The New Dark Age

A high-level group of experts has asked the <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>Government to clarify its position on whether it intends to develop “incapacitating chemical agents” for a range of domestic uses that go beyond the limited use of chemical irritants such as <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>CS <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>gas for riot control.

The experts were commissioned by the <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>Royal Society, the <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>UK‘s national academy of sciences, to investigate new developments in neuroscience that could be of use to the <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>military. They concluded that the <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>Government may be preparing to exploit a loophole in the Chemical Weapons Convention allowing the use of incapacitating chemical agents for domestic law enforcement.

The 1993 convention bans the development, stockpiling and use of nerve agents and other toxic chemicals by the <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>military but there is an exemption for certain chemical agents that could be used for “peaceful” domestic purposes such as policing and riot control.

The British <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>Government has traditionally taken the view that only a relatively mild class of irritant chemical agents that affect the eyes and respiratory tissues, such as <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>CS <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>gas, are exempt from the treaty, and then only strictly for use in riot control.

But the <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>Royal Society working group says the <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>Government shifted its position to allow the development of more severe chemical agents, such as the type of potentially dangerous nerve gases used by Russian <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>security forces to end hostage sieges. “The development of incapacitating chemical agents, ostensibly for law-enforcement purposes, raises a number of concerns in the context of humanitarian and human-rights law, as well as the Chemical Weapons Convention (<strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>CWC),” the report says.

“The <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>UK <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>Government should publish a statement on the reasons for its apparent recent shift in position on the interpretation of the <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>CWC‘s law enforcement position.” The <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>Royal Society group points to a 1992 statement by <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>Douglas Hogg, the then Foreign Office Minister, who indicated that riot-control agents were the only toxic chemicals that the <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>UK considered to be permitted for law-enforcement purposes. But in 2009 ministers gave a less-restrictive definition suggesting the use of “incapacitating” chemical agents would be permitted for law-enforcement purposes as long as they were in the categories and quantities consistent with that permitted purpose.

<strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>Professor Rod Flower, a biochemical pharmacologist at Queen Mary University of <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>London, said the latest scientific insights into human brain is leading to novel ways of degrading human performance using chemicals.