Sunday 28 April 2013

British protests against drones


British protesters deplore govt. for using armed drones in Afghanistan
British demonstrators protest against a critical expansion in the country’s drones program, condemning UK's use of armed drones in Afghanistan.



27 April, 2013


A coalition of protesters marched Saturday to a Royal Air Force base north of London to voice its opposition to the UK's use of armed drones in Afghanistan.

"People are pretty upset about the idea that Britain will be developing this drone warfare," said John Hilary, executive director of War on Want.

Some 700 representatives of "a whole range of different anti-war movements" participated, many of them arriving in buses from around the country, he said.

They made the 4-mile march from the town of Lincoln to Royal Air Force Waddington, about 130 miles north of London, he said.

The coalition also includes members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the Drone Campaign Network and Stop the War Coalition.

Their march was held two days after the RAF announced that it has begun remotely operating its Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles deployed to Afghanistan from the Lincolnshire airbase.

Before that, they had been operated from Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, where the U.S. drone program is located.

This comes as a study published last year by two U.S. universities argued that the "dominant narrative" that drones are "surgically precise and effective" is false.

The strikes have killed far more people than the United States has acknowledged, traumatized innocent people and largely been ineffective, according to the study by the law schools of Stanford and New York University. 

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