international law

LawNews

Germany, Rwanda, Kosovo, Syria – what do these places have in common? They were and are the sites of some of the worst atrocities in our history.

On April 7, 2017 the Orange-Gasbag President of the US authorized military strikes against Syria. The attack was allegedly precipitated by the use of chemical weapons against civilians.

Though the Syrian government, led by president Bashar al-Assad, has denied responsibility for the chemical attacks, the insurgents he is fighting not only lacked the means to commit them, but the targets consisted of the rebel-held town of Khan-Sheikhan, and one of the medical clinics treating victims of the ongoing civil war.

This article is not about the US President’s hypocrisy, as he blames Obama for the situation in Syria and yet in 2013 tweeted:

It is not about the fact that the US military strike hit an almost empty airbase that had little impact on Assad’s reign of terror, or the fact that the Orange Blowhard’s administration has clearly seen the film Wag the Dog.

For those unfamiliar with the movie, it features a President on the brink of scandal whose advisors fabricate a war to win back support from the American people. With the evidence of treason against the Cheeto Administration mounting, it should be no surprise that they’ve thrown themselves into a war against a hugely unpopular world leader, especially given that said world leader is backed by Russia, the very state accused of hacking the American election. With evidence mounting that Russia was warned about the US airstrike, this move by Orange Administration is clearly just for PR purposes.

This article is about Crimes Against Humanity, Genocide, and War Crimes.

With refugees being turned away by xenophobic politicians in primarily white countries and military leaders breaking every rule in International Law, it’s high time we looked at how the world defines these crimes.

For this article, I’m going to use the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the International Criminal Court and has been in force since 2002.

The International Criminal Court, based in The Netherlands, is a permanent court that investigates and tries individuals charged with crimes against humanity. Their goal is to put an end to impunity for atrocities and acts complementary to existing criminal justice systems.

The Rome Statute, in describing the role of the International Criminal Court, provides detailed definitions of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Genocide is defined as any of the following acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group”:

  • Killing members of that group
  • Causing serious physical or mental harm to members of said group
  • “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”
  • Imposing measures to prevent births within that group
  • Forcibly transmitting the children of said group into that of another group

Crimes against humanity are defined by the Rome Statute as acts committed as part of a “widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population with knowledge of the attack.” That means that for an act to be considered a crime against humanity, it has to be part of a widespread deliberate attack against civilians that includes one or all of the following acts:

  • Murder
  • Extermination
  • Enslavement
  • Deportation or forcible transfer of the population
  • Imprisonment
  • Torture
  • Rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, or forced sterilization or any other serious sexual violence
  • “Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender” or other grounds
  • Enforced disappearances
  • Apartheid
  • “Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.”

Unfortunately, the Rome Statute’s definition gender is binary, recognizing only male and female despite evidence that gender goes beyond the two.

War Crimes are defined as breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which establish a set of rules for humanitarian treatment in war. Article 8 of the Rome Statute has a sort of abridged version of the definition of war crimes, which include:

  1. Willful killing
  2. Torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments
  3. Willfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health
  4. Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly
  5. Compelling a prisoner of war or other protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile power
  6. Willfully depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of the rights of a fair and regular trial
  7. Unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement
  8. Taking of hostages

The Statute lists other offenses as war crimes, including intentionally directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects even when they’re not military objectives.

Though it goes without saying that war crimes and crimes against humanity are indeed taking place in Syria, prosecuting war crimes is always a problem. As Larry May, Professor of Philosophy and author of the book Crimes Against Humanity: A Normative Study once wrote:

“We cannot prosecute on the basis of moral outrage alone.”

It is for this reason that rules on how to prosecute atrocities were established. However, in order to successfully do so, you need a certain degree of consent from the country the crimes took place in, as state sovereignty and the right to self-determination is the rule in our international system. There are no overarching laws to force countries to hand over their war criminals if they don’t want to subject them to international justice.

The International Criminal Court can only prosecute cases committed in a state that is party to the Rome Statute since 2002. The ICC has no jurisdiction in countries like the USA, China, and Russia who chose not to ratify the treaty, undoubtedly due to concerns about their own statesmen being prosecuted.

In this international crisis we have to remember that we are citizens of the world with a responsibility to shelter and protect the victims of atrocities and punish the perpetrators. At the same time, we must do our best to respect that the people of a country have the right to determine what is best for them. Let’s hope an influential someone in the White House remembers this too.

NewsPolitics

The UK’s Iraq war inquiry just came to a damning conclusion: Ex-PM Tony Blair led the country into an ill-prepared war under false pretenses. The decision to blindly follow the United-States into Iraq in 2003 “went badly wrong, with consequences to this day,” said the long-awaited Chilcot Report, published Wednesday.

The war in Iraq killed 179 British soldiers, 4500 American ones and at least 150 000 Iraqis. It left the country without a proper army or government and riddled with rising terrorist militias. And according to Chilcot’s findings, it might be now considered an illegitimate act of aggression under the UN charter.

Key Findings

The independent inquiry was ordered by Blair’s successor Gordon Brown (Labour Party) in 2009 and was supposed to last two years.  Half a decade late and £10 million later, Chairman Sir John Chilcot published a 2.5 million word document eviscerating the launching and the planning of the UK’s military involvement from 2003 to 2009.

The report found that Blair overstated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein in order to gather support for a military intervention in Iraq. The claims that Hussein posed an imminent threat and that all peaceful options had been exhausted were found patently untrue.  Although the report heavily blamed the government for playing up what was actually very shaky intelligence about a possible nuclear threat from Iraq, it did not accuse them of knowingly lying.

Chilcot heavily critiqued the entire military operation. The risks were “neither properly identified nor fully exposed to ministers,” he wrote.  He was especially critical of the “wholly inadequate” planning for post-conflict Iraq. British troops failed to reach the objectives laid out in 2003 and ended up making “humiliating” deals with local militias to avoid attacks.

In a bewildering two-hour-long press conference, Blair expressed “more sorrow, regret and apology than you may ever know or can believe,” for his decisions, all while resolutely denying their horrible impact in the middle-east and declaring he would do it again.

He insisted that it was “better to remove Saddam Hussein” and does not “believe this is the cause of the terrorism we see today whether in the Middle East or elsewhere in the world.”

He added “If I was back in the same place with the same information, I would take the same decision because obviously that was the decision I believe was right.”

Tony Blair Facing Trial?

Relatives of soldiers killed in action renewed their calls to prosecute Tony Blair.

“We want to see him in court,”  one father assured.

“There is one terrorist the world needs to be aware of and his name is Tony Blair; the world’s worst terrorist,” said Sarah O’Connor, whose brother died in the war. She was speaking at a press conference called by bereaved families after the report’s release.

The report stopped short of commenting the legality of Tony Blair’s action, but it might have opened the door to prosecution.  It stated that Blair called for an invasion of Iraq at a time when Saddam Hussein was not an imminent threat, and that peaceful options to contain him had not yet been exhausted.

This makes the action an illegitimate aggression, according to the UN charter. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean that Tony Blair will face repercussions. The UN Security Council could apply sanctions, but since the UK and US both have permanent seats on the Council, this is a very unlikely scenario.

The international court, which deals with war crimes, does not have jurisdiction over “acts of aggression.” Bringing politicians or military leaders to court would require proving that

  • a) The army breached laws of war in Iraq and that
  • b) The leaders in question knew about it and did nothing to stop it

No western leaders have ever been indicted by the international court.

Lawyers representing the families of veterans are looking into bringing Blair to civil court on charges of “misconduct in public office.” This law, unused since the 19th century, was recently criticized for its vagueness.

Canada Should Take Note

The Chilcot report must singularly vindicate Jean Chrétien, Canada’s PM at the time. The question of whether or not Canada would join the US-led coalition had generated heated debates in the House of Commons and the population alike.

He and Blair both said that this was the hardest decision of their respective mandates. Chrétien made the right one. The Canadian population can claim partial credit for that. Anti-war protests had taken place across the country, uniting 1000 people in Montreal, 2000 in Toronto and 3000 in Vancouver.

To kill any temptation to feel smug about it, Canadians should remember how close we came to being an integral part of the disaster. You can watch Stephen Harper’s fervent plea for the invasion of Iraq, if you need a reminder. This was in 2003, only a couple of years before he took Chrétien’s place (and stayed there for almost a decade).

As it is, we should face the fact that while Canada avoided the international backlash, it did not do so with a clean conscience. Unofficially, it provided significant practical support to the war. Canadian troops escorted the US navy through the Persian Gulf. They also provided significant military expertise and training for our southern neighbours, as well as airspace and fuel.

Paul Cellucci, then US ambassador to Canada, admitted that “… ironically, Canadian naval vessels, aircraft and personnel… will supply more support to this war in Iraq indirectly… than most of those 46 countries that are fully supporting our efforts there.”

News

This past Saturday, Greenpeace Canada held vigils in Toronto and Montreal in order to draw attention to the fact that two Canadians, Alexandre Paul and Paul Ruzycki, are rotting in a Russian jail cell awaiting their show trial for protesting against drilling for oil in the Arctic by Gazprom, Russia’s massive transnational energy corporation. The charges against them you ask? PIRACY!!!

That’s right. According to the authoritarian logic of the Putin regime, these eco-activists’ peaceful protest was actually an act of criminality and violence against the state of Russia on the high seas. And they are no less guilty then such memorable pirates as Captain Blackbeard or the Somalis behind the hijacking of Maersk Alabama.

Piracy under international law (unlike so much else in that area) is one of the oldest and most well-defined crimes. Basically the International Convention on the Law of the Sea holds that piracy is act of robbery or criminal violence, at sea, land or air. Seeing as none of these folks were armed, it’s hard to understand where the Russian authorities are coming from in this case. Conversely, the Russian commandos that seized their ship (the Arctic Sunrise) and captured the crew, were armed to the teeth.

Meanwhile, the Australian Liberal Government (actually they’re conservatives, how confusing is that?) has publicly denounced the detention of their nationals by the Russian government on the pretext of piracy. Their foreign minister has already registered her concern with her Russian counterpart about the treatment of their nationals who were involved in the incident. Greenpeace claims that Colin Russel is stuck in a cell 23 hours a day and has not been able to contact his wife or family, in violation of his human rights.

In Ottawa, however, barely a word about the matter from Stephen Harper and our Foreign Minister John Baird, beyond the standard promise, by a flak for the Foreign Affairs Department, of “consular services” for our Canadians being detained indefinitely by a judicial system that notoriously disregards universally recognized principles of international law and basic human rights. Don’t take my word for it, just watch the HBO documentary on the Kafkaesque trial of Pussy Riot (Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer).

I guess this is yet another example of Harper’s indifference towards anyone who doesn’t share his well-documented love affair with the oil industry (ironically, Russia is Canada’s rival in extracting oil and gas reserves in the Arctic sea) even when the people in question are Canadian citizens with rights he is sworn to protect.

News

The hunt for evidence of the use of chemical weapons in Syria is a red herring and shouldn’t be the focus of the international community’s (minus Assad’s apologists in Moscow and Tehran) efforts to stop the Assad regime’s relentless campaign of bloodshed against its own people.

Irrespective of the good intentions of UN Secretary general Ban Ki Moon, President Obama and French Minister of Foreign Affairs Laurent Fabius, the search for proof of a likely use of sarin, nerve, or other deadly gases on a huge number of innocent civilians (between 136 to 1300) outside of the Syrian capital Damascus in a town called Ghouta, will be near impossible under the circumstances. Besides, it wouldn’t make the case against the President of Syria, Bashar (“the butcher) El Assad, and his cronies any more credible. In the minds of many international criminal law experts, that case is already open and shut.

Setting aside the question of whether Assad has violated the universal taboo among states with respect to using chemical weapons against his foes (a category that apparently includes women and children!!!!), there is already sufficient proof based of eyewitness accounts of survivors of his atrocities and enough documentation of his crimes collected by impartial international observers, since the beginning of the civil war in Syria in 2011, to indict Assad and his generals for their part in the brutality. And yes I am aware of crimes being committed by rebels forces in Syria. They too will have to be held to account for their crimes, at the end of the day.

With the chances of some sort of robust humanitarian intervention, along the lines of what NATO did to fellow glorified thug Colonel Muammer Gadhaffi, looking increasingly slim, and seemingly every military analyst in the world insisting that there are no good options in Syria, it might be time to explore alternatives to the use of force. Moving the U.S. Navy’s 6th Fleet into range for possible air strikes against the Syrian military, may have some deterrent value.

While I realize that an International Criminal Court investigation and possible future prosecution of war criminals in Syria will be at best a moral victory, at worst an empty threat and futile attempt to bring an end to daily murders, tortures and disappearances, there is something to be said for what the head of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay is suggesting about referring the case to the ICC for them to take all necessary legal measures against the Assad regime.

This will, of course, never give the murderers who rule Syria sleepless nights, but it just might shame those who, like Russia, continue to defend their legitimacy, into abandoning their allies in Syria or at least keeping their mouths shut when the matter next comes before the UN Security Council for discussion.

NewsQuiet Mikes Mumblings

What are we to make of the Julian Assange drama unfolding in London these days?

Assange may be a hero or villain (I lean towards the former) to millions of people and internet users all over the world for establishing Wikileaks and exposing the hypocricy of governments’ (especially the U.S.’s) foreign policies, but, and it must be said, his decision to seek asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, was not his finest moment. Though the gambit may have achieved its ultimate purpose of gaining Assange the sanctuary he set out for, it has also resulted in a stalemate between British police—who have an arrest warrant and a court order to extradite Assange to Sweden for questioning on sexual assault allegations—and what is probably the oldest of all international legal principles: diplomatic immunity.

While we may have some doubts about the thought process that would lead a man to take such drastic measures to avoid a possible trial, there is certainly no doubt about the legality of his current situation. He can not be removed by force from the premises of the embassy, period! This is enshrined in every form of international treaty (The Vienna Declaration, 1961) doctrine, case law (The Iran Hostage crisis) and international customary law (i.e. diplomatic immunity) you can name. No domestic law invoked by the British authorities in violating this sacrosanct legal norm, would make one bit of difference.

Of course, this won’t stop them from trying. The British government is already, citing the obscure Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act (1987) which it claims give it the right to enter the premises of the embassy if the state in question “ceases to use land for the purposes of its mission or exclusively for the purposes of a consular post.” The only problem is that such as law goes against every rule in the international legal rule book and isn’t recognized by any international court, anywhere.

Assange is still very much painted into a corner, though. He can do one of two things: stay put in the embassy and pray that the Brits are bluffing (more than likely) about the invasion threats. Or he can attempt some sort of daring cinematic escape to Ecuador (less likely, but a hell of a lot more fun!).

Either way, Britain should respect the age old principle of asylum and grant Assange safe passage to Ecuador, instead of listening to those in the U.S. (and Tom Flanagan in Canada) who view him as some sort of international terrorist mastermind. It’s hard not to conclude that the Brits’ hard line stance in this case is due, in part, to being pressured by the Americans, who would sorely like to get their hands on Assange for his part in any number of leaks that have embarrassed the U.S. government over the years. It also looks an awful lot like a double standard that would be almost unimaginable if this were a case involving one of the more important embassies in London (e.g. Canada’s) harbouring any dissident other than Assange.

*Photo from Democracy Now! (Under a Creative Commons license.)