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10:04 2001-07-05
TIMOTHY BANCROFT-HINCHEY:
NATO GUILTY OF WAR CRIMES BY OWN
DEFINITION
According to definitions
used by The Hague Tribunal and by the Geneva Convention on War Crimes, NATO is
guilty. Pravda.Ru
presents the evidence for a case against NATO in a court of law such as the
one at The Hague.
Article 3 of the Statute of The Hague International
Penal Court states clearly that one criterion for indictment for war crimes
is:
“Attack or bombardment, by whatever means, against undefended
cities, towns, villages, buildings or houses”.
NATO’s continuous
use of civilian targets for military purposes, a scenario which this military
organization wantonly and callously calls “collateral damage”, fits this clause
exactly and would be the cornerstone of a case accusing this organisation of
being guilty of war crimes.
Another clause of the same Article 3 could
also be stipulated:
“Massive destruction of cities, towns or
villages or destruction not justified by military
necessity”.
Any number of the unprovoked attacks by NATO in
Yugoslavia and Iraq in the past decade would fit into this category, namely
bombing attacks by NATO on civilian targets and structures. The bombing of the
Chinese Embassy, for example, was not a “military necessity”, by NATO’s own
definition, because it was officially classified by this organisation as a
mistake. In which case, and under Article 3, it was a case of destruction not
justified by military necessity and therefore, by its own definition and using
the Articles from the Court set up by this organisation, NATO is guilty of war
crimes.
However, the case does not stop here. Article 147 of the Geneva
Convention on War Crimes, defines the latter as “...deportation or illegal
transfer or illegal detention of a protected person...or to purposefully deprive
a protected person of his rights of a fair and regular trial...”
What is
being done in the case of Mr. Slobodan Milosevic at The Hague, apart from being
a case of piracy, kidnapping and illegal imprisonment, is in flagrant violation
of the Geneva Convention. Not having been appointed by the United Nations
General Assembly, the IPC at The Hague is at most illegal and at least not
legal. It is therefore incompetent to try Slobodan Milosevic, or anyone else,
for alleged crimes.
More ironic still is this case when we discover that
by their own definitions, NATO are guilty of the crimes they accuse others of –
in an organism which has no legal substance whatsoever. How the international
community tolerates such a scandalous state of affairs and apportions to it such
a degree of seriousness is ridiculous and a shame for any country which prides
itself on saying that it is a state of law.
Timothy
BANCROFT-HINCHEY
PRAVDA.Ru
LISBON
PORTUGAL
Miroslav Antic,
http://www.antic.org/
Title: Message
