|
[home]>[programmes]>[campaigns]>Tribunal
on Iraq
SAFHR invites all concerned people to
join the campaign
"Let us take Steps to set up an
Independent International War Crimes Tribunal on Iraq"
An Open Letter from a group of Concerned Peace and Human Rights
Activists of South Asia
To Irene Khan, Secretary General,
Amnesty International
(17 April 2003)
Dear Irene Khan,
1. On behalf of the peace and human rights community of South
Asia we send you this open letter in the wake of the devastating war on
Iraq by Coalition Forces led by the United States and the United
Kingdom, who have allied for the purpose of waging war there. Amnesty
International has earned respect of the peace loving people and the
human rights organisations throughout the world for its pioneering work
in many fields of human rights, and under your leadership now, we are
sure, it will continue to lead the human rights movement across the
globe. This letter sent by a group of human rights and peace activists
of South Asia - a region once colonised and still reeling under the
effects of civil wars and repressions - contains some significant
urgings on you, as well as our expectations that you would take certain
concrete steps that will enable the global human rights community to
appropriately and effectively respond to worst human rights abuses in
Iraq in the course of war waged by the Coalition Forces. The reflections
that follow in this letter are pertinent to our appeal, and are
precipitated by 10 specific demands on all parties involved in the war
in Iraq, which Amnesty International made on 18 March 2003. These
demands are also reflections of the tensions between the humanitarian
law, called the laws of war, and the human rights law they mirror.
Ten Demands of the Amnesty
2. The 10 demands made by Amnesty are:
-
Do not attack civilians.
-
Do not use weapons that kill and maim
indiscriminately.
-
Treat civilian detainees fairly and humanely.
-
Treat combatants according to the Geneva
Conventions.
-
Prioritize the safety and needs of the Iraqi
people.
-
Refugees and the internally displaced must be
protected and helped.
-
Perpetrators of crimes under international law
must be brought to justice.
-
All parties should allow independent
investigation of their conduct.
-
Human rights monitors should be deployed
throughout Iraq as soon as practicable.
-
All parties must support the UN’s humanitarian
and human rights work.
3. These ten injunctions are more relevant
than ever. In these injunctions we have the embodiments of the
principles of proportionality, transparency, and accountability.
Collectively they represent the norms of fairness, humanitarianism,
human rights, and justice.
4. The military campaign of occupation of
Iraq by the US-led coalition forces, the capturing of its oil wells, the
decapitation of the Iraq's governing and defending capabilities, and the
state of anarchy, arson and plunder that attends the fading of Iraqi
regime, referred to as "liberation" by the Coalition Forces, mark the
latest stage of the war on Iraq and its people that started in January
1991. We do not know when this war will end. Meanwhile, violations of
human rights laws and humanitarian laws continue, with murders of tens
and thousands of people, amounting to a continuing and undeclared
genocide. The partnership of the two leading powers of the Allied or the
Coalition Forces, the US and the UK, and their way of declaring and
conducting war, has already created serious predicaments for and
questions about the working of the United Nations, its functions and the
future, as the fundamental repository of human rights and humanitarian
guarantees. At this juncture much will depend on how impartially,
transparently and candidly the international human rights community is
able to contend with these challenges when the conduct of the most
powerful and ambitious nations that also assume the burden of civilising
the world have come under scrutiny. The claim of fighting this war to
liberate the Iraqi people from tyranny, restore to them their human
rights, to safeguard the world from the threats of weapons of mass
destruction, and to reinstate an international order of accountability
has to be hence rigorously examined. The scrutiny of the conduct of the
Allied Powers fighting the war, therefore, has to be against these
claims. The process of such a scrutiny also has to reflect on the
Security Council Resolution 661 adopted on 6 August 1990, which allowed
these two Powers to become entrenched in Iraq, if there is to be any
faith in its Charter as the basis for the advancement of the world
order. Even as we look up to Amnesty International for leadership in
living up to these challenges, we wish to take up its 10 specific
demands on all parties involved in the war, figure out their logic and
understand what their implementation entails.
5. The first 6 demands derive from the
international humanitarian law, with distinction and proportionality
being the guiding principles, which aim to "restrain the destructive
force of war, while recognizing its inexorable necessities". Obviously,
it will be difficult to give findings on whether or not and to what
extant these principles of distinction and proportionality are being
adhered to until the parties involved in the war (as Amnesty’s demands 8
and 9 show), submit to independent investigation of their conduct and
receive human rights monitors in the terrain of their operations. But we
have prima facie evidence of the way in which these countries have been
waging war, which can be drawn from their record in 1991. The evidence
speaks of the violations of these guiding principles of distinction and
proportionality.
Primary evidence of violations of the principles
of proportionality, distinction, and accountability
6. The January-February 1991 war following
the UN Security Council Resolution 678, which authorized "all necessary
means" to obtain unconditional withdrawal of the Iraqi troops from the
Kuwaiti soil. The story of the 1991 Gulf War is well known and does not
require a repetition here. But we can recall the indiscriminate carnage
towards the end of the war when the Iraqi forces were already
withdrawing from Kuwait following Moscow’s 24 February 1991 peace plan,
which Iraq had accepted. On 26 February 1991, as the long Iraqi convoy
was moving towards Basra along the Highway 80, the coalition forces
launched a combined ground and air offensive and hit both the ends with
heavy explosives. The slaughter continued for the next forty hours with
petrol tankers and tanks exploding in cascades of red flame and figures
of soldiers perishing in them like little ants. An estimated 25,000 to
30,000 Iraqis of 12 retreating divisions died. The air campaign alone
had taken the toll of 32,000 deaths and the total Iraqi casualties added
up to 62,000. The coalition forces reportedly dropped a total of 99,000
– 140,000 tons of explosives – equivalent to five to seven of the
nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima. We do not know what the calculation
would show this time. The war in 1991 had also witnessed a near total
destruction of Iraq’s civilian infrastructure, including electric power
stations, irrigation facilities, and water and sewage treatment plants.
It was estimated that Iraq needed US $ 22 billion to repair damage to
the civilian infrastructure. Those responsible for the destruction of
civilian infrastructure have not yet paid.
7. All these imply that as against the
traditional way of securing reparation by the victorious power from the
vanquished, we need a process of reparation, which will take into
account the costs of damages including the ongoing devastation and their
impact on the quality of life because of the way the war has been
conducted by the victorious party. The issue of reparation is linked to
human lives, human rights, indeed the basic right to live. International
human rights law and international humanitarian law must agree on a
computation of the overall damage and the need for securing reparation
from the victorious party.
8. Traditionally, the distinction between
combatants and non-combatants has been held important, and rightly so,
not only for the accountability process but also to ensure that
combatants receive the benefits of Geneva Conventions. Combatants are
supposed to belong to clear military units, to clear structures of
command with superiors and subordinates who wear recognizable
identification and openly carry arms. The distinction between combatants
and non-combatants allows the former to be accountable to the laws of
war and to be liable for their actions. But today because of the way war
has been conducted, and civilians simply because of their political
allegiance, or membership of a political party, are being detained,
tortured, and often murdered, often rousing total resistance from
non-civilians and civilians alike, the question is: How do we recover
the meaning of this distinction and apply it in an accountability
process when aerial bombing of terrifying power softens the enemy
territory for the land war and occupation? And even if we can recover
the meaning, how do we establish the degree of responsibility for
obliterating this distinction?
9. In this context it is important to
remember that the international human rights and humanitarian law must
now address the so-called concerns about the Iraqi military tactics and
their encouragement to suicide bombing, which place the civilians at
greater risk. The issue of distinction between combatants and
non-combatants has assumed obscure dimensions in the context of a war
against such total aggression – as it has been always so - when a
resistance is being fought by a country on the basis of a patriotic call
on the people – combatants and civilians, all - to fight the invasion.
Can "resistance" emanating from such a patriotic call, even if it
manifests itself in such desperate and suicidal acts, as the British
people would have taken recourse to if the Nazi German troops had
crossed the English Channel in 1944, be judged illegal under the
international humanitarian law? Do we condemn the American Revolution as
perfidious because its harbingers had encouraged the participants to
sneak up to the British military formations and shoot at them
surreptitiously? It is time that we rethink the laws to bring them to
conformity with current reality of colonial and neo-colonial wars of
aggression and conquest.
10. The Amnesty International has already
expressed its deep concern about the toll of civilian causalities and
the use of cluster bombs by the coalition forces in heavily populated
areas. It is now known that the coalition forces have been dropping
cluster bombs from the air and also firing from the ground as artillery
projectiles and rockets. The US Infantry Divisions have been heavily
using Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS) and Army Tactical Missile
Systems (ATACMS), and 155mm artillery, known as M483A1 and M864
projectiles, which use only cluster munitions. The standard warhead for
the MLRS is reported to contain 644 M77 individual sub-munitions, also
known as dual-purpose grenades with a failure rate of 16 per cent. It is
also reported that the standard volley of 12 MLRS rockets leave more
than 1,200 unexploded grenades over an area of 12,000 – 240,000 meters.
An ATACMS releases between 300 sub-munitions to 950 sub-munitions.
M483A1 and M864 projectiles release 88 and 72 dual-purpose grenades and
are reported to have a 14 per cent rate of failure. No one knows how
many thousands of sub-munitions, or "duds" that explode on impact remain
scattered and in which areas. The coalition forces say that the cluster
bombs and munitions are not specifically banned under the 1997 Ottawa
Mine Ban Treaty. That may be so, and that just shows the one-sidedness
of the laws of war and their stagnant character. Poison gas is banned.
Iraqi forces did not use it even in this war. But atomic weapons are not
banned. Also, cluster bombs are not banned. Bunker-busters are not
banned. There are reports that the coalition troops have been using the
incendiary chemical mix called Napalm, used extensively during the
Vietnam War, which the US claims to have stopped utilizing in 1970s.
Reporters of the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age claim that the
coalition forces dropped 40,000 pounds of explosives and napalm bombs
over Safwan Hill near Basra to beat the Iraqi resistance. The US
authorities deny. They have also been using bunker buster bombs,
5,000-pound explosives, which are designed to penetrate up to 6 meters
of concrete or 30 meters of earth before exploding. These bombs have
been used also in the urban area of Baghdad. Former Nobel Peace Prize
nominee Helen Caldicott says that the casing of bunker busters are made
of uranium 238, depleted uranium, or DU. The coalition forces remain
unapologetic about the extensive use of DU tipped anti-tank shells,
which burn through tank armour, igniting the vehicle. After exploding,
70 per cent of the shell is said to vaporize into tiny particles and to
get carried by the wind. During the first Gulf War, the US tanks and
anti-tank aircrafts are reported to have fired 954,000 DU shells,
leaving a total of 564,000 pounds of DU either vaporized or unexploded
on the desert floor. Iraqis are reported to have experienced extremely
abnormal rates of cancer, birth defects and miscarriages. The coalition
forces are unapologetic and continue to use them, even though the use of
DU tipped weapons has reportedly caused cancer among US and US soldiers
elsewhere.
11. The widespread reports about using these
weapons by the Allied forces, and/ or the unconcern shown by them in
using these weapons raise two questions of immediate concern to the
international human rights community and the human rights law. First,
there is the need for an immediate impartial inquiry, preferably
instituted by the United Nations, into the reports, and fixing of
accountability. Second, there is the immediate responsibility on the
part of the human rights community to initiate such an investigation.
The reports alluded in the preceding two paragraphs, certainly call for
vigorous gathering of more reports and evidences so that the human
rights community can build up prima facie case for investigation and
trail for war crimes.
Responsibility of the Occupying Power
12. By any definition, Iraq is now an
occupied territory, and by Geneva Conventions the occupying authority
alone is in a position and has a duty to maintain order. In the past few
days, we have been witnessing how Iraq has been allowed to slip into
criminal anarchy and in this context it is important to remind the
occupying authorities of the rules of conduct by which they would be
judged. It is their duty to inform the inhabitants of the powers they
exercise and the extent of their occupation. They must also take all
measures to restore and ensure public order, public safety and public
health. For that purpose, the occupying forces have to maintain the laws
which were in force before they arrived, and must not modify, suspend or
replace them. The occupying forces must ensure that the property in a
comprehensive sense that belongs to the occupied State is not disposed
of or appropriated, that means of transportation as well as
communication are not destroyed, that they act as provisional
administrators in respect to real property, such as buildings,
commercial and business establishments and natural resources, and that
they do not seize or interfere with the institutions devoted to
religion, charity, education, health, art and science. Such are the
requirements under the Laws of War on Land, drafted in September 1880.
Indeed, we must recall in this respect that, while the occupying forces
took care to guard the office of the Petroleum Ministry, they allowed
the Iraq's National Museum, considered to be a heritage of mankind
containing artefacts and items of five thousand years' of human history,
to be looted, ransacked, and destroyed.
13. The case for initiating independent
human rights investigation by the human rights community into the war
crimes becomes stronger when we critically examine of the role of those
Security Council members of the UN who have been waging this war since
1991 and also the humanitarian and human rights work which the UN
agencies have so far done and undone in Iraq. This is important in view
of the Amnesty's call for trial of war crimes and support for UN
humanitarian efforts in Iraq. Resolution 661 by the Security Council on
6 August 1990 placed a blanket ban on all imports and exports from Iraq
except for "supplies intended strictly for medical purposes, and, in
humanitarian circumstances, foodstuffs." The exception had no meaning
since Iraq did not have any hard currency income because of the ban on
oil sales and the freezing of its foreign assets. Regular reports about
the humanitarian disaster caused by these sanctions resulted in the
Resolution 986, adopted in April 1995, which proposed a food-for-oil
deal which the Iraq accepted on 20 May 1996. Under the proposal, Iraq
was permitted to sell US $ 1 billion of oil over a 90-day renewable
period in order to buy humanitarian supplies. All proceeds from such
sales had to be placed in a UN-controlled bank account, to which Iraqi
government had no access. Of the US $ 4 billion of revenues over one
year, 30 per cent had to go towards reparations for the Gulf War, 15 per
cent towards humanitarian supplies for 3 million Kurds in northern Iraq,
5-10 per cent for the UN operations in Iraq and 5-10 per cent to repair
and maintain oil pipelines, leaving just about US $ 1.6 billion for
Iraq’s remaining population of 18 million, which meant less than $ 7.50
per Iraqi per month. Then the value of Iraqi Dinar had sharply fallen
after the Gulf War. Before the War, an Iraqi government employee who
received a salary of 100 Dinars earned an equivalent of US $ 310. This
was a reasonable sum to maintain a normal life style. In early 2000,
100,000 dinars were less than US $ 60. A school teacher, who earned 3000
dinars a month, took home less than US $ 4, not enough for minimum food
let alone medicine and other essentials. The oil for food program
basically made Iraq pay for several clandestine operations of military
nature under taken by the coalition forces in Iraq’s North and the
South, also the weapons inspection programmes. Even then the programme
could not be implemented until mid-August 1996 because of repeated
technical objections raised by the USA. We are sure, Madam Irene that
you will remember the interview the then US Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright gave to Lesley Stahl of CBS for its 60 Minutes Program
on 12 May 1996. Stahl asked: More than 500,000 Iraqi children are
already dead as a direct result of the UN sanction. Do you think the
price is worth paying?" The US Secretary of State replied: "It is a
difficult question. But, yes, we think the price is worth it." The World
Health Organization’s report released in the fall of 1997 disclosed that
over 500,000 Iraqi children under five had died as a result of
malnutrition and lack of medicine caused by the UN embargo. The Iraqi
health ministry statistics showed much higher figures. In January 2000,
seventy members of the US Congress addressed an open letter to President
Clinton appealing him to do "What is Right - Lift the Economic
Sanctions." The letter cited the UN estimates that over one million
civilians, mostly children, had died due to sanctions. Clinton ignored
the appeal. The US knew the facts and after carefully considering them,
chose to kill millions of weakest Iraqis through the UN regime of
sanctions.
Responsibility of the United Nations for this
situation
14. The question therefore relates also
around UN's culpability in violating human rights. Did the UN know the
undeclared genocide and approve? Did the UN policy-making circles at
least consider and debate the facts of the World Health Organization’s
report? Did they deliberate over the issue of acceptable balancing
between coercing a rogue state and harming its population? What were the
legal principles that justified sanctions after their results became
known? Can a Security Council Resolution be allowed to undermine the
United Nations Charter? Article 24 of the Charter explicitly directs the
Security Council "to act in accordance with the Purposes and Principles
of the United Nations" when exercising its authority to maintain peace
and security. The most fundamental purposes and principles for which the
UN exists, as Article 1 of the Charter says, is to promote human rights,
of which the right to life, considered by the UN Human Rights Committee
to be the "supreme right from which no derogation is permitted even in
time of public emergency" is pre-eminent. All the permanent Security
Council members are signatories of the Convention of the Rights of the
Child, which calls on all states "to ensure the maximum extent possible
the survival and development of the child" and "to take appropriate
measures to diminish infant and child mortality." It is a universally
accepted principle that human rights belong to individuals, and not on
the dent of their association with a State. Also, human rights of
individuals cannot be forfeited because their government has offended
members of the Security Council. Many Iraqis, Arabs and other global
citizens hold the UN’s devastating regime of sanctions responsible for
at least 500,000 deaths in Iraq and for violating the UN Charter’s
proclamation of "faith in fundamental human rights and in the dignity
and worth of the human person". Even as the war was threatened by the
Allied Powers, the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, ordered
UN personnel engaged in disarmament mission and oil for food programme
to withdraw from Iraq, citing reasons of their safety. At the same time,
while Iraq still remained a UN member, its children, women, old men and
women, infirm, disabled, were left completely unprotected, their safety
and survival un-monitored. In the light of all these, will not the
global human rights community ask the United Nations to account for its
past involvements in Iraq and atone and apologize for its past failures
before it returns to do humanitarian and human rights work in that
country, and allow the United States and United Kingdom, two founding
members of the United Nations, in a position of leadership for any role
in Iraq.
15. It is also important to recall how the
UN programme of inspecting Iraq's weaponry was used throughout the last
decade in order to weaken Iraq, gather all available intelligence, so
that at appropriate moment the US and the UK could begin war on Iraq and
complete the mission of conquering Iraq that remained unaccomplished in
1991. There exists sufficient evidence to indicate that the United
States used the UN’s inspections regime to plant its intelligence agents
and others involved in anti-Saddam coup attempts, and generally to
further its policy of espionage and subversion of the regime. Already
under Rolf Ekeus, the first head of the Unscom, the US placed Charles
Duelfer, a US State Department official, who supervised the intelligence
operations. On 2 March 1999, Barton Gellman of Washington Post
carried a long report about these operations, but withheld the names of
key US intelligence agents operating under the cover of Unscam for
security reasons. Rolf Ekeus, Chief of Unscom during 1991-97, told
Swedish Radio in August 2002 that the US had planted its nationals, who
were engaged more in trying to locate Saddam Hussein than attend to
their duties as inspectors. They were also busy coordinating with the
commanders of the elite Special Republic Guard for a planned anti-Saddam
coup on 26 June 1996, which failed. Scott Ritter, a former Colonel of
the US Marine Corps intelligence who joined the Unscom as a chief
inspector at the very beginning, is known for his attitudes and actions.
By his own admission, Ritter visited Israel to confer with Mossad and
Israel’s military intelligence agencies, mainly Aman, and shared his
Iraqi intelligence with them. He also obtained from them the technology
to tap Iraqi security networks on frequencies that could not be picked
up by American U-2 spy planes, which it had been flying under the cover
of 15 August 1991 Security Council Resolution 707. Yet, after
five-and-a-half-year existence and 373 inspections involving 3,574
experts that cost $ 120 million, taken out of Iraq’s frozen assets
abroad, the Unscom, as its October 1996 report disclosed, obtained no
proof of "Iraqi wrongdoing." But the inspections continued, not so much
to recover WMD but to undermine the Iraqi sense of national dignity and
sovereignty. Scott Ritter described the inspections to Peter J. Boyer of
New Yorker which carried a long interview with him on 9 November 1998.
In his own memorable words: "I am going in tail held high. If they growl
at me, I am gona jump on them. I am gonna let them know who the boss is
here. I am in charge. They report to me, they do what I say. You work
for me, so every one of you are alpha dogs. When you go to a site, they
are gonna know we are there, we are gonna raise our tails and we are
gonna spray urin all over their walls – that is the equivalent of what
we are doing. So when we leave a site they know they have been
inspected." In July 1997, Rolf Ekeus stepped down as Unscom’s chief and
Richard Butler, an Australian disarmament expert, took over. As is now
public knowledge, Butler and the US National Security Adviser Samuel
Berger worked closely. Barton Gellman of Washington Post
published a report on 28 August 1998 referring to "a standard procedure"
whereby Butler’s senior staff briefed a liaison officer from the CIA.
Butler became famous after withdrawing the inspectors from Iraq to help
the Clinton administration launch the Operation Desert Thunder in
January 1999. The Operation was designed to thwart the impeachment
debate in the House of Representatives on the ground that the President
could not be harassed as long as he was leading a war with Iraq. The
House Democrat leaders failed to stall the impeachment debate and
Clinton was arraigned for perjury and obstruction of justice twenty-four
hours after he addressed the nation on television on the Operation
Desert Thunder. The Operation lasted one hundred hours, and in this
period the forces had fired 415 cruise missiles, 90 more than in the
Gulf War, and dropped 600 laser-guided bombs. By a later August 1999
admission, the Pentagon revealed that over the past eight months, the
coalition forces had fired over 1000 missiles at 359 Iraqi targets –
more than three times the number of missiles fired during Operation
Desert Fox. The US cited the Security Council Resolution 688 of April
1991 to rationalize its behaviour. But the resolution makes no reference
to air exclusion zones. The resolution was not passed under Chapter VII
of the Charter; hence it did not authorize the use of force. Exclusion
zones were the pre-text of effectively partitioning Iraq by violating
its integrity, when respecting the integrity of member countries remains
one of the aims of the United Nations.
16. We all know what happened later with the
UN inspection programme. Resolution 1284 of the Security Council, passed
under Chapter VII of the Charter, replaced Unscom with Unmovic under
Hans Blix In September 2002, Iraq agreed to receive Unmovic, under
Resolution 1284, after holding long discussions with Secretary-General
Kofi Annan. After several inspections, Hans Blix reported that there was
"no clear-cut evidence" that Iraq possessed WMD. He reported
satisfactory progress of inspections and asked for more time to complete
the disarmament. Iraq did not expel them this time. The Security Council
did not ask them to leave. The UK and the USA were free to send whatever
information they possessed to Hans Blix and the International Atomic
Energy Agency in Vienna. Instead, the White House released a twenty-page
document on 12 September 2002, entitled A Decade of Deception and
Defiance for publicity and propaganda. The document contained no
hard information. Likewise, Tony Blair released a fifty-page document,
Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: Assessment of the British
Government on 24 September. The document offered no evidence. The
USA tried to obtain a new resolution from the UN authorizing the use of
force. Failing in this, the US-led coalition chose to act in defiance of
the United Nations.
17. The question that we must address now
goes therefore beyond the issue of monitoring how this war was
conducted, because given the history of systematic violation by the
Allied powers of the UN Charter and the abuse of its programmes, the
paramount concern has to be: Is not this war by itself the greatest
violation of human rights?
18. Peace, democracy, development and human
rights in the region cannot be brought into being on this basis of
hypocrisy, double-standards and political loyalty to neo-colonialist
designs and aggressions that we are witnessing today. They are in a
clear violation of the UN Charter and the Customary International Law.
The principle of renunciation of the use or threat of force is clearly
affirmed by Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which requires all member
states to renounce "the threat or use of force against the territorial
integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner
inconsistent with the purposes of the UN". The words of Robert Jackson,
a US Supreme Court Justice who served as the Chief American prosecutor
at the Nuremberg trials, spoken to indict Germany 5 decades ago are
appropriate for the war against Iraq initiated by the US led coalition
forces. Jackson said: "To initiate a war of aggression…is not only an
international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing
only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the
accumulated evil of the whole." The most reprehensible fact about the US
decision to use force against Iraq outside the UN Charter is that it
used the UN’s disarmament program for 11 years effectively to make a
country completely defenceless.
19. In all likelihood, the USA will insist
on trying Iraqi war prisoners and criminals under the American law and
dispense "victors’ justice". Nothing can be more damaging for the
principles of international jurisdiction of human rights. As we know,
Washington opposed the ICC on the ground that Americans could get
implicated in politically sensitive prosecutions. We have noted that the
Lawyers Committee for Human Rights has called on the UN to appoint a
Commission of Inquiry to pave the way to establishing an international
criminal tribunal for Iraq, with appropriate mechanism for prosecuting
those responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide
committed in Iraq. But we do not know if this will include trial for the
crimes committed by the United States and other Allied Powers. Robert
Jackson, the US chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal,
had said: "If certain acts of violations of treaties are crimes, they
are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does
them. We are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against
others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."
Need for an Independent War Crimes Tribunal
20. Given the culpability of some of the
permanent and other leading members of the United Nations, and its over
all failure, given the fact that the division of the world into colonial
powers and the again-to-be colonised countries again appearing, the
international human rights community must now take immediate, primary,
and appropriate steps towards establishing an international war crimes
tribunal of the kind Bertrand Russell in association with Jean-Paul
Sartre and Leon Matarasso instituted in 1960s with the objective to keep
the movement for accountability and end of impunity alive in the sphere
of popular consciousness.
21. It is to this direction, that we address
this open letter to you with the hope that Amnesty will take the lead.
If it does not, it will sadly and very unfortunately fail the entire
human rights community. We urge you more because we belong to the once-colonised
region of the world, which has in its memory alive the colonial
plunders, loots, and colonial wars of aggression and annexation. We also
constantly note how many of the well-known human rights organisations
based in the West, particularly in the United States, all in the name of
human rights have supported wars of intervention, wars to impose
democracy, and the accompanying loss of lives, reminding us of the past
two centuries when the colonial powers annexed one country after another
in the name of protecting "Christian subjects", or introducing democracy
and rule of law.
Our services and the need for help from all
22. This then is our appeal. This is an open
appeal to you – in fact to all human rights activists, to take
appropriate and founding steps towards investigation of the crime of
imposing war on Iraq, conduct and build up a primary or a first
information report, so that the international human rights community can
institute a specific public trials for war crimes in Iraq and on Iraq.
This is a letter from concerned South Asians who are ready to place
their services for such work. Our appeal to all is lend all possible
help towards such direction.
Wishing you all the best,
Sincerely Yours,
Paula Banerjee (University of Calcutta, Calcutta)
Tapan K. Bose (South Asia Forum for Human Rights, Kathmandu)
Anuradha Chenoy (Jawharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)
Kamal Mitra Chenoy (Jawharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)
Sunanda Deshpriya (Centre for Policy Alternatives, Colombo)
Vishakha Dharmadasa (Association of War Affected Women, Kandy)
Basil Fernando ( Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong)
Meghna Guhathakurta (University of Dhaka, Dhaka)
Ram Narayan Kumar (Solidarity for the Victims of Enforced Disappearance
in Punjab, New Delhi)
Rita Manchanda (South Asia Forum for Human Rights, Kathmandu)
Dinesh Mohan (Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi)
Gautam Navlakha (Pakistan India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy,
India)
M. B. Naqvi (Journalist, Karachi)
Subodh raj Pyakurel (INSEC, Kathmandu)
Sushil Pyakurel (National Human Rights Commission, Nepal, Kathmandu)
I.A. Rehman (Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Lahore)
Salim Samad (Journalist, Dhaka)
Ranabir Samaddar (South Asia Forum for Human Rights, Kathmandu)
S. Sumathy (Perdeniya University, Sri Lanka)
Jayadeva Uyangoda (Colombo University, Colombo)
Daya Varma (CERAS, Montreal)
|
