BEGINNING FOR THE INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL
London
After a three-day meeting of leading participants here November 13-16, an International War Crimes Tribunal was formally constituted. A declaration of aims and objectives was adopted and legal and technical machinery set up to prepare for formal hearings scheduled for next March in Paris.
At the invitation of Bertrand Russell, who initiated the body, a distinguished group of intellectuals and legal experts have joined the tribunal. Headed by Jean-Paul Sartre, they include Vladimir Dedijer, Yugoslav historian and writer; Isaac Deutscher, writer and historian; Mehmet Ali Aybar, expert in international law and a member of parliament in Turkey; Mahmud Ali Pasuri, senior advocate Supreme Court of Pakistan; former President Lazaro Cardenas of Mexico; the Americans, David Dellinger and Stokely Carmichael, well known for their vigorous opposition to Johnson's escalation of the war in Vietnam; and similar prominent figures in the academic and legal fields in Italy, France, Japan and the Philippines.
As the preliminary meetings convened, the leading conservative paper here, the Daily Telegraph, opened a full-dress attack, headlining the resignations of various heads of state from the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation. These included President Léopold Senghor of Senegal, Emperor Hailé Selassié of Ethiopia, President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia and President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania.
The Daily Telegraph candidly admitted that "The Americans are known to have put diplomatic pressure on friendly Governments not to support the tribunal."
The same newspaper also carried a dispatch from its staff correspondent in Washington that the "United States Government let it be known today particularly in Paris that it would be displeased if any official support or consent was given to Earl Russell's tribunal on Vietnam ‘war crimes.'"
Bertrand Russell replied to the resignations by regretting that sponsors of the Russell Peace Foundation had "yielded to intolerable pressure." He added that the tripbunal was fully autonomous and would not bend to governmental pressure. This position was backed by members of the tribunal at a press conference November 16. Isaac Deutscher and Vladimir Dedijer emphasized that the tribunal would rigorously guard its independence from any interference by any state power, official or unofficial agency. They made it clear that it would finance its work through contributions from sympathetic individuals and organizations. They stressed that all funds expended initially came from a loan extended by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation which would be paid back and that control of the finances were under the jurisdiction of a special commission that would issue a public report at the conclusion of its work.
At the press conference, Russell read a moving statement on the establishment of the tribunal. He recalled that he had characterized the war in Vietnam as far back as 1964 as a "war of annihilation" by the United States government and that the events in the three and a half years since then had confirmed this assessment.
"We command no armies," he said, “and compel no audience to hear us. If civilisation is to be more than an unfounded hope, it must be possible for people who have sought only to contribute to it to claim the right to speak in its name and to defend it." He recalled the many wars and crimes that he had witnessed and lived through from the Dreyfus case and the crimes committed by King Leopold in the Congo to the injustices and crimes of the present. The acts reported by the Western press today "force one to look back twenty years for anything comparable in our collective experience....I cannot recall a people so tormented, yet so devoid of the failings of their tormentors. I do not know any other conflict in which the disparity in physical power was so vast. I have no memory of any people so enduring, or of any nation with a spirit of resistance so unquenchable."
The tribunal has set up a Public Liaison Commission, a Finance Commission, a Scientific Commission and a Legal Commission. It will send investigators to north and south Vietnam and invite witnesses to appear in Paris.
Skilled scientific workers have already volunteered to help in the inquiry and they will function under the direction of Professor Laurent Schwartz of the University of Paris, an eminent mathematician. The hearings scheduled to begin in Paris next March are expected to last three months.
The U.S. government and President Johnson will be invited to appear or to submit whatever material evidence they wish. The government of the People's Republic of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front of south Vietnam have offered their cooperation to facilitate the work of investigating teams in their respective areas.
At the three-day preliminary meeting here it was amply clear that the tribunal members, who are from many lands and diverse backgrounds and who hold divergent philosophies, shared a common feeling of historic responsibility to bring out the truth about what is happening in Vietnam and just who is guilty.
Some of the tribunal members were conscious of the historic precedent set by the commission headed by the American educator and philosopher John Dewey which undertook an impartial investigation into the notorious Moscow Trials of the thirties, and which amassed definitive proof that they were frame-ups concocted by Stalin and his secret police. The work of that courageous group of intellectuals, who resisted great pressures at the time, was eventually vindicated in the most resounding way.
The attitude of the Communist parties, both of the Khrushchevist and Maoist varieties, is still not clear. It appears that uncertainty exists in these circles as to what to say about the establishment of the International War Crimes Tribunal. While some
Communist papers have sought to ignore or minimize its significance, others have responded positively. The Bulgarian Communist party, for instance, gave it front-page prominence November 15.
In a British Broadcasting Corporation program November 14, Jean-Paul Sartre sharply criticized the negative and ambiguous line of the Khrushchevists as being responsible for the continuation of the tragedy in Vietnam.
It was quite evident in the preliminary meetings, that unlike many previous broad united-front committees, the leading participants in this one, such as Sartre, Dedijer and Deutscher, are determined to play an aggressive public role to push the work of the tribunal to a successful conclusion.