[sambeau]

I was reading the European Convention on Human Rights recently and I was surprised to see that Article 2 explicitly allows for states to kill people to quell rioting or insurrection:

  Article 2 – Right to life
  :
  2. Deprivation of life shall not be regarded as inflicted in contravention of this 
     article when it results from the use of force which is no more than 
     absolutely necessary:
     :
    c. in action lawfully taken for the purpose of quelling a riot or insurrection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_2_of_the_European_Conve...

[rayiner]

You have to read "riot" in context of "insurrection." Armed uprisings are put down with lethal force. That's not inconsistent with western thought. E.g. its one of the first things the fledgling U.S. federal government did in response to a rebellion in Massachusetts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays'_Rebellion#Rebellion.

Vis-a-vis riots, read in the context of "insurrection" you might interpret it as referring to the kind of riots you see in say Bangladesh: labor strikes where people bomb things.

[obviouslygreen]

Are there instances where this has been applied with commentary? That would be interesting to read; just based on the raw text, it seems to me this is closer to "if you have an allergic reaction to the legal application of tear gas while rioting and die, it's not our fault" and less like "if you're protesting and we don't like it, we can and will shoot you, and it's legal."

[ekianjo]

Interesting. Maybe that explains why dictatorships actually signed it too.Is that only in the European version ?