“Water cannon are highly dangerous ranged weapons and can cause extremely serious injuries. German police forces are now acquiring a model with even higher water pressure. Dozens of phased-out second-hand units are being dumped on the European market. They might be deployed in London to counter the fear of disturbances”, according to German Bundestag member Andrej Hunko, reporting on the planned sale of German cannon to the London Mayor’s Office.
All “WaWe 9000” water cannon owned by the German Federal and Land police forces are to be replaced by 2017 by the “WaWe 10000”, which costs about EUR 900.000 per unit. The Federal Government will bear the costs of these futuristic-looking vehicles. The new model got a bad press recently in a report by Der Spiegel magazine on damage caused by eggs, tennis balls and half-full plastic bottles. According to the Federal Government, the Federation currently has 15 and the Länder have more than 46 water cannon.
Andrej Hunko continued:
“The London Metropolitan Police has been planning for some time to acquire its first water cannon in order to arm itself against ‘disturbances’. Police chiefs want to deploy the equipment against ‘ongoing and potential future austerity measures [that] are likely to lead to continued protest’. Home Secretary Theresa May has not, however, authorised the use of water cannon. The German Federal Government must not disregard the law in its eagerness to sell.
Civil rights groups and British MPs are rightly protesting against the domestic build-up of weaponry. I fully support the critics and call on the Federal Government to withdraw its call option.
The pensioner Dietrich Wagner, invited to Britain by critics to tell how he was almost totally blinded during protests against the pointless large German railway infrastructure project ‘Stuttgart 21’, expressed the same view.
The Federal Ministry of the Interior must also reveal which other countries are interested in phased-out German water cannon and to which countries it has already sold units. I will start a parliamentarian initiative to request more answers from the government and to discuss the issue in the Bundestag. We are launching a minor interpellation tomorrow”.