Patten moves to disarm torture traders

Date: 24/01/02

By Peter Chapman

THE EUROPEAN Commission is poised to unveil tough export restrictions on electric shock equipment such as stun guns and batons - often used by repressive regimes to torture prisoners.

The trade law, which will also cover products used to carry out the death penalty, follows claims by Amnesty International Ireland that the mish-mash of national regimes governing the sale of the such products means repressive regimes and criminals have easy access to them.

Officials said the new law, if approved, would help prevent potential instruments of torture getting into the wrong hands.

Under the new regime, exporters would be forced to apply for an export licence before they could sell goods to a particular buyer.

Amnesty's Jim Loughran said: 'We welcome this move. It means if you apply for a licence Amnesty will be able to see who you are selling it to. It brings it into the public arena for the first time. But its effectiveness depends on how rigidly it is enforced.'

He said the UK already had an effective export control system - unlike countries such as France where he claimed anyone can buy products 'willy-nilly'.

Amnesty has accused some companies of abusing the 'CE' standard mark as a 'selling point'. For instance, Taiwanese firm Teh Huang claims in a sales brochure 'all our electric shockers have got the EC certificate on our export goods formally'.

An unnamed French firm claimed that its 'Power 200 stun gun rated at 200,000 volts has a European guarantee of two years' and also displays the CE standard mark.

An aide to the commissioner in charge of standards, Erkki Liikanen, explained that any equipment that met norms ensuring the safety of the user had the right to use the mark.

The CE mark said nothing about the safety of the equipment for people on the receiving end of electric shocks, he added.

He added it would be the job of the regulation - and the member states enforcing it - to ensure the stun guns did not get into the wrong hands.

The EU external relations chief Chris Patten hopes the law, which will take the form of a legally binding EU regulation, will be ready before the summer.

Officials said they would ensure it met World Trade Organisation rules and ruled out the likelihood of a trade conflict with the US, even though America is a major importer of such goods and has the death penalty.

They said Washington already operated similar restrictions to ensure that products legitimately used by prison guards and air marshals, for instance, did not fall into the hands of terrorists and repressive regimes.

The European Commission is poised to unveil tough export restrictions on electric shock equipment such as stun guns and batons, which are often used by repressive regimes to torture prisoners.