(Hat tip to TheMomCat for alerting me to this project. Thanks TheMomCat!)
In military slang, Predator drone operators often refer to kills as ‘bug splats’, since viewing the body through a grainy video image gives the sense of an insect being crushed.
To challenge this insensitivity as well as raise awareness of civilian casualties, an artist collective installed a massive portrait facing up in the heavily bombed Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa region of Pakistan, where drone attacks regularly occur. Now, when viewed by a drone camera, what an operator sees on his screen is not an anonymous dot on the landscape, but an innocent child victim’s face.
Visit the site:
#NotABugSplat
Though there has not been a confirmed drone strike in Pakistan since December 2013, #NotABugSplat wants to continue to put up more posters of children to instigate further dialogue and awareness, because as R puts it, "it is only the loss of a child that can show the impact that drone strikes have on the residents of these regions."
Drone strikes in the tribal regions bordering Afghanistan have drawn heated opposition in Pakistan because of civilian casualties.
The drone strikes have further roiled relations between the two nations, which flared following a 2011 raid by U.S. commandos on a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. According to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 383 U.S. drone strikes have been reported in Pakistan since 2004 with the death toll estimated to be between 2,296 and 3,718.
Artists give drone victims a face in Pakistan
TheMomCat also alerted me to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's page on Drone Strikes in Pakistan.
Some interesting statistics:
Casualty estimates
Reported deaths and injuries
Pakistan 2004–2014
CIA Drone Strikes
Total strikes: 383
Obama strikes: 332
Total killed: 2,296-3,718
Civilians killed: 416-957
Children killed: 168-202
Injured: 1,089-1,639
Did you know that CIA attacks have struck Pakistan’s tribal areas on average once every five days during Obama’s first term – six times more than under George W Bush.
Six times more than under George W. Bush.
Nothing to see here:
Despite Obama’s pledge of greater transparency, the United States chose to boycott a United Nations Human Rights Council discussion of a Pakistani draft resolution, which was later adopted with 27 states in favor, six against, and 14 abstentions, that urges states to "ensure transparency" regarding drone strikes and to "conduct prompt, independent and impartial investigations whenever there are indications of any violations to human rights caused by their use."
While the Obama administration continues to rely on the “trust us” defense against allegations that it has violated international human rights law and the laws of war, Christof Heyns, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, and Ben Emmerson, UN Special Rapporteur on Counterterrorism and Human Rights, have repeatedly called for the Obama administration to be transparent about who it kills in its drone strikes.
In October 2013, Heyns published a report that stated, “Legal and political accountability are dependent on public access to the relevant information. Only on the basis of such information can effective oversight and enforcement take place. The first step towards securing human rights in this context is transparency about the use of drones.” He added, “Accountability for violations of international human rights law (or international humanitarian law) is not a matter of choice or policy; it is a duty under domestic and international law.”
1:32 PM PT: Updated to include a link to and excerpt from Rep. Grayson's speech:
“There needs to be increased oversight of the decisions to fly lethal weapons over another nation and kill people, and we should never accept that their children or their loved ones in a far-away land are acceptable collateral damage. The world has learned from past wars. We’ve passed rules that every nation must adhere to when engaging in combat. The United States of America’s decision to disavow these rules unilaterally, to engage in anonymous killing from the skies, does not make us safer. It simply engages the world in perpetual war."
Read the speech
here.
(Special thanks to PhilJD for the link.)