A sobering and commendable art installation in Pakistan puts a
face on the victims of U.S. drone attacks. The giant portrait,
installed in Pakistan’s heavily bombed Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa region,
features a child who lost both her parents and two siblings in a
predator drone attack.
“Now, when viewed by a drone camera, what an operator sees on
his screen is not an anonymous dot on the landscape, but an
innocent child victim’s face,” the #NotABugSplat
website states.
The installation, created by a group of artists in collaboration
with Reprieve/Foundation for Fundamental
Rights, gets its name from what is apparently/incredibly
military slang for drone kills. It aims “to challenge this
insensitivity as well as raise awareness of civilian
casualties.”
The #NotABugSplat portrait can also be captured by
satellites “in order to make it a permanent part of the landscape
on online mapping sites,” its creators note.
Since 2004, U.S. drone strikes have killed an estimated 2,537 to
3,646 people in Pakistan, according to
the Bureau of Investigatie Journalism. At least 416 and
possibly almost 1,000 were civilians, including 168 to 200
children.
from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/1kjwjab
via IFTTT