UK campaigner to join Waziristan anti-drone march

Carol Grayson                                        pic: CAAB

A British filmaker and campaigner, Carol Grayson, will travel to South Waziristan later this month to take part in a peace march calling for an end to drone strikes and organised by former cricketer and leader of the Tehreek-e-Insaf party, Imran Khan.
The march has already created a stir, with the Pakistan Taliban having threatened to kill Khan - and then withdrawing the threat.
Grayson, who has campaigned to expose the infected blood scandal of the 1970-80s and has also helped to make a film about a notorious incident in Iraq in which a US Army helicopter killed eight men, including two Reuters journalists, in 2007, told the Drone Wars UK website that she refuses to support "the US and British state-sanctioned terror of targeted killing by drone, being used in the so-called 'war on terror' which frequently annihilates civilians in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan".
She said she had been invited to join the march into one of the most dangerous areas in Pakistan by Imran Khan: "I will be joining a peace march to Waziristan with international media, human rights activists and anti-war protesters in solidarity with drone victims. I plan to publicly disassociate, ditch and disown any connection to those drones manufactured as remote control killing machines operated out of airbases in the US and soon the UK."
She said that she did not think the march was a gimmick and revealed that Imran Khan had met with tribal leaders this week who are supportive of the march. An anti-drone protest will take place in Bradford, Yorkshire - in advance of the Wazirstan march - on 14 September.