CIA drone terror
The Obama adminstration led human rights violations continue in the secret United States Drone War on Pakistan, with latest being, reported by Democracy Now!, the CIA killing of Tariq Aziz, 16, and his cousin, 12, as Aziz was photographing the drones for a project to document U.S. human rights violations, including killing 175 Pakistan children by drones, President Obama's stated weapon of choice.
"People were aware of the threat to them. Yet they volunteered—Tariq, in particular, because he, at his age in that remote community, was familiar with computers, was excited about the idea of being able to document the civilian casualties," said reporter Pratap Chatterjee, who met Aziz days before he was killed.
When a group of Pakistanis gathered in Islamabad in Late October to discuss the U.S. drone strikes in their communities, one 16-year-old Tariq Aziz, who volunteered to learn photography to begin documenting drone strikes near his home.
"Within 72 hours of the meeting, Aziz was killed in a U.S. drone strike. His 12-year-old cousin was also killed in the Oct. 31 attack," reported Democracy Now!
As part of a larger investigation on the CIA-led U.S. covert drone war, Chatterjee and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports that drone strikes in Pakistan have killed at least 392 civilians, including 175 children.
"I question as to whether the CIA is really attempting to identify people before they kill them," he says.
"It would have been so easy for the CIA, the ISI, to come question these kids, to have taken them aside, even put them in jail or interrogated them... But instead they chose to kill them."
(See slideshow: "Pakistan: US drone strikes intolerable")
Reprieve, the London based legal charity led by Clive Stafford Smith and the Islamabad based Foundation for Fundamental Rights worked with Waziristan elders to create a Waziristan Grand Jirga bringing together in an open meeting elders and families of people the CIA has killed killed by drones over past five years in northern Pakistan.
"So they met at the Margala Hotel, and this jirga was held on Friday the 28th," said Chetterjee.
"And there were probably 35 people, who were families, relatives of people who were killed, including—among them was Tariq Aziz, whom I met briefly, who was 16."
"And he had lost his cousin 18 months ago. His cousin’s name is Aswar Ullah, who was killed when he was riding a motorbike near their home village of Norak."
"So, at that meeting, the elders, as is typical in a jirga, met to discuss what had happened. They adopted a resolution condemning the strikes and then went to a rally organized by Imran Khan. And Tariq Aziz traveled with all of us to the rally. There were lawyers. There were reporters. It was an open meeting, an open rally in front of the parliament in Islamabad."
After that, Tariq Aziz and the other attendees returned to their homes. And 72 hours later, when Tariq was traveling with his 12-year-old cousin to go pick up his aunt on Monday morning, he was killed in a drone strike.
Drones are President Barack Obama's "weapon of choice."
Video aims to bridge U.S. - Pakistan relationship as a Secretary of State of integrity would aim
"To call the current US-Pak relationship dysfunctional would, indeed, be an understatement," human rights defender and peace-maker Daniyal Noorani of DNA Testing Productions stated Tuesday.
Conducting business development for a biotech company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in his spare, Noorani writes and plays music. His first single, "Find Heaven," addresses radicalization and Taliban militancy and has screened in film festivals, most recently the London Independent Film Festival.
"The recent statement of the US Secretary of Defense, saying that there is no choice but to maintain a good relationship with Pakistan sums up the current state of this relationship perfectly; both are unwilling partners."
Noorani has created a short, animated provacative edutainment aimed at creating what a Secretary of State of integrity would aim: fostering peace and justice between nations.
(To see a short the reader of goodwill will want to share, watch potentially award winning DNA Testing Productions "Own2Feet" on this page)
Norrani explained:
"The motivation for Own2Feet, for me, was to portray the Pakistani point of view and to highlight its justified grievances towards an American audience. In addition to this, my aim was to motivate Pakistanis to take ownership of their problems and to be introspective."As for Marria, her view is that Pakistan’s relationship with the US is compounding the problems within the country, and wanted to vent her annoyance through her art. She had seen the impact that our first video has had on audiences and wanted to get her message across in a similar fashion."
"At the end of the day, the hope is that viewers will enjoy Own2Feet as a piece of provocative entertainment, and that the video will evoke constructive conversations between the two countries."
Follow Deborah Dupré on Twitter @DeborahDupre.
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