The purchase of an armored vehicle equipped with a water cannon has announced a new era by the current administration in dealing with potential civil unrest in Guyana.
Water cannons were first used for crowd control in Nazi Germany in the 1930’s and since then many tyrannical nations like Libya etc. procured water cannons from Britain to quell citizen revolt.
The high-pressure hoses, which fire jets of water, have been used in Northern Ireland since 2001, they are also used by police in parts of Europe, including Belgium and France, to tackle riots, and used by law enforcement in the US.
Water cannon generally have reservoirs of 2000 gallons of water and are can deliver jets of up to 250 gallons a minute, capable of knocking someone over at up to 100 yards. The effectiveness of water cannons is limited to the supply of water and the number in the fleet during the operation. Each vehicle operating at full potential has only about 10 minutes of water supply before the need to replenish. Therefore unless there are additional backup resources in the operational theatre the police will be the mercy of the crowd after the water cannon has run out of water.
In 2009 there was controversy over the British government’s 2007 decision to sell water cannons (among other weapons) to Libya during the negotiations over the fate of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Al Megrahi
Critics charged that ministers bent international rules which ban the sale of weapons for internal repression to curry favor with Tripoli, and then covered up the deal. Details of the shady arrangement has fueled suspicion that Gordon Brown’s Government ran a covert campaign to court the Libyan dictator, culminating with the release of Megrahi.
Note:
The person in the photo above was identified as 66-year-old Dietrich Wagner. The pensioner was hit full in the face by a water cannon blast. Wagner’s doctor said the patient was currently blind and might never have his sight fully restored.
As well as suffering major bruising on both sides, Wagner’s eyelids were torn, and on one side, part of his orbital bone – which encases the eye – was fractured. The retina on the same side also suffered suspected damage.
The lenses of his eyes were damaged and will need to be replaced by artificial lenses. http://www.thelocal.de/national/20101006-30295.html
