Govt equally responsible for ‘civilian’ deaths in drone strikes

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan has strongly condemned the recent US drone strike that killed 24 people in North Waziristan on Friday, saying the Pakistani government was equally responsible in the massacre of its citizens by not disclosing the identities of the victims. In a statement on Saturday, Imran said the latest drone attack speaks volumes about the so-called “close working partnershi p” between Pakistan and the United States in the ongoing war. He said the rulers of Pakistan had restored NATO supply routes to appease the US in defiance of the people’s strong sentiments and the parliamentary resolutions. On the other hand, the US reciprocated with incessant drone attacks, the last of which killed 24 people, Imran added. “The drone strikes are in clear violation of the international humanitarian laws, while there is a complete media censorship in the tribal areas, and no way to ascertain the identities of those killed in such attacks,” the PTI chief said. He demanded the government to disclose the identification details of the victims so that the nation could know how many women, children and ordinary civilians had been killed. He wondered if any other country in the world would allow indiscriminate killing of its citizens by a foreign power. The PTI chief held the Pakistani government equally responsible for the indiscriminate elimination of its citizens as it had “consciously avoided” disclosing identification details of the drone strike victims. “Our rulers are blindly supporting the US claims of high precision drone strikes and minimum collateral damage when they are actually aware of the details of Pakistani civilian casualties in the tribal areas,” Imran said. Rejecting the argument that the strikes were primarily carried out against foreign militants, Imran referred to statistics from various independent organisations which suggest that both the United States and the Government of Pakistan were grossly underreporting civilian casualties. “Furthermore, accounts of various local and western journalists suggest that a large number of local civilians have been killed in these strikes,” he said.