GPJA: NZ Govt Must Renounce CIA Assassinations

Global Peace and Justice Auckland has called on the government to condemn the CIA organised assassination of alleged Al Qaeda suspects in Yemen as a gross violation of international law. “This is a blatant use of terrorist methods by the worlds most powerful state and will hinder not help genuine efforts to rid the world of the terrorist threat,” said GPJA spokesperson John Minto.

“Speaking like he was in a B grade Western US President Bush boasted on Monday that the only way to treat killers was to ‘hunt them down. And the United States of America is doing just that.’ Setting himself up as judge, jury and executioner the US president is violating not only international law but also the law of the United States, which forbids assassination as a tool of its military or secret services.

“The US has hundreds of military advisers in Yemen and since they were able to track their car they clearly had the opportunity to arrest and charge these people if they had proof of any of the crimes they are alleged to have committed.

“New Zealand was the victim of just such a terrorist attack when the Rainbow Warrior was bombed. At the time the US refused to condemn France for its violation of international law since it was itself defying the World Court by organising a proxy war against Nicaragua.

“The Yemen assassination comes on top of the US’s blatant disregard of all international conventions in the treatment of prisoners captured in Afghanistan and the continuing illegal bombing of Iraq.

“The New Zealand government must not allow this example of international vigilantism to go unchallenged. Otherwise so-called ‘extra-judicial killings’ like those in Yemen will become normalised and the world will reap the whirlwind.

“Since the New Zealand government is militarily supporting the US’s so-called War on Terrorism if it does not speak out it will be complicit in the use of murder as a tool of foreign policy.”

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