by CAM MCGRATH
Demonstrators in Cairo hold up used tear gas shells. PHOTO/Cam McGrath/IPS
CAIRO, Dec 18, 2011 (IPS) – Activists across the Middle East are reporting a mysterious toxin, possibly a banned nerve agent, in the thick clouds of tear gas used by security forces to suppress anti-government protests in recent months.
“I felt weak and dizzy for several days, and my hands wouldn’t stop shaking,” recalls Mahmoud Hassan, an Egyptian marketing executive who was hospitalised last month after inhaling tear gas during a protest against military rule in Cairo. The gas used against protesters was many times stronger than that used by security forces during the 18-day uprising that toppled Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak in February, he insists.
“This wasn’t tear gas, it was something else,” says Hassan. “It burned the skin and lungs, and we all fell to the ground shaking uncontrollably.”
A similar gas is suspected of causing the deaths of at least eight civilians in Bahrain since February. In Yemen, doctors reported that anti-government protesters exposed to what appeared to be tear gas arrived at field hospitals paralysed, unconscious, or in convulsions. Routine treatments for tear gas exposure had no effect.
“We are seeing symptoms in the patient’s nerves, not in their respiratory systems. I’m 90 percent sure it’s nerve gas and not tear gas that was used,” Dr. Sami Zaid, a physician at the Science and Technology Hospital in Sanaa, said in March.
Conventional tear gas is a white powder composed of ortho-chlorobenzylidene-malononitrile, commonly known as CS. The chemical was developed for crowd control in the 1950s, proving a more powerful irritant but less toxic than the chloroacetophenone (CN) series it has largely replaced.
Inter Press Service for more