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Let's hear it for Belgium
An attempt to try Tommy Franks for war crimes in a Belgian court has outraged the US
George Monbiot
Tuesday May 20, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,959442,00.html
Belgium is becoming an interesting country. In the course of a week, it has
managed to upset both liberal opinion in Europe - by granting the far-right
Vlaams Blok 18 parliamentary seats - and illiberal opinion in the US. On
Wednesday, a human rights lawyer filed a case with the federal prosecutors
whose purpose is to arraign Thomas Franks, the commander of the American
troops in Iraq, for crimes against humanity. This may be the only judicial
means, anywhere on earth, of holding the US government to account for its
actions.
The case has been filed in Belgium, on behalf of 17 Iraqis and two
Jordanians, because Belgium has a law permitting foreigners to be tried for
war crimes, irrespective of where they were committed. The suit has little
chance of success, for the law was hastily amended by the government at the
beginning of this month. But the fact that the plaintiffs had no choice but
to seek redress in Belgium speaks volumes about the realities of Tony
Blair's vision for a world order led by the US, built on democracy and
justice.
Franks appears to have a case to answer. The charges fall into four
categories: the use of cluster bombs; the killing of civilians by other
means; attacks on the infrastructure essential for public health; and the
failure to prevent the looting of hospitals. There is plenty of supporting
evidence.
US forces dropped around 1,500 cluster bombs from the air and fired an
unknown quantity from artillery pieces. British troops fired 2,100. Each
contained several hundred bomblets, which fragment into shrapnel. Between
200 and 400 Iraqi civilians were killed by them during the war. Others,
mostly children, continue to killed by those bomblets which failed to
explode when they hit the ground. The effects of their deployment in
residential areas were both predictable and predicted. This suggests that
their use there breached protocol II to the Geneva conventions, which
prohibits "violence to the life, health and physical or mental well-being"
of non-combatants.
On several occasions, US troops appear to have opened fire on unarmed
civilians. In Nassiriya, they shot at any vehicle that approached their
positions. In one night alone they killed 12 civilians. On a bridge on the
outskirts of Baghdad they shot 15 in two days. Last month, US troops fired
on peaceful demonstrators in Mosul, killing seven, and in Falluja, killing
13 and injuring 75. All these actions appear to offend the fourth
convention.
The armed forces also deliberately destroyed civilian infrastructure,
bombing the electricity lines upon which water treatment plants depended,
with the result that cholera and dysentery have spread. Protocol II
prohibits troops from attacking "objects indispensable to the survival of
the civilian population such as ... drinking water installations and
supplies".
The fourth convention also insists that an occupying power is responsible
for "ensuring and maintaining ... the medical and hospital establishments
and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory". Yet when
the US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked why his troops had failed
to prevent the looting of public buildings, he replied: "Stuff happens. Free
people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things." Many
hospitals remain closed or desperately under-supplied. On several occasions
US soldiers acted on orders to fire at Iraqi ambulances, killing or wounding
their occupants. They shot the medical crews which came to retrieve the dead
and wounded at the demonstration in Falluja. The Geneva conventions suggest
that these are straightforward war crimes: "Medical units and transports
shall be respected and protected at all times and shall not be the object of
attack."
The armed forces of the US, in other words, appear to have taken short cuts
while prosecuting their war with Iraq. Some of these may have permitted them
to conclude their war more swiftly, but at the expense of the civilian
population. Repeatedly, in some cases systematically, US soldiers appear to
have broken the laws of war.
We should not be surprised to learn that the US government has responded to
the suit with outrage. The state department has warned Belgium that it will
punish nations which permit their laws to be used for "political ends". The
Belgian government hasn't waited to discover what this means. It has amended
the law and denounced the lawyer who filed the case.
The Bush government's response would doubtless be explained by its
apologists as a measure of its insistence upon and respect for national
sovereignty. But while the US forbids other nations to proscribe the actions
of its citizens, it also insists that its own laws should apply abroad. The
foreign sovereignty immunities act, for example, permits the US courts to
prosecute foreigners for harming commercial interests in the US, even if
they are breaking no laws within their own countries. The Helms-Burton Act
allows the courts in America to confiscate the property of foreign companies
which do business with Cuba. The Iran-Libya Sanctions Act instructs the
government to punish foreign firms investing in the oil or gas sectors in
those countries. The message these laws send is this: you can't prosecute
us, but we can prosecute you.
Of course, the sensible means of resolving legal disputes between nations is
the use of impartial, multinational tribunals, such as the international
criminal court in the Hague. But impartial legislation is precisely what the
US government will not contemplate. When the ICC treaty was being
negotiated, the US demanded that its troops should be exempt from
prosecution, and the UN security council gave it what it wanted. The US also
helped to ensure that the court's writ runs only in the nations which have
ratified the treaty. Its soldiers in Iraq would thus have been exempt in any
case, as Saddam Hussein's government was one of seven which voted against
the formation of the court in 1998. The others were China, Israel, Libya,
Qatar, Yemen and the US. This is the company the American government keeps
when it comes to international law.
To ensure that there was not the slightest possibility that his servicemen
need fear the rule of law, George W Bush signed a new piece of
extra-territorial legislation last year, which permits the US "to use all
means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release" of US citizens
being tried in the court. This appears to include the invasion of the
capital of the Netherlands.
All this serves to illustrate the grand mistake Tony Blair is making. The
empire he claims to influence entertains no interest in his moral posturing.
Its vision of justice between nations is the judicial oubliette of
Guantanamo Bay. The idea that it might be subject to the international rule
of law, and therefore belong to a world order in which other nations can
participate, is as unthinkable in Washington as a six-month public holiday.
If Blair does not understand this, he has missed the entire point of US
foreign policy. If he does understand it, he has misled us as to the purpose
of his own diplomacy. The US government does not respect the law between
nations. It is the law.
Guardian Unlimited
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