-------- Original Message -------- Subject: WAR CRIMES TRIBUNALS: NO PLACE FOR THE OPPRESSED Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 17:40:04 +1200 From: Philip Ferguson <plf13 at it.canterbury.ac.nz> Reply-To: marxism at lists.panix.com To: marxism-digest at lists.panix.com
The following was written by James Heartfield, and first appeared in his 'The Week' e-letter. I thought it makes a good case as to why we should reject Western attempts to judge Third World leaders, whether they happpen to be pro-West reactionaries like Pinochet or progressives. I especially lked Heartfield's description of the Hague War Crimes Tribunal as the judicial wing of NATO:
WAR CRIMES TRIBUNALS: NO PLACE FOR THE OPPRESSED
Slobodan Milosevic dismissed The Hague war crimes tribunal from the dock as an illegitimate political forum. He is unlikely to keep up such a principled performance but for now he has touched a nerve. It is all too obvious that Milosevic is only at The Hague because the Nato powers finally decided they needed him to take a fall for Kosovo. Outside Western elites The Hague court still lacks legitimacy because it looks too much like what it is - the legal wing of Nato. The fear in human rights circles is that the planned International Criminal Court might suffer from similar problems.
So the cry has gone up for a Western ally, or former Western ally, who can be tried to give international war crimes prosecutions the appearance of neutral international justice. Human rights campaigners are already looking for the next Pinochet case. Leading contenders include former President Suharto of Indonesia and Baby Doc Duvalier, once of Haiti. But the favourite target at the moment appears to be Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. He is wanted for his role in the massacre of Palestinian refugees in the Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila back in 1982. Palestinians in Belgium are already testing the water by seeking to use that country's assumption of jurisdiction over war crimes outside Belgian territory to bring a prosecution against Sharon.
At present it seems unlikely that the Americans would give up their ally to this European-inspired campaign. But regardless of whether Sharon ever faces a trial, his Palestinian victims would be wise not to lend the campaign to have him tried as a war criminal any credibility. Just as the Nato-backed trial at The Hague will attempt to rewrite the history of the Balkan wars in general, and Kosovo in particular, so any trial of Sharon that was agreeable to the West would almost certainly be used to whitewash Israel's role in the Lebanese civil war and the wider Middle East conflict. The BBC's controversial Panorama programme on Sharon has already set the agenda for such an agreeable prosecution.
The BBC's Fergal Keane argued that when Sharon was Israeli defence minister in 1982 he assumed responsibility for West Beirut after the Israeli invasion of the city and expulsion of the PLO. Keane's accusation is that when Sharon then allowed the Phalangist militia, Israel's Lebanese allies, into the Palestinian refugee camps, he failed to recognise or take into account Lebanon's 'culture of murder', and a massacre was the result. The truth is that Israel caused the Lebanese civil war, armed and trained one side, and, when that proved insufficient to destroy Palestinian resistance, Israel invaded Lebanon, drove out the PLO, and occupied West Beirut. To make absolutely sure, Sharon then ordered the Phalangists into Sabra and Shatila to terrorise the defenceless civilian population into quiescence. But in the Keane version, Sharon's crime turns out to have been one of negligence in the face of Arab barbarism.
It is not just The Hague tribunal that is a tool of Western policy. The entire war crimes agenda has only gained credibility to the extent that it draws attention to the superiority of the West over everybody else. War crimes prosecutions are an expression of the current inability of poor countries to resist domination by the West. They can only hinder Palestinian efforts to end the occupation and oppression they suffer at the hands of European and American colonialists.