International Citizens’ Tribunals

Abstract

eiews INTERNATIONAL CITIZENS’ TRIBUNALS S A Theology and Religious Studies / U. of Lund - , Lund, Sweden @. Arthur Jay Klinghoffer and Judith Apter Klinghoffer. International Citizens’ Tribunals: Mobilizing Public Opinion to Advance Human Rights. New York: Palgrave, . Pp. xii, . .. f you ask Google to search for “International Law”, it provides close to two Imillion sites to look at. According to The New Encyclopaedia Britannica (), “International law” refers to “the body of legal rules that apply between sovereign states and such other entities as have been granted international personality (status acknowledged by the international community). The term was coined by Jeremy Bentham and is synonymous with the term ‘law of nations’ and its equivalents in other languages” (Macropaedia, : ). The Britannica does not have any entries for “International Citizens’ Tribunal” or “International Peoples’ Tribunal”, but Google gives you four sites for the former and  for the latter. “International War Crimes Tribunal” gives you , matches. “Russell Tribunal” gives you , “Bertrand Russell International War Crimes Tribunal”  and “Russell II Tribunal” zero sites to look at. Bertrand Russell supplied the inspiration to establish the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation ( hits) in  as an international forum to carry forward his work for peace, human rights and social justice. It was Russell and people who were connected to the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation who were behind the first International War Crimes Tribunal, also called “the Russell Tribunal” or “the Vietnam Tribunal”. Knowing what was going on in Vietnam , Russell thought (in spite of his theoretical views on ethics) that it would be morally wrong not to try to “Prevent the Crime of Silence”. The first session was held in Stockholm in May  and the second in Roskilde, just south of Copenhagen, in November . The purpose of the tribunal was to investigate if the Americans and their allies had committed war crimes in the Vietnam war. Since then a number of other tribunals have taken place borrowing Russell’s name, although only a few have been directly connected with Bertrand Russell and the Russell Peace Foundation, which is still active today led by Ken Coates russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s.  (summer ): – The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U.  -  Reviews and publishing the journal The Spokesman, which was founded by Russell near the end of his life. According to its website, “it not only concerns itself with the many matters of peace and social justice which preoccupied Russell, but also examines in depth the present order, its structures, its beneficiaries and its victims. It includes the Peace Dossier (formerly The London Bulletin) and an extensive review section” (www.russfound.org). Noam Chomsky recently described the Spokesman as “really first rate”. Before I read the Klinghoffers’ book, I had for some time been interested in the tribunal held in Stockholm in  and read the reports from Stockholm (Against the Crime of Silence: Proceedings of the Russell International War Crimes Tribunal, ), Prevent the Crime of Silence (), and an unpublished essay by a Swede, Fredrik Lundblad, who wrote in Swedish about “The International War Crimes Tribunal: the Stockholm Session May –, ; Preparations, Reception and Accomplishment in Sweden” (), but I had very vague ideas about its connections with similar previous events and—most importantly—no idea about its influencing so many other similar tribunals. There is no doubt in my mind that the Klinghoffers have written a most informative and important book about issues that concern us all as individuals, citizens of states and, as Russell said “free citizens of the universe”. The book consists of sixteen chapters, which, apart from the first chapter on “Citizens’ Power”, are divided into four major sections: the Reichstag Fire Case, the Moscow Show Trials Case, the Vietnam War Crimes Case and Continuum . At the beginning of the first chapter the Klinghoffers introduce Russell as a citizen of Great Britain preparing the International War Crimes Tribunal to charge the United States with war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Vietnam. The Klinghoffers highlight a fundamental problem: “Such a venue had no legal standing” (p. ). The  government had really nothing to fear, but the Tribunal could give the country a bad reputation, so it was concerned . The Klinghoffers quickly...