Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“Human life cannot be left to the mercy of a president’s whim.”
Amnesty International on Wednesday denounced this week’s killing of six more people as US forces bombed another boat the Trump administration said—without evidence—was operated by narco-traffickers.
“Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations,” US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) said Sunday on social media. “Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations. Six male narco-terrorists were killed during this action.”
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The US has bombed at least 40 vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean since last September, killing at least 156 people, according to the Trump administration.
“Amnesty International strongly condemns these acts and reiterates that they constitute extrajudicial killings, a form of murder, prohibited under international law, and represent a grave affront to the most basic principles of humanity and legality,” Amnesty said in a statement. “No circumstances justify the arbitrary deprivation of life.”
The boat strikes were fraught from the start. In the first known attack, US forces killed nine people in an initial strike and then two men clinging to the boat’s wreckage in a follow-up bombing. Legal experts have debated whether those strikes were a war crime or simply murder, and many argue that all of the boat bombings violate international law.
“The United States cannot claim the right to blow up boats with people on board based solely on suspicions of drug trafficking or other allegedly illicit activities,” Amnesty International Americas director Ana Piquer said Wednesday. “The rest of the international community cannot normalize these extrajudicial killings, in which the United States military is judge and executioner.”
“No president or military has the right to arbitrarily take life.”
“Human life cannot be left to the mercy of a president’s whim,” Piquer stressed. “No president or military has the right to arbitrarily take life. The level of dehumanization and cynicism reflected in these acts is deeply alarming and should be of global concern.”
“It is urgent to demand accountability and immediately end these types of attacks,” she added. “Due to the current acquiescence of the attorney general’s office, Congress must step in with its oversight power and investigate.”
In addition to bombing boats—and 10 countries—President Donald Trump launched an invasion of Venezuela to abduct its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, who are jailed in the US awaiting trial for dubious narco-trafficking charges.
Earlier this month, Trump also authorized a joint campaign with Ecuador to combat “narco-terrorists” in which US ground troops have been deployed in the Andean nation.
Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
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