Published on Wednesday, July 4, 2001 in the Toronto
Star |
International Law Should Not Be
Victors' Justice Indicted or convicted war criminals are all citizens of small, poor countries |
by Richard Gwyn |
THE OTHER day the Los Angeles Times
ran an op-ed piece by freelance journalist Robert Scheer arguing that
Robert McNamara, the U.S. defence secretary during the 1960s, ought to be
tried as a war criminal for his conduct during the Vietnam War.
Scheer wrote: "(Former Yugoslav President) Slobodan Milosevic is
accused of using military force to wage a campaign of terror against the
civilian population of Kosovo. Yet it was McNamara who defined the largest
part of the Vietnamese countryside, populated by peasants, as a free-fire
zone."
Scheer is being extreme. But he has a point.
So also does Richard Falk, professor of international law at
Princeton, who when asked on a recent BBC-TV program whether Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon had been guilty of a war crime when he failed to
prevent a massacre of Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatila camps
in Lebanon, answered, "No doubt whatsoever."
And so did British journalist Christopher Hitchins in his recent
book describing former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger as a serial
war criminal for his actions in Vietnam, in Chile, in Cyprus.
Yesterday, Milosevic appeared in court in The Hague to hear the
charges against him - genocide and violations of human rights in Kosovo.
The actual trial will probably be held next year.
While, of course, innocent until proven guilty, the case against
Milosevic is overwhelming. An eventual guilty verdict is all but
inevitable.
Universal applause has greeted Milosevic's handover to the United
Nations special tribunal. His conviction will similarly be applauded and
will enable Yugoslavia to fully re-enter the community of nations, even
though Milosevic's actual delivery to The Hague was done under suspect
legal circumstances (the Yugoslav constitution provides for him to be
tried first in Belgrade).
Everywhere, so it seems, those who violate human rights have had
their immunity stripped away from them.
Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is under arrest and his
future depends upon the determination of a Chilean high court about
whether he is mentally and physically fit to stand trial. Former Peruvian
internal security chief Vladimiro Montesinos has just been extradited from
Venezuela to stand trial for corruption. Former Argentine president Carlos
Menem is under house arrest pending being charged with illegal arms sales.
And while the wheels of international justice grind slowly, they do
achieve their goals. Former Rwandan prime minister Jean Kambanda has been
convicted for genocide by the U.N.'s special tribunal in that country
(he's the first head of government to be charged as a war criminal, not
Milosevic, as has been said many times this week). Convictions against
less-important figures have been secured against those who committed war
crimes in both Bosnia and in Rwanda (in the latter instance, including two
nuns).
There is, though, a troubling characteristic about all these
indicted or convicted war criminals. They are all citizens of small, and
usually poor, countries.
The only inquiry into potential war crimes committed by the public
officials of large, wealthy and powerful countries has been the U.N.
special tribunal's examination of charges that NATO's bombing of Serbia, a
part of which was targeted at civilians, was a war crime. (The tribunal
rejected the accusation.) As well, a Paris judge examining charges against
Chile's Pinochet has asked Kissinger to give testimony (Kissinger was in
Paris, but said he was too busy to attend).
A defence for this one-sidedness exists. Industrial democracies
have mechanisms (a free press, a political opposition) to examine publicly
their own past - by the U.S. of its actions in Vietnam, for example, or
currently, by France of its use of torture in Algeria.
The U.N.'s special tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and
eventually the international criminal court, in effect extend the rule of
law of democratic states to those parts of the world where to be in power
has been, until now, to be free to do almost anything.
Nevertheless, the disparity in the treatment between leaders in
rich and poor countries will eventually become too obvious to be
sustainable. And, if perpetuated, it will severely undermine the authority
of the system of international law, causing it to be seen as merely
victors' justice with a few juridical trimmings to give it legitimacy.
Sooner or later someone like Kissinger or McNamara or Sharon, is
going to have to be indicted and then be brought before an international
criminal court to answer for his actions, just as is being done to
Pinochet and Milosevic and the others.
Either international law applies to all or it is, indeed, just victors' justice. Copyright 1996-2001. Toronto Star Newspapers Limited ### |
Miroslav Antic,
http://www.antic.org/