(Human Rights Watch was one of the outfits that took George Bush at his word that Iraqi soldiers were murdering Kuwaiti newborns in hospital nurseries. They whitewash George Bush in this article. This lie helped to launch the Gulf War. It would be interesting to find out who is exactly behind this outfit. The latest copy of Ken Silverstein and Alex Cockburn's Counterpunch reveals that the "Lawyers Committee on Human Rights" has endorsed a Clinton plan that would allow Nike and similar companies to maintain sweat shops in Asia. It turns out that some huge and powerful Wall Street legal firms who counsel these corporations are major funders of the "Lawyers Committee on Human Rights.") December 2, 1998 The Pinochet Precedent By CARROLL BOGERT If Britain allows Augusto Pinochet to be extradited to Spain to stand trial for atrocities committed under his 17-year rule, despots elsewhere will take note: if Mr. Pinochet cannot escape the long arm of international law, they might not, either. That would be quite a birthday present to mark the 50 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Dec. 10. The world is likely to see more arrests and, we hope, some actual prosecutions for serious human rights abuses. Crimes like genocide and systematic torture have long been matters of "universal jurisdiction," meaning that any state has the power to prosecute them, at least theoretically. But now, some countries are actually willing to do so. Will this justice be truly universal? Conservative critics have seized on the Pinochet case as evidence that human rights groups have a liberal bias: if Mr. Pinochet, why not Fidel Castro? If you want to prosecute bad guys on the right, how about bad guys on the left? Our response is, absolutely. Mr. Castro could be guilty of crimes against humanity in his execution of hundreds, if not thousands, of enemies of his Cuban revolution in the early 1960's. But if one measures leader's evildoing by the number of his victims, Mr. Castro doesn't rank near the top. Higher on the list should come Saddam Hussein, who orchestrated the execution of perhaps 100,000 Kurds in 1988. The rule of Idi Amin of Uganda resulted in the deaths of perhaps 200,000, but he is living quietly in exile in Saudi Arabia. In the early 1980's, Efra�n R�os Montt of Guatemala destroyed hundreds of villages and murdered thousands of Indians who couldn't run away fast enough. This list goes on, but it doesn't go on forever. The crimes subject to universal jurisdiction are limited to the most severe atrocities, including genocide, terrorism and grave war crimes. Other violations, like censorship or discrimination, may be reprehensible, but they don't carry a legal obligation for other states to get involved. So could George Bush be prosecuted in a third country for the deaths of Iraqi civilians in the gulf war? 1991, a Human Rights Watch investigation found that the Pentagon should have taken greater care to avoid civilian targets. But the deaths of ordinary Iraqis do not necessarily constitute a war crime, as defined clearly by the Geneva Conventions. (At the time, the Pentagon probably didn't have enough information to know it was attacking civilian targets without military benefit.) Nevertheless, fears of this type of prosecution have unfortunately led to a neuralgic American sition to the evolving system of international justice, including a treaty establishing a global criminal court -- even though that system seeks to uphold the values that the United States has done much to propagate. The Clinton Administration announced yesterday that it would release some documents on Mr. chet's crimes. But American cooperation on this score has been extremely stingy so far. Previous statements have suggested that Chile should be allowed to "wrestle with" justice on its own. But that is absurd: Mr. Pinochet enjoys immunity from prosecution in his home country, and that is highly unlikely to change. State Department spokesmen have said their "no comments" derive from solemn respect for British law. But Washington's "neutral" stance has been understood as tacit support for Mr. Pinochet in democratic countries that have not hesitated to denounce the former general's crimes. Some people have suggested that prosecuting Mr. Pinochet would discourage other tyrants from leaving office. Their view is disappointingly short term. Let's look at it another way: what can we do to prevent human rights abuse before it happens? The most obvious answer must be to insure that the guilty parties don't get away with it. Carroll Bogert is the communications director of Human Rights Watch. Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
