British lawyer Ben Emmerson, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights, has announced that the UN is launching an investigation into the consequences of the US drone airstrikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan and other countries.
He will be responsible for conducting the analysis and reporting his findings to the UN General Assembly in fall 2013. According to the Guardian newspaper, several countries, including Pakistan and two permanent members of the UN Security Council, initiated the investigation. Our correspondent Vasily Vanetsov discloses the details of the story.
Specifically, Ben Emmerson is to evaluate the consequences of the airstrikes made by the drones, the number of casualties among the civilian population, the accuracy and reasoning behind the selection of the military targets and the legal aspect of such strikes in the countries where there is no official acknowledgement of a conflict by specific resolutions of the UN. One of the main issues on the agenda is whether determining potential targets with the help of drones is an acceptable method in a conflict. The existing experience of drone usage in the territory of Pakistan reveals that the risk of making a mistake in such situations is very high. Sometimes, the drone operators mistake people celebrating some sort of event in a loud manner by shooting guns in the air, such as a wedding, or a crowd of people in the market or in front of a cinema, as terrorists groups.
According to the available data, in Pakistan in the period between June 2004 and September 2012, over 3,000 people died from drone airstrikes, including over 800 civilians and almost 200 children. With the election of Barack Obama as the US president the attacks by the US drones became more frequent. Killings made by the drones have become almost a daily routine by US armed forces in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and especially in Pakistan. It became one of the main reasons for the deterioration of the US-Pakistani relations. They dropped to their lowest in the entire history of their relations, points out Vadim Kozyulin, a professor at the Moscow Academy of Military Sciences.
"As far as the relations between Pakistan and the USA go, it is obvious that today they are going through a bad period. In Pakistan a strong opposition to the drone program is building up, as well as to their uncontrolled use in the territory of Pakistan, in particular in the tribal areas."
US drone airstrikes in Pakistani territory are a violation of international law, announced Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in his interview to Russian journalists given shortly after Barack Obama’s re-election for his second presidential term. Many human rights activists consider drone attacks in the territory of sovereign states to be a military crime. According to some of his statements, Ben Emmerson sticks to the same opinion.Now that, at the request of Pakistan and two permanent members of the UN Security Council, an investigation of mass murders by drone strikes is beginning, the main issue is: how far can Ben Emmerson go in his investigation? Will an international tribunal be set up to prosecute the criminals, or as often happens in international practice, will the problem be discussed and then forgotten? It is obvious that the US will do everything it takes to limit the extent of the investigation and have it end with the publication of a smoothed out and completely “politically correct” report. After that it would be dropped altogether.
Voice of Russia
No comments:
Post a Comment