War Crimes

Accumulated Evil of War Crime Law.

 

A recent lecture in Hobart on War Crime Law by Professor Gerry Simpson provided an informative overview, but somehow left me with too many unanswered questions. The whole idea of War Crimes is a very modern concept that grew out of events in the Great War. Until then wars were “natural” events that had occurred over the preceding several thousand years. Massacres had always occurred, populations wiped out, territory annexed by new masters. This was what Empire was all about.

Prof. Simpson suggested that the 1^st W.W. could have been resolved diplomatically after the assassination of Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo, but such were the aggressive foreign policies of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire that they refused to negotiate a mutual settlement and preferred to declare war on Siberia, a typical 19^th cent solution. When the war ended Germany was quite surprised at Allied attempts to allocate blame for the conflict giving rise to the whole idea of war crimes.

The issue of responsibility for acts of aggression are very close to my heart and I feel far too often such events are not dealt with in a satisfactory manner within our current legal system. The problem as far as my understanding is concerned, resolves around language, the attempt to define what is a “War Crime”. Legal language or the juryfication of war, [not sure whether there is such a word] revolves around the interpretation of the meaning of words in a legal sense, and attempts to require antagonistic parties to settle through negotiation becomes near impossible. Here in lies the major problem when parties are not interested in accepting responsibility for events and deflect their actions onto others. Did Hitler invade Poland or did Germany? Was the German Army simply carrying out orders and so on? How many war crime trials have travelled down this road. Lawyers love such banter, but does it lead to what I would call justice in any meaningful sense.

The league Nations and later the United Nations have never really been able to define what constitutes a legal war, let alone enforce justice in numerous instances of genocide over the last hundred years. The Armenian genocide in 1915, a trial run for the Jewish Holocaust that was to later follow, although the details of the events have never been addressed it seemed as though Western Powers at the time were more intent in dividing the spoils of the Ottoman Empire than address such issues, much I believe to their shame. Aggression may be defined as an unprovoked attack on another, but war, what does the word really mean. In recent years conflicts are no longer referred to as wars, it is as though the word has been abolished altogether. We now become involved in peace keeping operations, intervention only with the approval of the U.N, we need legal opinion to act, to stop blatant slaughter of innocent people. We attempt what is called regime change, but don’t call such acts war.

The reason for rephrasing the words war crime being that it is a social issue, a personal action and thus does not fall within the perimeter of war crimes. Wars require nations to undertake them, We no longer declare war, rather attempt to rectify wrongs in the name of humanity not states. After all we now all live in an International World. In a way we have declared war on death, not on men or flags. The struggle to make aggression a war crime in any true sense is not in the interest of nation states. When we view the aggression by governments or insurgents against their own people, cases such as Timor, Iraq, Cambodia, Syria, the list goes on, we are not able to define these issues as war crimes in any legal sense. There is no legal judgement for what is war, war is a political action not defined by law. This view allows every country to carry out any action it desires for ego or vanities sake, but never with without legal justification, this remains a major problem to creating a peaceful world.

What then is a war crime if not the massacre of innocent peoples. It is highly unlikely that current events in the Middle East or Africa will be dealt with in satisfactory way and proper punishment administered to those responsible. The issue of a legal definition of war crimes urgently needs addressing, not confined as at present to events between 1939 to 1945. Only then will any true justice prevail in this unequal world.