International War Crimes Tribunal Research Articles

Tricontinental Reverberations: Anti-Imperialist Solidarity in the International War Crimes Tribunal on Vietnam

Abstract In 1967, amid the U.S. war in Vietnam, distinguished leftist intellectuals and activists gathered in Sweden and Denmark to establish the first citizens’ tribunal. Initiated by the philosopher Bertrand Russell, the purpose of the International War Crimes Tribunal (iwct) was to put the U.S. government on trial for its military actions in Southeast Asia. This article has two objectives. First, it argues that this activist endeavour was embedded in a larger internationalist movement against Western imperialism, namely Tricontinentalism, of which the war in Vietnam was a connecting factor. Second, the article investigates the tribunal as a manifestation of the solidarity that the New Left in the West maintained with revolutionary movements in the Third World. It aims to show the utility of the theoretical concept of political solidarity, most thoroughly elaborated by Sally J. Scholz, for the global history analysis of social justice movements. At the same time, it contends the necessity of additional parameters when studying manifestations of political solidarity in a post- and settler-colonial context, drawing on new scholarship on colonial-sensitive solidarity. By carving out the specificities of this case of activism on the theoretical ground, this investigation also highlights the importance, advantages, and pitfalls of political anti-imperialist solidarity.

JASON in Europe: Contestation and the Physicists’ Dilemma about the Vietnam War

This article examines the contestation that in the summer of 1972 disrupted workshops in Western Europe featuring renowned physicists affiliated to the top-secret JASON advisory group. Set up by the US Department of Defense research division, JASON was responsible for outlining new bombing strategies in the context of the Vietnam War. Some of the physicists involved in the protest had contributed instead to the International War Crimes (Russell) Tribunal, gathering evidence in Indochina on the allegedly genocidal character of the US bombing. In reconstructing the history of the contestation, this article contends that the conflict was an opportunity for advertising diverging political stances in the rebellious atmosphere of early 1970s, as much as to convey competing views about the physicists’ influence on global affairs. In particular, while JASON members boasted that their advisory roles stifled bellicose approaches, the protesters recalled the merits of independent inquiry and advocacy “from below” the elitist sphere of government advice, describing these as a better way to advance principles of global social justice.

Women judges in transitional justice and their impact on trials on cases of sexual and gender-based violence committed as war crimes

Unfortunately, sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) against women and men who are identified as enemies very often appears as a tool of war. For a long time, SGBV-related atrocities were not perceived as an element of combat, thus they were not investigated as war crimes. None of the war criminals prosecuted in the Nurnberg and Tokyo trials was ever charged with crimes that specifically targeted women, despite overwhelming evidence of mass-scale rapes committed during World War II by their subordinates. Only in 2000, the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery was established to hear cases of women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army more than 50 years earlier.The perception of the SGBV crimes in armed conflicts has considerably changed because of the mass atrocities committed in Bosnia and Hercegovina and in Rwanda. Women who as victims of the sexual violence dared to talk about their suffering, played the crucial role in changing the general attitude towards SGBV crime committed during the war. Simultaneously, the composition of international prosecution and judiciary included numerous female prosecutors and judges.It may be argued if judge's characteristic, personal experience, or gender indeed or to what extent influence judicial decisions. Some fundamental questions related to the judge's gender remain without an answer: Would the gender of judges impact the quality of fact-finding in SGBV as a war crime? Would a female judge assess the evidence more thoroughly than a male judge? Would a SGBV victim's well-being be better protected by a judge of the same gender? Would the risk of a victim's re-traumatisation be lower if the trial was handled by a judge of the same gender as the victim? And finally: would the risk of a victim's re-traumatisation be lower if a judge of the same gender as the victim handled the trial? All these questions seem particularly relevant in the context of the new wave of war crimes SGBV cases resulting from the war in Ukraine.

Revisiting the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal in 2000 on Japanese Military Sexual Slavery from the Perspectives of Colonialism and the ‘Wartime Sexual Violence’

Revisiting the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal in 2000 on Japanese Military Sexual Slavery from the Perspectives of Colonialism and the ‘Wartime Sexual Violence’

Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance, and Transpacific Redress by Elizabeth W. Son

Reviewed by: Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance, and Transpacific Redress by Elizabeth W. Son Jennifer S. Oh (bio) Elizabeth W. Son, Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance, and Transpacific Redress (University of Michigan Press, 2018), ISBN 978–0–472–03710–0, 267 pages. The Japanese military’s sexual enslavement of women during World War II, also known as the “comfort women,” is a key example of gender-based war crime that has not been properly addressed in both national and international arenas. In her book Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance, and Transpacific Redress, Elizabeth Son provides a rich documentation of how survivors of the Japanese military sexual slavery and their supporters have attempted to redress the “comfort women” history through various forms of performances. One of the central themes of Son’s book is the role of performance in enacting “restitution for grievously unspeakable violence outside state parameters” and the “relationship between art and activism.”1 Son views these performances as “redressive acts,” which she defines as “embodied practices that involve multiple audiences in actively reengaging with traumatic pasts to work toward social, political, cultural, and epistemological change.”2 The book covers four different forms of “redressive acts”: the weekly Wednesday Demonstrations held across from the Japanese embassy in Seoul, South Korea; the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery held in Tokyo from 8 to 12 December 2000; theatrical works on the Japanese military sexual slavery; and lastly memorial building projects in South Korea and the United States. Each chapter covers one of the redressive acts and raises distinct questions on the relationship between performances and justice for violence committed against women. Chapter One explores the transformative role of performances by tracing the effects of the Wednesday Demonstrations on survivors of the Japanese wartime sexual slavery and the Korean society. Specifically the chapter asks, “What happens when survivors and thousands of their supporters repeatedly gather to perform demands of redress”? The Wednesday Demonstrations began in 1992 as a weekly rally demanding justice for the atrocities committed against women by the Japanese military. The [End Page 233] Wednesday Demonstrations have played a pivotal role in educating the public on the history of comfort women, generating domestic and international support for the cause of seeking justice for Japan’s wartime sexual slavery, and changing the perception and relationship of survivors with one another and with the society. These effects “go deeper than formal diplomatic forms of redress.”3 Chapter Two studies the relationship between performance and law, pointing to the limitations of the existing legal framework in bringing justice to survivors of the Japanese military sexual slavery. The Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery served as a symbolic public legal event to adjudicate the issue of war crimes committed against women by the Japanese military, something that national and international judicial systems had failed to do. One key question of the chapter is “How was the Women’s Tribunal both a rehearsal for a future legal performance that will probably never happen and a public enactment of justice?”4 The Women’s Tribunal offered a supportive platform for survivors to offer their testimonies, strengthened transnational network among survivors and supporters, and generated global publicity and awareness of the issue. While the Women’s Tribunal lacked legal authority, the process through which it reached a guilty verdict “reaffirmed the value of redressive measures outside state parameters.”5 In Chapters Three and Four, the memory of survivors and activists emerge as a prominent theme, raising questions on the relationship among performance, memory, and redress. Chapter Three offers a lengthy description of four theatrical works that performed in different countries: Comfort Women (2004), Nabi (2005–2009), The Trojan Women: An Asian History (2007), and Bongseonhwa (2013, 2014). These works address memories of the comfort women within a fictional setting, and at times have brought about harsh criticisms from survivors who question the accuracy of the performance content. Chapter Four illustrates how the building of memorials such as the bronze girl in Seoul (South Korea) and Palisades Park (New Jersey, United States) evoke a sense of attachment among the public to the survivors and their...

Incriminating Intelligence: The Strategic Provision of Evidence in War Crimes Tribunals

Transitional justice's effectiveness is hotly debated, with many scholars taking a negative view due to the difficulty of proving responsibility for war crimes. We highlight a largely overlooked source of such evidence: intelligence provided by third party states. We theorize countries' incentives and disincentives to share such information, arguing that they often wish to provide it to promote accountability and other political goals, but withhold it to avoid revealing intelligence sources and methods. However, we show that international war crimes tribunals' adoption of confidentiality systems can ease this tension. Courts can receive and use national intelligence to gain insights into culpability for atrocities while protecting that information from wide dissemination. However, states only supply sensitive information in line with their political interests. To test our claims, we focus on the United States' intelligence sharing with two ad hoc tribunals -- the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda -- which possess similar design features. Drawing on newly reviewed archival materials, elite interviews, and secondary sources, we show that confidentiality protections elicited considerable intelligence disclosures when the U.S. had a political interest in prosecuting the case, increasing arrests and indictments.

People’s Tribunal as a Place for Realizing Justice without Power On the case of The Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal in Tokyo 2000

People’s Tribunal as a Place for Realizing Justice without Power On the case of The Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal in Tokyo 2000

Too loud to rise above the silence: the United States vs. the International War Crimes Tribunal, 1966–1967

The International War Crimes Tribunal organized by Bertrand Russell in 1966–1967 sought to investigate alleged violations of international law and the Nuremberg Principles by the United States in Vietnam. While the Tribunal successfully convened three sets of hearings in Stockholm, Sweden, Roskilde, Denmark, and, Tokyo, Japan, it was easily dismissed in most of Western Europe and the United States as an anti-American propaganda ploy. This article explores how the United States Government deployed the national security state and international diplomacy to discredit and disrupt the proceedings of the Russell Tribunal and ultimately contain the embarrassing damage caused by this first major international antiwar initiative during the Vietnam War.

Remembering the Russell Tribunal

Fifty years have passed since the International War Crimes Tribunal for Vietnam was convened by the philosopher and anti-war activist Bertrand Russell. Its goal was to investigate US crimes in Vietnam - not to punish individual perpetrators but to inform public opinion and arouse opposition to the war in ‘the smug streets of Europe and the complacent cities of North America’.

The banality of liberal due process theory in international criminal law

International war crimes trials are normative pursuits par excellence; they are understandably deeply emotional affairs, as a result of the horrors and injustices that lead to their establishment. Since these trials emerge from political decisions, the fundamental challenge in international criminal law has been to try to conduct judicial proceedings uncontaminated by passion and politics. Contemporary legalism, inspired by democratic peace theory, argues that liberal polities are more likely to establish international war crimes tribunals than illiberal polities, and posits that these liberal courts are more likely to be driven by a commitment to due process. I argue that reliance on legalism (as a political theory) is misplaced: not only have illiberal states participated in the establishment of war crimes courts, but legalist claims obscure the fact that many proceedings have been marred by significant due process deficiencies. The U.S.-as the archetypically liberal legalist state-has not accepted to be held to the norms and institutional constraints emerging from institutions of international criminal justice that it has shaped and promoted. I begin to develop an approach that I call Kantian realism, which holds that states should only establish norms and institutions that they would willingly decree upon themselves.

The Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal, Tokyo 2000: a feminist response to revisionism?

The article examines the emergence in the 1990s of the issue of “Comfort women” and the conditions that led to the holding of The Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal for the Trial of Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery. It argues that it was a response both to victims’ needs and to the prevailing revisionism concerning the violence committed during the Asian-Pacific war by the Japanese army, which had been the subject of the Tokyo war crimes trials of 1946-1948. The women’s tribunal represents a significant moment in the recognition and condemnation of the specific violence perpetrated against women in wartime and during armed conflicts: it is both the result of of new paradigms in women’s history and oral history, and the starting point for active support for women victims of violence.

From Harvard to Nuremberg: Father Fabian Flynn’s Service as Catholic Chaplain to the 26th Infantry Regiment, 1942–1946

Despite daunting circumstances, including the survival of stomach cancer in 1938, the Passionist priest Fabian Flynn desired to enter the United States Army as a chaplain almost immediately after America’s entry into the Second World War in December 1941. Once he received approval to enlist from his Passionist superiors ten months later, his training began in his hometown at Boston’s Harvard University. Flynn spent six months at an Army Medical Training Center in southwest Texas before joining the First Infantry Division’s 26th Infantry Regiment in the summer of 1943. He served the next four years with them, from Tunisia to Sicily, Italy, France (during the D-Day invasion at Normandy), Belgium, Germany, and Czechoslovakia. Serving at the front lines for many of the U.S. Army’s engagements in Western and Central Europe, Flynn would then face a very different and complex challenge, as the first Catholic chaplain at the International War Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg. Throughout his service as a U.S. Army chaplain, Flynn strove to provide moral and spiritual leadership on a continent ravaged by war. His triumphs and missteps in pursuing these goals serve as a revealing microcosm of the Catholic Church’s role during the Second World War.

Reconciliation and the Rule of Law: The Changing Role of International War Crimes Tribunals

This thesis explores the relationship between international war crimes tribunals and peacebuilding in post-conflict societies. The aim of the present study was to examine how the role and function of international tribunals has changed since the establishment of the Nuremberg tribunal in the early years after World War II. Due to the evolving nature of international law and the international criminal legal system, international tribunals have become increasingly recognized as an integral component of peacebuilding processes in the aftermath of conflict. As the first international tribunal mandated to restore international peace and security, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) set a new precedent for international tribunals. Beginning with its establishment, there appeared to be a new trend of using international judicial mechanisms to promote peace and reconciliation in the aftermath of conflict. One important element of change was the increased tendency of international tribunals to engage in public outreach and help build the capacity of national justice sector institutions. As the first international tribunal to succeed the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals and the first UN tribunal of its kind, the ICTY has shown the extent to which international tribunals facilitate societal reconciliation is, and will be, understood within the context of the legacies they leave behind. Institutions such as the ICTY will not be judged solely on the merits of the ideals on which they were established, but instead on their concrete successes in the domestic arena and their ability to fortify domestic judicial capacity.

War and Peace and Ubu: Colonialism, the Exception, and Jarry's Legacy

Ubu Catulle Mendes wrote in Le Journal day after Ubu Rods storied, riot-inducing premiere in 1896. Compounded by Pulcinella and Polichinelle, of Punch and Judy ... of Monsieur Thiers and Catholic Torquemada and Jew Deutz, of a Surete policeman and anarchist Vaillant, an enormous parody of Macbeth and Napoleon, a flunky become king ... he will nevertheless become a popular legend of base instincts, rapacious and violent.1 Mendes instantly recognized a link between Ubu's slapstick violence and violence of revolutionary street warfare (Adolph Thiers was president during Bloody Week that ended Paris Commune), inquisitional torture, venal treason (Simon Deutz infamously sold out Duchess de Berry), police oppression, and terrorism. Since then, a multitude of Ubu plays from around globe have borne out Mendes assertion, addressing themselves to equally infamous contemporary acts of terror. Pere Ubu still exists, a dark caricature not only of a ruling class at war with its own subjects but also of revolutionaries who are quick to hide their own guilt behind idealistic cant. Ubu and his abusive deployment of'pataphysics, protosurrealist science of the laws governing exceptions2 introduced by Alfred Jarry, furnishes contemporary theater-makers with a critical funhouse reflection of real-world state's abuse of its assumed sovereign right of exception. Moreover, contemporary adaptations explicitly identify Ubu-esque brutality and antireason as exception that makes so-called enlightened Western liberal rule possible.The focus here will be on Jarry's own work, including collaboratively created Almanachs du Pere Ubu (1898 and 1901), and on two contemporary Ubu plays from sub-Saharan Africa: Jane Taylor and Handspring Puppet Company's Ubu and Truth Commission (1997) and Wole Soyinka's King Baabu (a play in manner-roughly-of Alfred Jarry) (2002). Both Ubu and Truth Commission and King Baabu appeared in aftermaths of triumphant political struggles for liberation, but both plays evoke feeling, shared by their creators, that performative declarations of victory, amnesty, and peace made by their new governments might not have been entirely felicitous. Implicitly, Handspring and especially Soyinka present amnesty processes and purported transitions to independence and democracy as also dependent on exceptions, exclusions, and erasures, on giving a partially fictive sense of an ending to periods of national suffering. To question what peace and victory mean, or to propose that pronouncements of peace may be premature or even empty utterances, is to suggest that liberal republicanism's perpetually deferred promise of a restored or redeemed Law is its enabling illusion-an illusion that masks both violence of politics as usual and extent to which revolutions and reforms leave systemic problems unsolved.Sub-Saharan Africa is by no means only part of world in which Ubu character has been used in this manner. Director Silviu Purcarete's Romanian Ubu Roi (1991), which identified Pere and Mere Ubu with Ceausescus; Piotr Szulkin's Polish film Ubu Tirol (2003); and British playwright Simon Stephens's The Trial of Ubu (2012), a satire on International War Crimes Tribunal at Hague, are just a few examples of how Ubu story has been used as a vehicle for depicting past and present political corruption in Central and Eastern Europe (and, in Stephens's case, hypocritical moralizing that attends Western efforts to judge Eastern tyrants). In 1988 and 1990, Cairo-based company Al-Warsha produced Arabic Ubus that blended Jarry with Egyptian shadow puppetry to comment on contemporary political events. Outside theater, Puerto Rican author Giannina Braschi employed motifs from Jarry in satirizing Latin American leaders such as Hugo Chavez, Lula de Silva, and Christina Kirchner in her drama/novel hybrid The United States of Banana (2011). …

Behind the Scenes at the BRPF, the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, and the Russell Tribunal

russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s. 34 (winter 2014–15): 135–61 The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. issn 0036–01631; online 1913–8032 c:\users\ken\documents\type3402\rj 3402 050 red.docx 2015-02-04 9:19 PM oeview bssay BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE BRPF, THE VIETNAM SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN, AND THE RUSSELL TRIBUNAL Stefan Andersson stefankarlandersson@live.com Ernest Tate. Revolutionary Activism in the 1950s and 60s: a Memoir. Vol. 1: Canada 1955–1965. Pp. xvi, 274. C$15; £9; €11. Vol. 2: Britain 1965–1969. London: Resistance Books, 2014. Pp. xviii, 402. isbn: 978-0-902869-60-8. C$21; £13. i. introduction rnest (Ernie) Tate was born in 1934 in Northern Ireland and emigrated to Canada in 1955. He describes himself as “a working class activist without any formal education, politically formed mainly by my experiences in a small Trotskyist group in Canada” (Memoir 2: 164). He came to Britain in 1965 to establish, with much help from his partner, Jess MacKenzie, a British Section of the Fourth International. This is when the International Marxist Group (img) was born. In this review I will limit my comments to Tate’s activities in his second volume relating to the brpf, the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (vsc) and the International War Crimes Tribunal (iwct). Tate describes how the img came into being and some of its main personalities : Ken Coates, Pat Jordan, Geoff Coggan, and in particular Tariq Ali. Ali was elected President of the Oxford Union in 1965 and organized the first teach-in against the Vietnam war in the uk. He was a delegate on behalf of the British Peace Committee to the Communist-dominated Helsinki Peace Conference, visited Vietnam as a member of one of the investigative commissions sent out by the iwct and reported his findings at the session in Stockholm in May 1967. He was recruited to the img, thanks to Tate’s initiatives (2: 240–1), and became editor of Black Dwarf. Tate has a whole chapter on Tariq Ali. “He was a very important addition to our ranks and he would eventually become one of our most well-known leaders”1 (p. 241). Tariq Ali became for the student protests in the uk what 1 There are nine letters from Tariq Ali and five to him in the bra. In the first, from 20 b= 136 stefan andersson c:\users\ken\documents\type3402\rj 3402 050 red.docx 2015-02-04 9:19 PM Tom Hayden and Carl Oglesby were for the sds (Students for a Democratic Society) in the us, and Rudi Dutschke was for Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund (Socialist German Student Union) in West Germany.2 Both Hayden and Oglesby had been presidents of sds. Hayden had written the draft of the Port Huron Statement in 1962 and visited Vietnam in 1965, and Oglesby was a member of the iwct, participated in both sessions and wrote about it. December 1964, Ali asks if he can buy two pamphlets on Vietnam. I sent an early draft of this review to Ali, who answered: “Hi: Read your review which I like ... what seems missed out is the role of Jean-Paul Sartre whose involvement was as important as that of Russell ... in fact the two philosophers made an amazing duo. It’s a pity if Ernie left the French out because they were crucial to the operation....” 2 For a well-researched and favourably received book about the relationship between the sds in West Germany and the sds in the United States and international relations between the different student movements in general, which all had one common interest: to stop the United States’ aggressive war in Indochina, see Klimke’s The Other Alliance (2010), where he also refers to a cia investigation “International Connections of us Peace Groups” (available at: http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/ files/document_conversions/89801/DOC_0000538627.pdf ). It shows how concerned Johnson was about the possible effects of the Russell Tribunal. Klimke says that in the report: “People like Dave Dellinger and Tom Hayden stood out as main organizers and international intermediaries, the latter especially because of his visit and contacts with Hanoi...

The Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal (Tokyo, 2000): a feminist answer to historical revisionism?

L’article examine les conditions qui ont permis la tenue du Tribunal international des femmes de Tokyo pour juger du systeme de l’esclavage sexuel institue par l’armee imperiale japonaise pendant la guerre d’Asie-Pacifique (1937-1945). Il considere qu’il a ete a la fois une reponse aux besoins des victimes et au revisionnisme ambiant sur les questions des violences commises pendant la guerre d’Asie-Pacifique et jugees lors du proces militaire de Tokyo en 1946-1948. Moment important pour la reconnaissance et la condamnation des violences exercees a l’encontre des femmes en temps de guerre et lors des conflits armes, il est a la fois l’aboutissement de nouveaux paradigmes en histoire des femmes et histoire orale, et le point de depart pour un soutien actif aux femmes victimes de violence.

Preventing the Crime of Silence

94 Reviews c:\users\kenneth\documents\type3401\rj 3401 193 red.docx 2014-05-14 8:54 PM PREVENTING THE CRIME OF SILENCE Stefan Andersson stefankarlandersson@live.com Nick Turse. Kill Anything That Moves: the Real American War in Vietnam. New York: Henry Holt, 2013. Pp. xii, 372. us$30(hb), $17 (pb). isbn: 0805086919. urse’s well documented book has received praise from most reviewers, including the late Jonathan Schell and Chris Hedges, for its exposure of American war crimes during the Vietnam War. Michael Uhl (http://www. inthemindfield.com/2013/04/05/) is not equally impressed by the claim of novelty . He played an important role in organizing and participating in former GIs publicly testifying about war crimes. The first time this happened was at the second session of the Russell’s International War Crimes Tribunal held near Copenhagen in fall 1967. Turse refers to it, but only once (Ch. 7, n.50) to the work done by the cci (Citizens’ Commission of Inquiry into us War Crimes in Indochina), founded by Ralph Schoenman in November 1969 in New York, upon news of the My Lai massacre. Early in 1970 Tod Ensign and Jeremy Rifkin took over, followed by Uhl. Through their work and the vvaw (Vietnam Veterans Against the War), the torch from the Tribunal was carried to GIs in the us, who were determined not to commit the crime of silence. q= ...

War Crimes Tribunals, Mass Atrocities and the Role of Humanity's Law in Transitional Justice

The three books under review provide a crucial linkage between the emergence of international criminal law and a new humanitarian law regime. To start, The Rise and Fall of War Crimes Trials provides historical context for this emergence, which is reinforced by Unimaginable Atrocities’ articulation of the legal frameworks governing international war crimes tribunals. This leads to the formulation of a ‘Humanity’s Law’ that ties in with the relationship among conflict, international criminal law and state responsibility. The central theme running through the three books is the effectiveness of international legal regimes with regard to mass atrocities. Charles Anthony Smith and William Schabas explore the extent to which states in the global North have been inconsistent in dealing with international criminal law both historically and in the present day. Their discussions reveal the extent to which contemporary political agendas affect the definition of international crimes and the application of international law, which has given rise to a sense that the global justice regime is at its heart a form of ‘victor’s justice.’1 This view stems from opinions that potential solutions to warfare seem to be informed by desire for the spoils of conflict.

Recorded Message for Spring Mobilization [New York, 1967

Stefan Andersson, in his review in this issue of Erik Eriksson’s book on Vietnam, cites the message that Bertrand Russell reportedly tape-recorded for the largest antiVietnam War demonstration in the United States. It took place in New York City, 15 April 1967. Russell’s tape was to have been played at the demonstration, but it was rain-shortened and the tape wasn’t presented. The whereabouts of the tape, if it is extant, are unknown. The message is of special interest for its several explicit and oblique references to the upcoming sessions of the International War Crimes Tribunal. It was not known at the time where and when they would take place, but later in April, France having failed Russell, Sweden stood Wrm in its tradition of free speech, assembly and press. The message was Wrst published in the tenth number of the New Yorkz brpf’s Foundation Bulletin (B&R C67.08). It was reprinted in Volume 2 of Bertrand Russell’s America, without the nine sentences from “We will demonstrate this” to “who insist that we identify Johnson and his policy with you the American people.” The present text is printed from the typescript, dated 7 April 1967, in the Bertrand Russell Archives (220.148669) and was compared with that in thez Foundation Bulletin. The typescript’s type is of baggage-stamp size. In extreme old age Russell commonly made his tapes from type of this size. There is no manuscript with it. Corrections are in another hand. Indeed, some of the phrasing is uncharacteristic of Russell’s prose, but his tape-recording the message must be regarded as conferring his approvalz—zjust like his extant tape-recording of “Appeal to the American Conscience” the previous year. (K.B.)

Inspired by Bertrand Russell’s Passion for Justice

June 25, 2012 (9:21 pm) E:\CPBR\RUSSJOUR\TYPE3201\russell 32,1 060 red.wpd 1 See my “Secondary Bibliography of the International War Crimes Tribunal: London, Stockholm and Roskilde”, Russell 31 (2011): 167–87. russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s. 32 (summer 2012): 87–93 The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. issn 0036-01631; online 1913-8032 eviews INSPIRED BY BERTRAND RUSSELL’S PASSION FOR JUSTICE Stefan Andersson stefankarlandersson@live.com Erik Eriksson. Jag såg kärleken och döden [I Saw Love and Death]. Falun, Sweden: Ordupplaget, 2008. Pp. 271 + 24 pp. of photos. With 30-min. dvd, “Vietnam 1972–73”. 163 kronor. isbn 978-91-85785-20-9. W zhen Bertrand Russell wrote the Prologuez—z“What I Have Lived For” (dated 25 July 1956)z—zto his planned Autobiography, he did not know that he had almost fourteen more years of hard work ahead of him, which I would maintain was governed by a fourth passionz that had inspired him from an early age: his passion for justice, which thrives on and summarizes the three he mentions: the longing for love, the search for knowledge and unbearable pity for the suTering of mankind. Russell’s legacy rests on great accomplishments in at least four areas: logic and the foundations of mathematics, philosophy, literature,and political activismz—z particularly the last: his passionate eTorts to inform the world about what the United States was doing in Vietnam and Southeast Asia in general. The us had been involved in the region since President Truman decided that it was politically more important to give in to French claims on the governance of Vietnam than to defend the right of each nation to be governed by its own people. Russell wanted to give the victims of French and American imperialism a voice in order to “Prevent the Crime of Silencez”, which was the title of the book published by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation in 1971 containing documentation from the International War Crimes Tribunal on American war crimes in Indochina. The tribunal had taken place in Stockholm and Roskilde four years earlier.1 “The Russell Tribunal”, or “the Russell–Sartre Tribunal” as the French preferred to call it, was from an international law perspective a unique event that fulWlled some of the intentions of the planned International Criminal Court, the realization of which was hampered by the burgeoning Cold War. In 1948 the un June 25, 2012 (9:21 pm) E:\CPBR\RUSSJOUR\TYPE3201\russell 32,1 060 red.wpd 88 Reviews 2 “Peace Group to Set Up Panels on Atrocity Charges”, New York Times, 30 Nov. 1969, p. 30. 3 See http://citizen-soldier.org/. (Visited 15 June 2012.) 4 Melvin Small, Antiwarriors: the Vietnam War and the Battle for America’s Hearts and Minds (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2002), Chap. 4. 5 “Recorded Message for Spring Mobilization”, large-print typescript for taperecording , ra2 220.148669. The complete text, which has several references to the upcoming Tribunal, is printed in this issue of Russell, pp. 80–2. had added “genocide” as a crime, but there was still no legal deWnition of “aggression ”, as is the case to this day. Regardless of its lack of formal power, the iwct’s important message was of a moral character. At the second session (20 Nov.–1 Dec. 1967) in Roskilde, half an hour south of the Danish capital, three former us gis testiWed for the Wrst time publicly about their own and other soldiers’ crimes. When the My Lai massacre was revealed in fall 1969, Russell’s former private secretary, Ralph Schoenman , was quoted in the New York Timesz2 as saying that the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation of America was creating a citizens’ commission of inquiry (the “cci”) into us war crimes in Indochina. Tod Ensign and Jeremy Rifkin read the notice and got involved in Wnding more veterans to testify at public hearings. Schoenman soon went on to other things while Ensign and Rifkin were joined by Vietnam War veteran Michael Uhl (who has written a book about it to be reviewed in a forthcoming issue of Russelly). The cci held its Wrst inquiry in...