water cannons

Article

15 June

Water cannons are “less-lethal” weapons used by police forces for crowd control, made infamous during civil rights protests in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1960s. Despite their designation as less-lethal, these weapons can cause serious injury and death.

Modern water cannons are mounted on specially designed armoured vehicles and operated via joystick from the cabin. Vehicles typically have one water cannon but some models such as the German Wasserwerfer 9000/10000 have three cannons allowing them to fire in several directions simultaneously (1). Water cannons fire at a rate of up to 20 litres per second with effective ranges reaching 67 metres (2).

Dyes, chemical irritants and malodorants can be added to the water fired from a cannon:

Dye allows authorities to identify protestors for later arrest. This technique has been used in India, Indonesia, South Korea, Northern Ireland and most recently Hong Kong (3).
Chemical weapons such as an ammonia solution, tear gas or pelargonic acid vanillylamide can also be added to the stream. This has been done in Indonesia, Turkey and Hong Kong (4, 5, 6).
Skunk is a foul smelling chemical (malodorant) developed by Ordotec and the Israeli Police (7). The odour can remain for weeks even after washing, and has been described as smelling like sewage and rotten flesh. It has primarily been used against Palestinians and ultra-Orthodox Jews in the occupied territories and Jerusalem, but is now being marketed to other countries including India and the United States (9, 10, 11).

a brief history of water cannon use

Hoses have been mounted to vehicles for firefighting since the 18th century but weren’t used for crowd control until the 1930s in Germany. Police water cannons were initially modelled on fire trucks but are now purpose-built.

Water cannons have been used by the state to quash dissent, often particularly targeting marginalised communities. In the 1960s water cannons were frequently used against civil rights protestors in the USA. More recently, police use of water cannons against Sioux people and allies at the No Dakota Access Pipeline blockade at Standing Rock in 2016 injured 300 people and hospitalised 26 (11).

Water cannons have become widespread in the 2020s. They have been deployed by Dutch police against climate change protestors (12), and against student protestors in Sri Lanka (13). In Afghanistan, the Taliban has used water cannons against people protesting a ban on women attending universities (14). As the Israeli government has pushed reforms to restrict the power of the judiciary and attacked Gaza, police have frequently used water cannons to quell dissent (15, 16, 17).

dangers of water cannons

As with other weapons, the state often attempts to portray water cannons as more of a nuisance to protesters, rather than the dangerous weapon they actually are. Water cannons can break bones both from the initial force of the blast and by knocking victims to the ground. They can cause blindness and death (18). In colder temperatures they can lead to hypothermia, which is what the majority of people were hospitalised for at Standing Rock. When chemicals are added to the stream it can cause skin burns and respiratory problems (19, 20).

Cases of grievous injuries and death occur across the world as a result of police use of water cannons. In September 1985 German protestor Günter Sare was knocked down by a water cannon then killed when the truck ran over him (21). In January 2014 Ukrainian protestor Bogdan Kalynyak died of pneumonia after being sprayed by a water cannon in sub-zero temperatures (22). In September 2016 a South Korean protestor named Baek Nam-gi died after being knocked over by a police water cannon and spending ten months in a coma (23).

countermeasures

Activists have countered water cannons using the following methods, to varying levels of success:

Stay low to the ground and keep your face away from the cannon. You can use an umbrella to shield yourself from the blast but this is only partially effective (24).
Activists have previously broken into the truck cabin to disable water cannons, but newer models have bullet-proof glass or metal bars to prevent this.
On 2 September 1989 South African police used a water cannon with purple dye against anti-apartheid protestors. Protestor Philip Ivey climbed onto the armoured truck and physically redirected the nozzle away from the crowd, spraying the headquarters of the ruling National Party with dye (25).
Carry extra clothing and headwear in your backpack so that you can change out of dye-stained clothing and attempt to evade detection.

The potential harm of water cannon use should not be taken lightly, and in circumstances where none of the above countermeasures are appropriate a plan to retreat, regroup and re-strategise may be the best course of action.