Brazil bans tear gas exports to Venezuela
The Politics Of Tears
By César Crespo - June 28, 2017
Years from now, when we think back on 2017, the first thing to come to mind will be a cloud of tear gas. But did you know that most of the thousands of tear gas canisters fired on protesters had to be bought abroad?
In fact, most of the tear gas for repressing Venezuela’s protest movement is Made in Brazil. Nor is the Brazilian government an innocent bystander in all this: under Brazilian law, tear gas made in the country needs export authorization from the government.
Brazil’s tear gas pipeline exemplifies the attitude of the international community all year: a kind of realpolitik you could describe as pragmatic cynicism. “If Venezuelans choose to tear gas one another like brutes,” the feeling goes, “why shouldn’t our companies walk away with a piece of the pie?”
Last week, finally, we began to see some pushback against that, as Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defense banned the Rio de Janeiro-based company Condor Tecnologias Não-Letais from selling 23 tons of tear gas (approximately 80,000 tear gas canisters) to the Venezuelan government – one half of the water and a “little” gas Maduro says he’s using to control the 2017 protests – as the body count climbs toward 80.
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https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2017/06/28/the-politics-of-tears/
http://brasil.elpais.com/brasil/2017/06/21/internacional/1498078055_852403.html?id_externo_rsoc=TW_BR_CM
