Earlier this month, the European Parliament and Commission finally agreed to outlaw the export, brokering and promotion of torture and execution equipment from Europe. Such equipment includes guillotines, hanging ropes, lethal injection drugs, multi-barbed steel ‘sting sticks’, electroshock batons and tools familiar to torturers of old, leg irons and wall cuffs to hang prisoners from walls and ceilings, thumbscrews, neck chains and other medieval paraphernalia….
Can we further civilize the security trade? I believe so, but only region by region. The 21st century has already become the epoch of the torturer. Only civil society can civilize state security practices further – as if people mattered.
See the full text: Civilizing the torture and execution trade (pdf) by Dr Steve Wright (Reader in Applied Global Ethics, Leeds Beckett University)