| inbluevt | Date: Tuesday, 2013/10/22, 8:24 PM | Message # 1 | DMCA |
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WASHINGTON, Oct 22 2013 (IPS) - The U.S. government has been engaged in unlawful drone strikes in Pakistan that are in violation of international law, and may amount to war crimes, according to a new report released here by Amnesty International on Tuesday.
The report’s release comes at a critical time, as newly-elect Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif returns to Washington for his first official visit as the country’s leader since 1999.
In the report, “Will I Be Next? U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan,” the human rights organisation provides evidence that U.S. drones have killed innocent civilians that posed no apparent threat to the United States.
Amnesty’s report notes that in nine strikes carried out between May 2012 and July 2013, at least 29 unarmed civilians lost their lives, including a 68-year-old woman who was killed instantly by two U.S. Hellfire missiles as she was picking vegetables.
The study was released jointly with a report by Human Rights Watch, another human rights organisation, highlighting the illegality of U.S. drone strikes in Yemen. The report “Between a
Drone and Al-Qaeda,” estimates that in Yemen, where the U.S. is currently engaged fighting Yemen’s Al-Qaeda wing (AQAP), dozens of civilians have been killed between 2009 and 2013 by U.S. drone strikes.
“President [Barack]Obama needs to come clean about these killings,” Naureen Shah, an advocacy advisor at Amnesty International USA, told IPS. “What really matters is that the U.S. government and Congress recognise that these killings are occurring, that civilians have been killed and that the narrative of precision and of no civilian casualties is a false one.”
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A protest in Peshawar against drone strikes. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
Message edited by inbluevt - Tuesday, 2013/10/22, 8:26 PM |
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