STATEMENT OF AIMS OF INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL
[As reported previously in World Outlook, the International War Crimes Tribunal, which was initiated by Bertrand Russell, met in London November 13-16 to complete preliminary work and lay the basis for a thoroughgoing inquiry into the criminal aspects of the war in Vietnam. The group of intellectuals, public figures and legal experts who have joined the Tribunal include Jean-Paul Sartre, Vladimir Dedijer, Isaac Deutscher, Mehmet Ali Aybar, Mahmud Ali Pasuri, former President Lazaro Cardenas, David Dellinger and Stokely Carmichael. -
{At its first press conference, held in London November 16, the Tribunal issued a statement defining its aims and the scope of its inquiry. The following is the text of this statement. ]
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The conscience of mankind is profoundly disturbed by the war being waged in Vietnam. It is a war in which the world's wealthiest and most powerful state is opposed to a nation of poor peasants, who have been fighting for their independence for a quarter of a century. It appears that this war is being waged in violation of international law ‘and custom.
Every day, the world press and, particularly, that of the United States, pub-
lishes reports which, if proved, would represent an ever-growing violation of the principles established by the Nuremberg Tribunal and rules fixed by international agreements.
Moved and shocked by the suffering endured by the Vietnamese people and convinced that humanity must know the truth in order to deliver a serious and impartial judgment on the events taking place in Vietnam and where the responsibility for them lies, we have accepted the invitation of Bertrand Russell to meet, in order to examine these facts scrupulously and confront them with the rules of law which govern then.
“It has been alleged that in the first nine months of 1966, the air force of the United States has dropped, in Vietnam, four million pounds of bombs daily. If it continues at this rate to the end of the year, the total will constitute a greater mass of explosives than it unloaded on the entire Pacific theater during the whole of the Second World War. The area bombarded in this way is no bigger than the states of New York and Pennsylvania.
In the south, the U.S. forces and their docile Saigon allies have herded eight million people, peasants and their families, into barbed wire encampments under the surveillance of the political police. Chemical poisons have been, and are being, used to defoliate and render barren tens of thousands of acres of farmland. Crops are being
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systematically destroyed -- and this in a country where, even in normal times, the average man or woman eats less than half the food consumed by the average American (and lives to less than one third of his age).
Irrigation systems are deliberately disrupted. Napalm, phosphorus bombs and a variety of other, sadistically designed and hitherto unknown weapons are being used against the population of both north and south Vietnam. More than five hundred thousand Vietnamese men, women and children have perished under this onslaught, more than the number of soldiers the United States lost in both world wars, although the population of Vietnam had already been decimated during the Japanese and French occupations and the famine .which followed the Second World War.
Even though we have not been entrusted with this task by any organized authority, we have taken the responsibility in the interest of humanity and the preservation of civilization. We act on our own accord, in complete independence from any government and any official or semiofficial organization, in the firm belief that we express a deep anxiety and remorse felt by many of our fellow humans in many countries. We trust that our action will help to arouse the conscience of the world.
We, therefore, consider ourselves a Tribunal which, even if it has not the power to impose sanctions, will have to answer, amongst others, the following questions:
1. Has the United States government (and the governments of Australia, New Zealand and South Korea) committed acts of aggression according to international law?
2. Has the American army made use of or experimented with new weapons or weapons forbidden by the laws of war (gas, special chemical products, napalm, etc.)?
3. Has there been bombardment of targets of a purely civilian character, for example hospitals, schools, sanatoria, dams, etc., and on what scale has this occurred?
4, Have Vietnamese prisoners been subjected to inhuman treatment forbidden by the laws of war and, in particular, to torture or to mutilation? Have there been unjustified reprisals against the civilian population, in particular, the execution of hostages?
5. Have forced labor camps been created, has there been deportation of the population or other acts tending to the extermination of the population and which can be characterized juridically as acts of genocide?
If the Tribunal decides that one, or all, of these crimes have been committed, it will be up to the Tribunal to decide who bears the responsibility for them.
This Tribunal will examine all the evidence that may be placed before it by any source or party. The evidence may be oral, or in the form of