UN: Drone attacks may violate international law
Non-representative ‘International law’ and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in their present form are completely bogus, given Article 29, subsection (3) which states ‘These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations’, which amounts to a notwithstanding clause. However, the investigator has a point. Drones are somewhat eerily akin to buzzbombs. Despite their high tech targeting capabilities, their strikes appear to kill indiscriminately, and they are only as good as their mission intel – much of which is provided by competing tribes in the area.
Flashback: Kandahar spy blimp raises privacy concerns | US drone ’shot down over Somalia’ | Military spycraft patrols Ontario border from Fort Drum | Homing chips are CIA’s latest weapon against ‘al-Qaida’ targets hiding in Pakistan’s tribal belt | CIA: Our Drones are Killing Terrorists. Promise
BBC News
October 28, 2009
The US has been warned that its use of drones to target suspected terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan may violate international law.
UN human rights investigator Philip Alston said the US should explain the legal basis for attacking individuals with the remote-controlled aircraft.
He said the CIA had to show accountability to international laws which ban arbitrary executions.
Drones have killed about 600 people in north-west Pakistan since August 2008.
Mr Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, told the BBC: “My concern is that these drones, these Predators, are being operated in a framework which may well violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law.
“The onus is really on the government of the United States to reveal more about the ways in which it makes sure that arbitrary executions, extrajudicial executions, are not in fact being carried out through the use of these weapons.”
Increased use
Mr Alston raised the issue in a report to the UN General Assembly’s human rights committee on Tuesday.
At a news conference afterwards, he said he had become increasingly concerned at the increase in their use since June, particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The US told the UN in June that it has a legal framework to respond to unlawful killings. It also said the UN Human Rights Council and the General Assembly have no role in relation to killings during an armed conflict.
But Mr Alston described that response as “simply untenable”.
Mr Alston’s warning came as US President Barack Obama reviews US strategy in the Afghan campaign.
The senior US military commander in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley McChrystal, has asked for at least 40,000 more troops there.
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November 3rd, 2009 at 12:29 am
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November 26th, 2009 at 1:02 am
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January 21st, 2010 at 10:27 pm
Although drones look like a new miracle weapon, they are bound to have serious and unpredictable side effects, side effects for which we have to pay later. The “Collateral damage” (killing of innocent civilians) which the drones are inflicting will inflame hatred toward America. Each time a drone attack kills an innocent person, it hands al-Qaeda a propaganda victory.
Being attacked by remote control will make the terrorists feel superior to an adversary who obviously is too much of a coward to confront them in person.
The local population feels terrorized by the United States because we are killing people by remote control on their home soil. The population will support al-Qaeda, because al-Qaeda is fighting their common adversary. Terrorizing a civilian population will only strengthen its resolve, as I learned while growing up in Germany during World War II. The Allies were bombing the German cities, terrorizing and killing the civilian population. This terror bombing, rather than weakening the population’s resolve, increased their determination to resist. It was a matter of survival.
The operator of the drone, safely based at some Air Force base in Nevada, pushes a button to kill by remote control. Killing Pakistanis thousands of miles away, as if it was a video game. At the end of his shift of killings this operator safely goes home to his family. Unless such a drone operator is already a psychopath to begin with, he is bound to eventually experience guilt and post traumatic stress when he finally realizes what he has done to other human beings, to innocent people and their families.
It will only be a matter of time before the drones come home to roost. The Immigration Department is already using drones on the border with Mexico. How long will it be before our government will use drones to spy on its own citizens, or shoot at “outlaws”?
February 18th, 2010 at 2:46 am
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