The US should end the secrecy surrounding its drone campaign in Pakistan and Yemen and bring those responsible for illegal attacks to justice, rights campaigners said yesterday.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) published separate reports on drones on the eve of White House talks between US President Barack Obama and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, at which the weapons are expected to be discussed.
Amnesty highlighted two drone attacks in northwest Pakistan last year, one of which killed a 68-year-old grandmother as she picked vegetables, saying there appeared to be no justification for either.
The US has carried out nearly 400 drone attacks in Pakistan’s restive tribal districts along the Afghan border since 2004, killing between 2,500 and 3,600 people, the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism said.
Amnesty said that without more transparency it was impossible to test US claims that the attacks conform to international law.
“Secrecy surrounding the drones program gives the US administration a license to kill beyond the reach of the courts or basic standards of international law,” said Mustafa Qadri, the group’s Pakistan researcher.
Amnesty’s drone report published yesterday focused on 45 confirmed strikes in the North Waziristan tribal agency between January last year and August.
The campaign group highlighted two incidents that it said raised serious concerns about violations of international law.
The first was the death of 68-year-old Mamana Bibi in a double strike as she picked vegetables in the family’s fields in October last year.
In the second, 18 workers were killed in a village on the Afghan border as they ate a meal at the end of the day in July last year, Amnesty said.
“We cannot find any justification for these killings. There are genuine threats to the USA and its allies in the region, and drone strikes may be lawful in some circumstances,” Qadri said. “But it is hard to believe that a group of laborers, or an elderly woman surrounded by her grandchildren, were endangering anyone at all, let alone posing an imminent threat to the US.”
Amnesty called on the US to investigate publicly all cases where drone strikes may have caused deaths unlawfully, and to prosecute those responsible where there was enough evidence.
Though the Pakistani government publicly protests against drone strikes, previous administrations are known to have given them their tacit blessing.
Amnesty called on Islamabad to investigate drone strikes and probe whether Pakistani officials were involved in providing information for them.
HRW said the US has carried out 80 operations in Yemen since 2009, including strikes from drones, warplanes and cruise missiles — killing at least 473 people.
Its report examined six US attacks on suspected members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which Washington regards as the global jihadist network’s most dangerous affiliate.
“Two of these attacks were in clear violation of international humanitarian law — the laws of war — because they struck only civilians or used indiscriminate weapons,” the report said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not