Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
Border police use 'the Skunk' to disperse a crowd in a protest against the security barrier in the West Bank village of Bilin, near Ramallah, in 2012. (Rishwanth Jayapaul/Flash 90)
An Israel-developed stink bomb that smells of sewers and is used for crowd control has failed to flush out protesters in India
According to the Hindustan Times, India’s Central Reserve Police Force tested the fetid liquid on the public and on CRPF personnel in the country’s capital, Delhi.
Instead of holding their noses and running away to retch, the test team “managed to tolerate the smell without much difficulty,” one official said.
Indian security forces are looking for nonlethal ways to control protesters in Kashmir and in other areas of the country.
Muslim-majority Kashmir is being fought over by India and Pakistan.
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Israeli security forces have been using the stink bomb — named Skunk – on Palestinian protesters since 2008 and market the material to armies and and law enforcement organizations around the world.
Kashmiri Muslims run after Indian government forces fired tear smoke shells during the funeral of Tanveer Ahmed in Beerwah town, central Kashmir, July 21, 2017. (AFP PHOTO / Tauseef MUSTAFA)
Skunk is mixed with water and fired through water cannons for crowd control.
While harmless, it has a smell that can linger for days, even after showers.
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A Reuters reporter, Noah Browning, described the smell as follows: “Imagine taking a chunk of rotting corpse from a stagnant sewer, placing it in a blender and spraying the filthy liquid in your face. Your gag reflex goes off the charts and you can’t escape, because the nauseating stench persists for days.”
One Indian official thought Indians were just more used to terrible smells.
“Maybe Indians have a higher threshold of tolerating stench,” the official surmised.
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