Saying ‘No” to Tear Gas
My eyes began to water, and shut, and I felt as if I were being choked. I was nearly totally incapacitated,” says Brad, of Chicago. Samah was gassed in Tahrir Square. “Blindness, skin on fire, utter panic,” were her words. These are just two of more than a dozen stories being told in the War Resisters League’ new “Facing Tear Gas” campaign.
The ultimate goal of this campaign is to stop the use of tear gas as a weapon of state repression (mostly against nonviolent groupings of people) and to end U.S. export of tear gas to nations around the world. In the process, the project hopes to shine a light on the pervasive use of tear gas against social movements in all corners of the world and to provide a forum for people to share their painful, harrowing stories and their overcoming stories.
Tear gas is used to incapacitate and create panic, but people keep going out into the streets, people keep protesting, people keep exercising their rights, even with faces full of tears. As one Quebecoise activist writes of their student street movement: “every night is teargas and riot cops, but it is also joy, laughter, kindness, togetherness, and beautiful music. our hearts are bursting. We are so proud of each other, of the spirit of Quebec and its people, of our ability to resist, and our ability to collaborate.”
Do you have a story like Brad’s or Samah’s? Write it on a placard, take a picture of yourself, and post it on the Tumblr (facingteargas.tumblr.com).
The United States is one of the largest manufacturers and exporters of tear gas (are you surprised?). Nonlethal Technologies, Defense Technology, and Combined Systems Inc. are three the big manufacturers. They have exported tear gas to dozens of nations including Egypt, Bahrain, Tunisia, Yemen, East Timor, Israel, Cameroon, and Sierra Leone.
Tear gas can be more than a non-lethal crowd dispersant. It can be a death sentence. In Tunisia in January 2011, a French journalist was killed after being hit in the head with a tear gas canister. In Oakland, Cairo, and many other places, people have been grievously injured by tear gas canisters used as projectiles by the police or military.
A reporter for Pro Publica pushed the State Department to explain why it licenses the sale of American-made tear gas to be used by the Egyptian police, when the State Department itself has documented the police’s history of brutality? The response?
“The U.S. government licensed the sale of certain crowd dispersal articles to the government of Egypt. That license was granted after a thorough vetting process and after a multi-agency review of the articles that were requested.”
Not much of a response, right?
The WRL project is not the first effort to draw attention to U.S. tear gas manufacturers. Just a few months ago, the hacker group Anonymous shut down Combined Systems Inc.’s website to protest its sale of tear gas to Egypt, where it was being used to brutally put down the democracy movement. In December, Egyptian activists and members of Occupy staged a die-in before the doors of CSI in Washington, D.C. and there were simultaneous demonstrations in New York and Canada and at the company plant in Jamestown, PA. But one of the most valuable things about the Facing Tear Gas project is that it helps to universalize the experience of tear gas and link all of those people in the work to outlaw this pernicious weapon. Already, posters have included Palestinian, Egyptian, Swedish, Quebecoise, and U.S. activists. Tomorrow you could be there, too.
—Frida Berrigan
Arms trade expert Frida Berrigan is a member of WRL’s National Committee. Versions of this article appeared on Waging Nonviolence (wagingnonviolence.org) and the WRL blog (warresisters.wordpress.com).
Tear Gas Testimonies
“Besides tear gas, police and the militias in Iran use pepper spray as well.… I was sprayed by it once and I thought the burn was a little worse than tear gas and the effect stayed longer.… The Iranian police also uses regular batons, electric batons, and guns.… I would say that tear gas has played an important role in oppressing the green movement protesters in Iran.… It made it easy for the police to arrest and disperse the protesters. It may have not killed anyone directly, but I’m sure that it led many to get arrested, injured, or perhaps even killed.”
—Alma (translated from Farsi)
“On the fourth of may 2012, in victoriaville, Québec, during the congress of the corrupted liberal party of Jean Charest, several dozen gas bombs were thrown on families, activists, old people, and students who were protesting against raising tuition fees by 75 percent.”
—Hauban
“Tear gas was used frequently during popular protests in Berkeley in the late 1960s. one of those I remember was around 1968, the Peoples’ Park struggle. A small block in Berkeley was fenced off and claimed by the university as its ‘owner,’ but people liberated it, arguing that first the Indians had held the land; then it was stolen from them by the Spaniards, the British, finally the university’s claim was based on theft. People moved in, put up tents, camped out, and named it ‘Peoples’ Park.’ Demonstrations grew. Police were called out, and the inevitable tear gas. We grabbed the popular bandanas, put them around our heads to ward off the gas with water, and went out. It was a good struggle!”
—Gail
Eugene Perrin, 1927–2011
Physician, activist, professor, father, and grandfather eugene Perrin died May 2011 at age 84. Born in Detroit of Ukrainian immigrants, Perrin completed high school at age 16 and then spent a year in the u.S. Army. Back in Michigan, he studied medicine and became a certified pathologist. He went on to become professor of pathology at his alma mater, Wayne State university.
Perrin’s dedication to peace and justice was evident in his many commitments and activities. early on, he was involved in the civil rights movement and the movement to end the war in vietnam. He founded the local Physicians for Social Responsibility, belonged to International Physicians for Prevention of nuclear War (1985 recipients of the nobel Peace Prize) and WRl, supported the Center for Peace and Conflict studies at Wayne State, and went on the medical education mission to the uSSR in the 1980s. His environmental activism included work with the International Joint Commission, Sierra Club, Audubon Society, and East Michigan Environmental Action Counsel. A longtime labor supporter, he was a member of the American Association of University Professors.
In addition, Perrin enjoyed performing music. He directed the Gilbert and Sullivan Society in Cincinnati and the First unitarian Church choir in Detroit. He was also involved in his children’s Jewish education and taught in Synagogues and Unitarian Churches. His memorial service was held at the Unitarian-Universalist Church in Detroit.
WRLers Meet the Presidents
It doesn’t happen very often, but WRlers recently met and shook hands with not one, but two heads of state.
On the tenth anniversary of Timor-Leste’s independence, members of the East Timor and Indonesia Action network (ETAN) received the Order of Timor-Leste (Ordem Timor-Leste), the highest award that the country bestows. ETAN National Coordinator (and current WRL Treasurer) John M. Miller accepted the award on the organization’s behalf from Timor’s newly elected President Taur Matan Ruak on May 21. Also honored was ETAN co-founder (and former WRL National
Committee member) Charles Scheiner.
The award was given in recognition of ETAN’s work in support of Timor’s liberation from Indonesian occupation. In 1975, Indonesia invaded the former Portuguese colony with military and political support from the U.S. government and occupied it for the next 24 years. ETAN was founded in 1991 to help end that occupation. Now based in Brooklyn, ETAN successfully campaigned to cut off U.S. military assistance to Indonesia and for U.S. support for Timor’s self-determination. In 1999, the east Timorese overwhelmingly voted for independence in a U.N.-organized plebiscite. After a period of U.N. administration, the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste became independent in 2002. WRL was an early supporter of ETAN, providing contacts for its successful campaign to limit military training for Indonesia. (For more information, etan.org.)
A month later, WRL National Committee member Jody Dodd of Philadelphia traveled to Washington, DC, to attend the White House’s LGBT pride reception hosted by
President Barack Obama. This was the first such reception since the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in the U.S. military. President Obama, while highlighting his accomplishments on issues affecting the LGBTIQ community, also acknowledged that it is inappropriate to ask us to be patient any further.
The reception was attended by people who have been working in their communities on LGBTIQ, HIV-AIDS, and social services issues across the country and around the world. The highlight of the evening was when Nfn Scout, national director of LGBT Health Equity, got down on one knee and proposed to his long-time love, Liz Margolies, director of the national LGBT Cancer Network. After a suspenseful pause, Liz said yes.
Want an iPad? Don’t speak Farsi
Iranian and anti-sanctions groups protested in new York City, Washington, DC, and elsewhere after an Apple salesperson in Georgia refused to sell an iPad to an Iranian-American student because he overheard her speaking Farsi.
Late in June, U.S. citizen Sahar Sabet and her Iranian uncle were shopping for an iPad for her in the Apple store in Alpharetta, Georgia, but when she answered the staffer’s question about what language they were speaking, he told her that U.S. sanctions against Iran barred the store from selling to her. His supervisors backed his decision, telling Sabet that they could be fined for making the sale. “They didn’t ask me whether I was an American citizen or not,” she said in an interview with the BBC.
A U.S. Treasury spokesperson admitted that there is “ absolutely no U.S. policy or law that would prohibit Apple or any other company from selling its products in the u.S. to anyone intending to use the product in the u.S., including Iranians and Persian speakers.”
But, noted Jamal Abdi, of the National Iranian American Council, the event was “part of an escalating pattern in which increasingly broad sanctions on Iran are hitting the wrong people.” on June 21, after the BBC reported the story, HAvAAR — the Iranian Initiative Against War, Sanctions and State Repression — brought a Farsi-speaking flash mob (that included WRL’s Field organizer Ali Issa) to an Apple store on new York City’s Fifth Avenue to demand end to the sanctions and the racial profiling of Iranians in the United States.
Two days later, dozens of people protested outside a DC Apple store, carrying signs that said, “I’m American, and I speak Farsi,” and demanding a public apology from Apple. Sabet says that Apple apologized to her in a telephone conversation, but all the company has said to date publicly is, “our retail stores are proud to serve customers from around the world, of every ethnicity. We don’t discriminate against anyone.”
