Weddings Not Targets
A wedding is a moment when two families come together in public. That a celebration ended in mourning is a loss to everyone who has ever helped plan one. We believe violence against civilians is wrong, wherever it happens and whoever carries it out.
What is reported to have happened
As reported by the BBC, a US missile strike hit a home in Kuhestak, Sirik county, Hormozgan province, Iran, where a wedding celebration was under way. The Iranian Red Crescent and provincial officials have reported four to five people killed, including a child, and more than fifty wounded. US Central Command has said it is aware of the reports and that the US military does not target civilians. The casualty figures and the footage have not been independently verified, and we do not present them as settled.
What we are saying
A wedding is the moment two families choose each other in public. It should be the safest room in the world. We build wedding websites for couples who marry across languages, cultures and borders, and we see every day that a wedding is where cultures, languages and nations are joined rather than divided. That a celebration ended in mourning is a loss to everyone who has ever helped plan one.
Violence against civilians is wrong wherever it happens and whoever carries it out. That is the whole of our position, and it does not depend on whose account of this strike turns out to be right.
What we are not saying
We are not adjudicating this war, assigning blame between states, or arguing the legality of any strike. Al Jazeera has reported that Iranian officials condemned the strike and described it as a war crime; US Central Command disputes that civilians were targeted. Those accounts are irreconcilable today, and we are not the people to reconcile them.
A wedding should be the safest room in the world.
Why we are saying it at all
Weddings are the work we do. We know what the months before one look like — the seating plans, the two families learning each other's words, the argument about the music. Somebody in Kuhestak did that work, and then the day came.
We have no policy to offer and nothing to sell here. We only did not want to say nothing.
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