>Yes, I posted this Convention to the list before related to the issue of
the charge brought by William Patterson against the U.S. in 1951 for
genocide against the Negro People.
<
I missed that post but I appreciate how you may have assembled the evidence. Was it not revealed recently how black people in one US town were secretly infected with syphilis to study its long term effects?
>
You leap too quickly to the conclusion that NATO or any of its minions may
not be guilty pursuant to this Convention. The fact is NATO is bombing a
specific national group. Sometimes the law looks at the facts and infers
the mental element. A murderer rarely admits his mental state in a murder
trial. It is inferred by his conduct. Similarly, here a jury could infer
that NATO is killing Serbians as Serbians (because they won't overthrow the
president , or they elected the president , whatever); and find NATO guilty
of genocide, as charged.
>
I do not find this a strong argument that NATO is bombing a specific national group. It is bombing a country run by a political coalition which it wants to defeat. I do not think a pure syllogism can therefore prove that they are bombing a national group.
>The provision doesn't have to apply to all wars. It DOES apply to some
wars. A jury might reasonably find that this war by NATO is one of the type
to which the prohibition of the convention applies.
>
Well, you say it might, but other's might say it might not.
I suppose the test would be how much money one side would put up to back its proposition.
>My use of genocide is legally sharp. The charges under the anti-genocide
convention, as well as other provisions of international law, have been
brought by two separate sets of international jurists, one in Greece and
one in Canada. I am using their definition of "genocide" in this case. As
far as I can tell not all of them are Marxists.
<
No problem that not all of them are Marxists. Clearly the Genocide Convention was not drafted by marxists, but was a bourgeois liberal compromise drawn up in the aftermath of the Second World War. (Forgetting what the victors had done in ethnically tidying about half a dozen countries.) That does not however make it meaningless nor the movement irrelevant in the context of the horrors in Europe this century.
On the evidence you tabled, the Greek jurists made no attempt to align their one charge of genocide with any clause of the Genocide Convention.
With the news that the International Court at the Hague may indict Milosevic with war crimes, what matters is what they think they can get away with, rather than what is right.
Are you in a position to post the Canadian statement to see if it makes a more focussed case that the Greek statement did, for a violation of at least one of the clauses of the Genocide Convention
Chris Burford
London