Chilling. - Molly
Human rights advocates were shocked when Foreign Policy reported that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson might close the department's war crime office
The United States has a long history of noncooperation with
international legal entities. For example, America is not a member of
the International Criminal Court. Add to that the fact that
President Trump has not been shy about his “America First” style of foreign
relations. But this week, human rights advocates and State Department watchers
were shocked when Foreign Policy broke
the story that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was poised to shut the
Department’s war crimes office.
It’s another example of the “streamlining” of government
agencies advocated by the Trump administration — in part necessitated by budget
cuts. The Office of Global Criminal Justice,
as it is formally known, has a small staff of about a dozen employees and an
annual budget of only $3 million. But the State Department has been asked to
cut its budget by 31 percent.
The
office may have been especially vulnerable because it is one of those run by an
envoy who is appointed by the president, not career staff. Stephen J. Rapp, who
headed the office under President Obama, has already been reassigned to other
duties. Rapp was well experienced in international criminal justice systems —
he served on tribunals for Rwanda and Sierra Leone. During his tenure he
arranged for an important Syrian defector to provide photographic evidence of
FBI detainees in al-Assad’s prisons. According to The
New York Times, Rapp also pushed
Kosovo leadership to accept its human rights tribunal and for Senegal’s
prosecution of Hissène Habré, the former dictator of Chad.
But
human rights advocates aren’t buying the budgetary excuse. Nina Burleigh at Newsweekhas more on the story:
“It just makes official what has been US policy since 9/11,
which is that there will be no notice taken of war crimes because so many of
them were being committed by our own allies, our military and intelligence
officers and our elected officials,” Maj. Todd E. Pierce, a former judge
advocate general defense attorney at Guantanamo, told Newsweek.
“The war crime of conspiring and waging aggressive war still exists, as
torture, denial of fair trial rights, and indefinite detention are war crimes.
But how embarrassing and revealing of hypocrisy would it be to charge a foreign
official with war crimes such as these? That’s not to defend the closing of
this office but to lament that is has been rendered irrelevant.”
Amherst College law professor
Lawrence Douglas, a war crimes expert, said the plan “should be a source of
deep regret domestically and cause for grave concern abroad. The closing makes
a powerful statement — that the Trump administration cares little about the
protection of human rights and nothing about the vital work of international
criminal courts. Perpetrators of atrocities the world over will, however, be
pleased.”
Efraim Zuroff of Simon Wiesenthal
Center’s Israel office, which tracks Nazi war criminals, told Newsweek the
State Department’s decision sends the wrong message to victims and perpetrators
around the world. “War crimes are now happening all over the world, as you
know. Prosecuting them is not the job only of the United States, but to close
this office will not help to bring justice,” he said. …
The office was formed following the
1996 passage of the War Crimes Act, which defined a war crime as a “grave
breach” of the Geneva Conventions. When the CIA began using torture early in
the Iraq War and, later, jailing people indefinitely and without trial in
Guantanamo, the US was in open breach of the conventions.
The War Crimes Act is applicable to
both foreign and US individuals, including US military and intelligence
officials, but civil claims brought by victims against US officials over the
last 10 years “for what are undisputed war crimes,” according to former US Army
Judge Advocate General Maj. Todd Pierce, have routinely been tossed out on the
grounds that the accused were “acting within the scope of their employment.”
Pierce compared that defense to “the latest version of the Nuremberg defense of
‘I was just following orders.’ Closing this office dispenses with any lingering
hypocrisy that we care to hold war criminals accountable for their acts.”
Please continue this article here: http://billmoyers.com/story/have-we-found-cure-atrocities-of-war/
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