Word: stun
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...with manufacturers and governments around the world to curb commerce in these devices. Amnesty says electric-shock torture or the abuse of prisoners with shock devices has occurred in at least 50 countries in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia. "Torturers seem to be discovering that electroshock stun weapons are ideal for their evil purposes--cheap, easy to conceal and hard to trace," says Brian Wood, who tracks the weapons internationally for Amnesty. TIME's own investigation found few international controls over the devices, along with disturbing evidence that stun guns from the U.S., Asia and Europe wind...
Americans first developed stun technology in the early 1970s as a nonlethal way for police to incapacitate violent criminals. Shaped like small flashlights or cellular phones and powered by store-bought batteries, stun rods deliver a series of millisecond-long shocks that cause muscles to contract, leaving the victim writhing and twitching on the ground. In the U.S., for example, Nova Products Inc., in Cookeville, Tenn., sells a Police Special to law agencies that delivers 75,000 volts from two metal tips at the end of the prod. Air Taser Inc., in Scottsdale, Ariz., manufactures an air gun that...
Countries that practice torture have little problem finding suppliers. Taiwan exports shock batons to Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia. German- and South African-made stun weapons have turned up in Angola and Egypt. Mexico is becoming a production and transshipment site for American and Asian stun devices. It has also begun attacking its own people with the weapons. Last September police turned fire hoses on 400 people protesting election fraud in Campeche. Members of the Cobras security force then waded in, jabbing protesters with 3-ft.-long shock sticks. "I fell to the ground, but they carried on giving...
...TIME review of Commerce Department documents shows that Washington has approved a dozen shipments of stun guns and shock batons over the past decade to Saudi Arabia despite that country's long history of brutalizing prisoners. American firms must obtain a Commerce Department license to export shock weapons to most countries, and officials say the applications are closely screened to block the items from falling into the hands of human-rights abusers. Yet Air Taser has been negotiating to supply thousands of electric-shock riot shields for crowd control to police in Turkey, where torture is "widespread," according to State...
...five years from now, no one is going to remember who played for whom and who did what. If the Crimson can stun the nation, all that will be said is, "Harvard actually pulled...