{"id":1834,"date":"2007-11-27T01:49:42","date_gmt":"2007-11-27T01:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/tasers-a-form-of-torture-says-un\/1834\/"},"modified":"2007-11-27T01:49:42","modified_gmt":"2007-11-27T01:49:42","slug":"tasers-a-form-of-torture-says-un","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/tasers-a-form-of-torture-says-un\/","title":{"rendered":"Tasers a form of torture, says UN"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"standfirst\"><strong style=\"display: block\">TASER electronic stun guns are a form of torture that can kill, a UN committee has declared after several recent deaths in North America.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The use of these weapons causes acute pain, constituting a form of torture,&#8221; the UN&#8217;s Committee against Torture said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In certain cases, they can even cause death, as has been shown by reliable studies and recent real-life events,&#8221; the committee of 10 experts said.<\/p>\n<p>Three men, all in their early 20s, were reported to have died in the United States this week, days after a Polish man died at Vancouver airport after being Tasered by Canadian police.<\/p>\n<p>The man, Robert Dziekanski, 40, fell to the ground and died after the police officers piled on top of him.<\/p>\n<p>There have been three deaths in Canada after the use of Tasers over the past five weeks.<\/p>\n<p>The company that makes the weapons has said that similar deaths have been shown by &#8220;medical science and forensic analysis&#8221; to be &#8220;attributable to other factors and not the low-energy electrical discharge of the Taser&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The UN committee made its comments in recommendations to Portugal, which has bought the newest Taser X26 stun gun for use by police.<\/p>\n<p>Portugal &#8220;should consider giving up the use of the Taser X26,&#8221; as its use can have a grave physical and mental impact on those targeted, which violates the UN&#8217;s Convention against Torture, the experts said.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.news.com.au\/dailytelegraph\/story\/0,22049,22814674-5001028,00.html?from=public_rss\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TASER electronic stun guns are a form of torture that can kill, a UN committee has declared after several recent deaths in North America. &#8220;The use of these weapons causes acute pain, constituting a form of torture,&#8221; the UN&#8217;s Committee against Torture said. &#8220;In certain cases, they can even cause death, as has been shown [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1834","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1834\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}