The Taser is unfit for use on Human Beings – we call upon those in power to ABOLISH TASER NOW!
On 23rd November, 2007, the United Nations Committee Against Torture declared that use of the taser x-26 was a violation of the Convention Against Torture (UNCAT) as the weapons were found to cause extreme pain and death.
In February 2010 the RESIST CARDIAC ARREST Campaign started writing to Members of the British Parliament, pointing out the litany of death and abuse associated with tasers and bringing their attention to the UN’s definition of them as instruments of torture. Nobody from the Prime Minister to the Attorney General, to my MP Andrew George or local Chief Constable of Police, could explain to me how tasers could be legal in view of the UN’s statement. Britain signed the UNCAT back in 1985, making torture totally illegal, so how can the British state use a torture-device without breaking the Convention Against Torture?
As I continued to lobby my government, my parliament and my police, the death-toll from tasers gradually rose - from 582 in North America and 1 in the UK, to 779 in America and 5 in the UK at time of publishing. Then on 29th April, 2011, in Falmouth, Cornwall, UK, Stefan Naumczyk, after apparently throwing a bottle, was tasered by Devon & Cornwall police. He was knelt on, handcuffed and then tasered again. I tried to report this blatant case of torture to my local police in Penzance, but they would not record my complaint, so I wrote to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, and they told me that they could not consider the case because Britain has never signed Article 22 of the UNCAT which allows the Convention to be implemented in our country!
Meanwhile taser-abuse continues – on 18th April 2013, police arrived at a garden in Plymouth, Devon, where a young man in a disturbed state had soaked himself in inflammable fluid and was holding a can of the fluid in one hand and a naked flame in the other. A policeman fired his 50,000 volt taser x-26 and Andrew Pimlott erupted in flames. He died in hospital a week later.
In memory of Andrew and the thousands of others around the world killed, tortured, injured and traumatized by tasers and similar devices, we the undersigned demand that those in power act now to uphold the UNCAT, sign Article 22 and ban taser usage in Britain.
Sincere thanks to everyone who signs the petition and please give it some publicity!
