War Crimes Tribunals Research Articles

Ex Post Facto Prosecution of International Crimes in the Bangladesh War Crimes Tribunal: An Issue of Constitutionality

Bangladesh War Crimes Tribunal-a domestic criminal court is currently prosecuting the offenders of atrocious crimes perpetrated in the Bangladesh War of Independence in 1971. Though the atrocious offenses took place in 1971, the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) Act 1973 was decreed by Bangladeshi Parliament in 1973, and the Tribunal was established in 2010; hence the ICT Act 1973 is considered as an ex post facto (retrospective) legislation because it has been promulgated after the commission of the crimes. Therefore, this study first analyzes the importance of ex post facto law’s prohibition in customary international law. Secondly, the study highlights how the 1973 ICT Act applies to prosecute the ICTB’s defendants retrospectively by amending the constitution of Bangladesh. Thirdly, it examines the ex post facto legislation’s application in the Bangladesh Tribunal and the issue of constitutionality because rules on the prohibition of retrospective legislation is one of the fundamental rights of every citizen that need to be safeguarded by every constitution of civilized nations. Lastly, this study's originality proves that ex post facto law’s application in the ICTB is unconstitutional. Then, this research paper concludes by inferring that the government of Bangladesh needs to amend the constitution to prohibit the ex post facto law’s implementation through the Tribunal that will enhance the legal acceptability of the War Crimes Court because the recent Criminal Court in question is operating under the Bangladeshi government.

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.

Experimenting with Humans and Animals: from Aristotle to Crispr, second edition

Experimenting with Humans and Animals: from Aristotle to Crispr, second edition

Genocide in Kashmir: Right of Self-Determination, UNSC Resolutions and Holding India To Account Under International Humanitarian Law

Kashmir has been a flashpoint of conflict since independence from British rule in 1947 and the partition of India into two states. These two countries, India, and Pakistan, have both claimed the land on the northern most sector of the Subcontinent the focal point of which is the Valley of Kashmir. The conflict is not a domestic dispute or a regional issue between the two protagonists but engages international law because of the human rights violations and the atrocities committed that has engaged international humanitarian law. The occupation by India of Kashmir was controversial from the start as it went against the aspirations of the population who had close affinity and kinship with Pakistan. The United Nations Security Council mandated a referendum to decide the future of the territory divided by a Line of Control, a military boundary, but India has refused to implement the resolutions. The Indian army has cracked down on the population under the Special Powers Act 1958 and various other opaque ordinances that oppress the population. The final act in this de facto occupation was transformed into de jure control by the Indian Parliament when it revoked Article 370 and Article 35 of the Constitution and annexed Kashmir. The Valley has been placed under lockdown and the population disfranchised with all political activity banned and demographic changes underway by a government appointed by India. The pogroms committed by the Security forces and the gross abuses of human rights have been catalogued in two UN Human Rights Council reports that implicate the Indian forces. The argument of this paper is that there should be rigorous application of international law and war crimes tribunals should be invested to prosecute the Indian officials for breaches of human rights established in the conduct of non-international conflicts (NIC).

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.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the universality of health and human rights

The UN adopted the Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid in November, 1973, making this systematised form of racial discrimination an international crime.1 The vote was overwhelmingly in favour of the designation, with only Portugal, South Africa, the USA, and the UK voting against it. Subsequently, the 1998 Rome Statute, which created the International Criminal Court, further established apartheid as one of 11 crimes against humanity.2 Initially linked specifically to the apartheid regime of South Africa, the crime has been since been more broadly invoked—in the war crimes tribunals of the former Yugoslavia and the Rwandan genocide,3,4 and in the abuses against the Rohingya minority in Myanmar.

Colonialism, Collective Memory, and Memory Politics: Critical Reflections on Narratives and Public Archives of the Algerian War

Purpose: The article examines the trial of French General Paul Aussaresses (b. 1918, d. 2013) in the 2000s for war crimes committed during the Algerian War (1954 to 1962). Approach/Methodology/Design: A historiographical analysis covering topics such as colonialism, public memory, collective memory, counter-narratives, education, forgetting, and authenticity. Findings: Public history without individual memories or lived experiences of communities that have survived historical events can be viewed as inauthentic. It might even be called propaganda to present only state state-sanctioned accounts of historical events. Many governments will consequently enact laws to distinguish between what constitutes official national narratives—and what remains peripheral, or perhaps extremist individual, historical accounts. Practical Implications: This paper contributes to the scholarly literature examining oral testimonials in political and war crime tribunals, and the ethics of conducting public history research using media archives. Originality/value: Towards a greater understanding of collective memory processes, the case of the Algerian War reveals the constant negotiations, formal networks, and informal channels used to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate sources of historical memory—and the consequences on culture, law, and society.

The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, Law, History, and Jurisprudence, written by David Cohen and Yuma Totani

The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, Law, History, and Jurisprudence, written by David Cohen and Yuma Totani

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’

Implementation and Enforcement of International Humanitarian Law

The chapter analyzes different means of implementation and enforcement of international humanitarian law (IHL). This includes traditional means, and new means of implementation. Hence, the use of big data tools and Artificial Intelligence, and new challenges for the implementation of IHL, as the use of autonomous weapons, are tackled. In more general terms the author differentiates between bilateral confrontative means (such as retorsions and reprisals), general non-confrontative means (such as the law of state responsibility) and more specific non-confrontative means (such as decisions and opinions of courts and war crime tribunals, especially the International Criminal Court). Moreover, special forms of implementation and enforcement of IHL are stressed, as the system of collective security, the instruments to secure both interstate and domestic enforcement and the competence and responsibilities of different actors. It is argued by Voeneky that, even though there is no place for the claim ‘inter arma silent leges’, IHL faces two main challenges for its realization: Firstly, IHL, like other areas of international law, is not implemented and enforced via a central body or hierarchical institutions, which leads to implementation deficits of rules protecting common values and an overlap of norms and competences. The second major challenge, relevant for this particular area of international law, is its purpose, aiming at humanizing an area that is per se inhumane. Moreover, by implementing and enforcing IHL rules, a balance has to be struck between the aim to protect certain persons and objects through restricting the means and methods of warfare, and the preservation of the right of self-defense as enshrined in Article 51 UN Charter.

The Ambiguous Legacy of the Balkans War Crimes Tribunal

[T]he historical record remains bitterly contested in the former Yugoslav lands, and none of the tribunal's findings has promoted reconciliation.

Could the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Have Erred in a Major Exhibit?

Not long after the Nazi takeover of Germany and proclamation of their Jewish agenda, Armenian propaganda efforts were directed toward establishing a linkage between their own historical experiences and those of European Jewry. Following WWII the cornerstone in the Armenian case has been Adolf Hitler's purported remark “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” This sentence is widely known, quoted, taught, and believed worldwide. National and local governments in several countries have used it to justify resolutions declaring that the alleged slaughter of Armenians by Turks was genocide. The veracity of this statement, however, cannot be confirmed anywhere in the transcripts of evidence admitted into record by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. Quite the contrary. Transcripts of the speech in which that statement was supposedly made by Hitler on August 22, 1939, and admitted into evidence are devoid of that sentence. Believed to be Hitler’s justification for the invasion of Poland and his “final solution,” that sentence may, in fact, be a contrived statement. Using archival documents, this paper casts doubt upon the veracity of that statement and questions the validity of its use on a USHMM wall in a memorial to victims of genocide. These findings are put into the context of the Armenians’ use of terror as part of a propaganda campaign. This campaign began in the second half of the 19th century, for the purpose of alerting western countries to their victimization and encouraging the west of the need to dismantle the Ottoman Empire. One outcome of WWI. This paper relies on various archival documents including contemporaneous articles from the New York Times and Western diplomatic dispatches as well as writings by ethnic Armenian historians in both the US and the USSR.

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.

The Danger of a single story about forensic humanitarianism

Since the mid-1980s, forensic scientists have played a crucial role in the international response to mass violence, contributing evidence to war crimes tribunals and identifying bodies to end the tortuous uncertainty of loved ones. Recently, experts at the International Committee for the Red Cross have described these activities using the term “humanitarian forensic action,” applying it from the field's origins in Argentina to the multiple organizations and types of projects that exist today. This article cautions against any account of the history of humanitarian forensic action, or its contemporary landscape, that is so simple and unified. It points to divergent mandates, working methods, and even definitions of humanitarianism, focusing especially on new ways in which forensic scientists are addressing the mass suffering caused by structural violence.

Questioning Islamic Belief in Post-Genocide Bangladesh: Mu‘tazilites and Ash‘arites, Maya and Sohail

The civil war of 1971 between then West Pakistan and East Pakistan led to the formation of the new nation-state of Bangladesh—and to ongoing contestation about war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Many locals who once collaborated with the Punjabi-dominated Pakistani military have in recent years been held accountable before war crimes tribunals, including at least one prominent Islamist hanged. The crimes of 1971 included ethnic cleansing of Bengali Hindus and the mass murder of Bengali Muslims whose South Asian culture was identified as so reflective of Hindu influence as to be heretical. For many Bengali Muslims today, one question remains how an omnibenevolent and omnipotent Allah permitted Muslims to slaughter and rape hundreds of thousands of other Muslims along with tens of thousands of others. This question strikes to the heart of religious and cultural sensitivities central to contemporary Bangladeshi Muslim identity, and to the place of the nation’s foundational event in that identity. The author shows how two schools of Islamic theodicy and one secular novelist offer divergent answers to the question.

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

Prosecuting Sexual Violence at the Cambodian War Crimes Tribunal: Challenges, Limitations, and Implications

The trial of Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea in Case 002 at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) is widely seen as a landmark case in international criminal law. While the defendants were convicted of crimes against humanity in the first half of the case, Case 002/01, they were cleared of charges for sexual crimes by the trial chambers, disappointing observers and advocates who considered them to have facilitated mass sexual violence between 1976 and 1979 in Democratic Kampuchea (DK), as Cambodia was known at the time. Case 002/01 raises important questions over the prosecution of sexual crimes as acts of state, especially when that state's official policy is to prevent and punish sexual violence. The conclusion of this article discusses the court's ruling that DK policies and laws against sexual violence indicate that the defendants intended to prevent sexual violence. The ruling is deeply flawed, especially when we consider that murder was also outlawed under the DK criminal code. Yet, these laws against murder were not considered a barrier to charging Khmer Rouge leaders with murder in the context of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. This, in turn, raises a question as to what exactly constitutes state policy in the context of mass violence committed by state actors: the policy of governments, laws, and decrees of the state or the actions of the state and government?

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.