ISLAMABAD: PTI Chairman Imran Khan said on Thursday that he would take up the issue of compensation for drone strike victims in parliament and help them obtain justice.

The assurance came as a relief to the residents of Waziristan and other tribal agencies, who had travelled to Islamabad to attend an event held to mark the launch of a new report on the plight of drone attack victims in Pakistan.

`It is deeply embarrassing [to live in] a state that doesn`t look after its citizens, Mr Khan said, adding that his party would approach all relevant forums and were even prepared to go to court to seek justice for innocent civilians whose lives were destroyed by drone attacks.

The report, titled `Do We Not Bleed?: International Failure to Redress Pakistan Victims of US Drone Strikes`, contains an analysis of US compensation programmes for other countries, such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen, where the US also uses drones. On average, civilian victims ofdrone strikes in these countries have received around $50,000 each in compensation.

Reprieve Director Clive Stafford Smith said the US had a $40 million fund to compensate civilian victims of the US drone programme, but not a single Pakistani victim was acknowledged as an innocent casualty, nor was any compensation paid to them.

`Although no payment can ever replace a life lost, saying `I am sorry` acknowledges wrongs and sheds light on mistakes so they can be avoided in the future,` he said.

US drone attacks kill at least nine innocent children for every terrorist that they eliminate, he said, adding that not once had any official stepped up to acknowledge or apologise for these deaths.

In contrast, the families of Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto, who were accidentally killed in a drone strike in January of this year, received a full apology from President Barack Obama, as well as compensation to the tune of Rs1 million.

`Either the US has paid Pakistan the compensation money and it hasn`t reached the victims, or no compensation has been paid,` Mr Smith said.

`Pakistan is the only country where there is zero accountability over the US drone programme,` Jennifer Gibson, a lawyer from Reprieve, told Dawn.

She said that there had been accountability for civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq through open compensation schemes and even in Yemen, compensa-tion was paid to victims` families off-thebooks.

`The government of Pakistan could and should be doing a lot more for these people,` she said.

Hearing from victims The most moving part of Thursday`s event were the testimonies of three drone survivors; Karim Khan, Faheem Qureshi and Zubair Rehman.

Karim, the oldest of the three, hails from Mir Ali and lost a brother and a son to a drone strike on his family house. `My people (Pashtuns) are prepared to wander from pillar to post for the sake of our rights, but we cannot stomach injustice, he said.

He recalled Sadaullah, a young boy who lost both legs to a drone missile, who had passed away without any sort of acknowledgement from either the US or Pakistani government or apology.

`When we learn that the US has a different standard for Pakistanis and a different one for other, it makes me very angry. Are we not human beings,` he asl
The voice of Faheem, who lost an eye and nearly his entire family in the first drone strike of the Obama presidency, trembled with emotion as he recounted the horrible day when he went from being a normal young man to being the victim of a drone attack.

Zubair Rehman, who also testified before the US Congress last year, spoke of his grandmother, who was killed when two Hellfire missiles targeted their house.Zubair and at least eight of his siblings were badly injured in the attack. `What harm would a 67-year-old woman ever cause you,` he asked of the US.

Legal questions The event was well-attended by an audience of young lawyers and students, as well as members of civil society and human rights activists.

Madiha Tahir, a journalist and researcher who has done extensive work on America`s drone programme, told Dawn that it was no coincidence that the drone war was being carried out in an area where a law such as the Frontier Crimes Regulation was in force. `Drone attacks are another form of collective punishment, just as the British shelling of tribal areas in the first part of the 20th century was considered `air policing she said.

One of the lawyers involved with preparation of the report told Dawn that the distinction between civilian and combatant, one of the most pointed questions that is usually asked of drone victims, was quite clear. `Look at these people, some of them are teachers, lawyers, journalists; they aren`t terrorists,` he said.

He said that the Pakistani government had admitted to civilian casualties before the Peshawar High Court, while Shahzad Akbar the human rights lawyer who has been representing civilian drone victims said that his firm would approach the courts again for redressal of their clients` grievances.