Bay Area activists say NO to
"Monsters in the Sky."
Weekly vigils against remote
killings of civilians continued in downtown San Francisco yesterday outside one
busy entrance to the city's subway system (Montgomery Street BART station). Inspired by photographer Noor Behran's
documentation of brutal U.S. drone strikes on the people of Pakistan,
demonstrators challenged passersby to confront the human cost of their government's
targeted assassination policy.
Every picture tells a story.
On Valentine's Day 2009, just weeks after President Obama assumed office, a CIA drone attack struck a village in South Waziristan. Approximately 30 people died in the bombing, including
Noor Syed:
Maezol Khan and his son were sleeping in the courtyard of their home when a missile from a drone struck a nearby car. As a result of the explosion, a missile part flew into the courtyard, killing Maezol's eight-year-old son.
At the funeral, the boy's mother was out of her mind with grief and began coloring the boy's face with her lipstick, perhaps to restore the color of life to his waxen features.
On August 21, 2009 Syed Wali Shah was killed in an air strike on Dande Darpa Khel (Pakistan):
By the time photographer Noor Behram reached Bismullah Khan's mud house, partially destroyed in the strike, Khan's youngest son had already died. Behram watched as the boy's body was laid out on a prayer rug, a "very small" one, in preparation for his funeral. "The body was whole," Behram recalls. "He was found dead." The villagers wrapped a bandage around the boy's head, even though they had no chance to save his life. Behram doesn't know who the target of the Dande Darpa Khel attack was. ("You'd have to ask the CIA that," he says.) But he observed people's anger as they prepared bodies for burial and cleared the wreckage. "The people were extremely angry. They were talking and shouting against the U.S. for the attack," Behram says.
We can't begin to name all those murdered by your government's weapon of choice; the above represent a handful of hundreds identified. Death by these "monsters in the sky" continues to escalate under the Obama administration.
Our last photo identified Naeemullah, wounded at Datta Khel on October 18, 2010:
Pakistan's Express Tribune reported a drone attacked "two suspected militant hideouts" near Mirin Shah. Photographer Noor Behram never saw the scene. He headed instead to a near-by hospital, where he heard residents had frantically driven one of the strike's victims, a boy of about 10 or 11. Naeemullah was said to be injured after a missile struck the house next door. Shrapnel and debris travelled into Naeemullah's house, wounding him in "various parts of his body," Behram says. "You can't see his back, but his back was wounded by missile pieces and burns."
An hour after Behram took this picture, Naeemullah died of his injuries.
Join CodePink, World Can't Wait, Know Drones, Occupy SF Action Council and others every week, same time (5:30 pm) and place (northwest corner of Montgomery and Market Streets) to say NO to the President's assassination program.
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