tear gas and pepper spray, worth USD 21 million, mainly from the US and Brazil.
The use of tear gas as an indiscriminate crowd dispersal weapon is nothing new. A Google map created by an anonymous activist last year lists over 75 locations across the world where, since December 2012, tear gas has been used by police against large crowds of protesters. From the Middle Eastern uprisings to anti-capitalist protests in various European countries; from India to South Africa to Brazil: scattered protesters gasping for air amid thick, white clouds has become a familiar scene on news reports.
Although described by manufacturers and police as 'non-lethal' or 'less lethal', numerous cases from Palestine, Bahrain, Turkey and elsewhere have shown that tear gas can cause serious injury, even death, especially when used in large quantities, in closed spaces or fired directly at people at close range and high velocity, rather than at a 45 degree angle and from a 120 yard distance.
Many scientific studies have raised doubts about its classification as 'non-lethal'. A famous study from 2000 on the use of CS gas by the FBI concluded that, if no gas masks were used and people exposed to the gas were trapped in a closed space, “there is a distinct possibility that this kind of CS exposure can significantly contribute to or even cause lethal effects.”
Defenders of the technology – that is, manufacturers, police forces and the academics and writers on their payroll – often argue that the 'tragedies' are simply a result of 'misuse', contrary to the manufacturers' instructions. But the history of tear gas suggests that such weapons are routinely 'misused' by police and security forces when mass protests 'get out of control'.
Turkey: gases, tears and home-made masks
Tear gas features in many of the iconic images emerging from Turkey's ongoing mass protests. From the woman in a red dress being sprayed in the face with tear gas by a cop in Istanbul to a dervish wearing a gas mask doing a Sufi dance on the street and people wearing funny-looking masks made of plastic bottles cut in half. The reason: in the first 15 days of the protests, which began on 28 May, Turkish police fired over 150,000 tear gas canisters.
According to the Turkish Medical Association, which helped organise many of the field clinics in Istanbul, over 12,000 people required medical care in that same period after being exposed to CS gas, CR gas, pepper spray and other types of tear gas. Hundreds were admitted to hospital, though many others avoided going as police were following and arresting people there. About 53 per cent of those treated said they had been exposed to the toxic gases for between one and eight hours; 11 per cent for more than 20 hours. Around 20 per cent of the injuries were open sores and fractures to the head, face, eyes, thorax and abdomen, resulting from being struck directly by tear gas canisters.
The use of tear gas by the Turkish police has been on such a scale that one of the protesters' five demands is: “Teargas bombs and other similar materials must be prohibited.” Tara O'Grady, an expert on tear gas who has just returned from Turkey, says:
"Tear gas has been used to suppress protesters and as a form of collective punishment in Turkey over the last few weeks. The many different types of gas that they are using means that there is no one common response to the medical problems and complications. Some of them burn your skin…your eyes, nose, ears, throat, and lungs, you are just really overwhelmed with an almost convulsive reaction to it. People have suffered from palpitations for days afterwards. People can't eat, they are vomiting blood, urinating blood. The water cannons they are using also have some form of chemical in them, with a similar effect to the tear gas canisters. And this is indiscriminate. There are children who are suffering with this."
While the dramatic use of tear gas in Turkey has gripped international attention, it is by no means a unique case.
Bahrain: tear gas as a weapon of mass repression
Since the early 1990s, Bahrain has hosted an important US military naval base. Currently being upgraded, it was instrumental in the Second Gulf War, the invasion of Iraq and other US adventures in the region. The tiny island in the Arabian (or Persian) Gulf also provides easy access to the Indian Ocean and is a stone's throw away from Iran. Its vast reserves of natural gas, aluminium and other natural resources entrench its position as a 'strategic ally' of the US and Saudi Arabia in the region.
This may partly explain why the Bahraini uprising, which started in February 2011, has received relatively little attention in both Arab and Western mainstream media compared to other uprisings in the region. Al-Jazeera is a case in point.
Yet the level of repression there has not been less than that seen in other neighbouring countries, save for Libya and Syria, perhaps, where the popular revolutions were quickly militarised. The heavy use of US-manufactured tear gas has been instrumental in enabling this repression to continue... read more:
Physicians for Human Rights report: Bahrain's Unprecedented Use of Toxic Chemical Agents Against Civilians
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