The
Rehman family waits to testify at the Congressional Briefing on drone
strikes Tuesday, October 29. (Photo: @akneerudh/ Twitter)Despite
being heralded as the first time in history that U.S. lawmakers would
hear directly from the survivors of a U.S. drone strike, only five
elected officials chose to attend the congressional briefing that took
place Tuesday.
Pakistani schoolteacher Rafiq ur Rehman and his two
children—9 year-old daughter Nabila and 13 year-old son Zubair—came to
Washington, DC to give their account of a U.S. drone attack that killed
Rafiq's mother, Momina Bibi, and injured the two children in the remote
tribal region of North Waziristan last October.
"I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now
prefer grey skies. Drones don't fly when sky is grey." –Zubair Rehman,
13-year-old drone victim
According to journalist Anjali Kamat, who was present and
tweeting live during
the hearing, the only lawmakers to attend the briefing organized by
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), were Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Rep. Jan
Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) and Rep. Rick Nolan
(D-Minn.).
Before the handful of reporters and scant lawmakers, however, Rafiq and his children gave dramatic testimony which
reportedly caused the translator to break down into tears.
In her testimony, Nabila shared that she was picking okra with her
grandmother when the U.S. missile struck and both children described how
they used to play outside but are now too afraid.
"I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now prefer grey skies.
Drones don't fly when sky is grey," said Zubair, whose leg was injured
by shrapnel during the strike.
“My grandmother was nobody’s enemy," he added.
"Nobody has ever told me why my mother was targeted that day," Rafiq
wrote
in an open letter to President Barack Obama last week. "The media
reported that the attack was on a car, but there is no road alongside my
mother's house. Several reported the attack was on a house. But the
missiles hit a nearby field, not a house. All reported that five
militants were killed. Only one person was killed – a 65-year-old
grandmother of nine."
"But the United States and its citizens probably do not know this," Rafiq continued. "No one ever asked
us
who was killed or injured that day. Not the United States or my own
government. Nobody has come to investigate nor has anyone been held
accountable."
He concluded, "Quite simply, nobody seems to care."
You can watch a recording of the briefing below and
here:
The purpose of the briefing, Grayson
told the
Guardian,
is "simply to get people to start to think through the implications of
killing hundreds of people ordered by the president, or worse, unelected
and unidentifiable bureaucrats within the Department of Defense without
any declaration of war."
The family was joined by their legal representative Jennifer Gibson of the UK human rights organization
Reprieve.
Their Islamabad-based lawyer, Shahzad Akbar, was also supposed to be
present but was denied a visa by the US authorities—"a recurring
problem,"
according to Reprieve, "since he began representing civilian victims of drone strikes in 2011."
"The onus is now on President Obama and his Administration to bring
this war out of the shadows and to give answers," said Gibson.
Also present was U.S. filmmaker Robert Greenwald, who first met Rafiq
when he traveled to Pakistan to interview the drone strike victims for
his documentary
Unmanned: America's Drone Wars. Before the briefing, Greenwald
told the
Guardian that he hoped the briefing "will begin the process of demanding investigation. Innocent people are being killed."
The following clip from
Unmanned was shown at Tuesday's hearing:
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