.S. Govt. Found Guilty
By War Crimes Tribunal
Verdict Reflects Moral
Judgment of Entire World
The International War Crimes Tri-
bunal, meeting in Stockholm, concluded
nine days of deliberations on May 10. Af-
ter hearing extensive testimony by inves-
tigation teams, jurists and Vietnamese
victims of the war; the body of distin-
guished intellectuals found the United
States guilty of the crimes of aggression
and "widespread, deliberate and system-
atic" bombardment of civilian targets in
Vietnan.
The tribunal, initiated by the em-
inent British philosopher Bertrand Rus-
sell, also found the U.S. guilty of viola-
ting the "neutrality and territorial in-
tegrity of Cambodia."
Australia, New Zealand and South
Korea were found guilty of complicity in
the war crimes.
Jean-Paul Sartre, the French phi-
losopher and author, read the opinion of
the body. Sartre is the executive pres-
ident of the tribunal.
At future sessions the commission
will take up the question of whether or
not the United States has committed geno-
cide in Vietnam. DANTE PERERA Kea in fice Peru, ett,
on since April 1962 without trial. To- U.S. crimes were defined as "crimes gether with 12 comrades, he is charged against peace and crimes against humanwith holding up bank to get funds to aid ity." Specific violations of international guerrilla movement. Real issue is polit- law were cited under the Kellog-Briand ical views of the defendants. They seek support for their demand for a trial. [Please turn to next page. ]
New York, N. Y. 10010. HP
Pact of 1928, the United Nations Charter, the Nuremberg declarations and the Geneva accords of 1954.
The verdict of the tribunal and the volumes of testimony presented at its” sessions represent a big blow to American prestige. While the U.S. press has mounted a campaign of silence or slander against the Stockholm hearings, the evidence presented by the tribunal is having a significant impact in Europe.
Indicative of the importance Washington has attributed to the tribunal are the intensive efforts by Johnson to prevent the hearings from taking place at all.
U.S. blackmail succeeded in prompting de Gaulle to ban the tribunal from holding its sessions in France as originally planned.
Attempting to hound the tribunal from country to country, Johnson used the occasion of Adenauer's funeral to bring pressure on the Swedish government to refuse admission to the group.
The New York Times reported May 9 that Swedish Premier Tage Erlander had announced. "that a White House aide had told him President Johnson ‘considered it highly regrettable' that the so-called war crimes tribunal was holding sessions here [Stockholm].
"Mr. Erlander said he was told this in Bonn on April 25 by Walt W. Rostow, a special assistant to the President....
"'Mr, Rostow developed President Johnson's regret with considerable sharpness,' Mr. Erlander said."
Failing to prevent the tribunal from meeting, Washington and the U.S. press have pulled all stops in a drive to vilify and discredit the proceedings.
The usually sedate New York Times ran a column on May 12, the day after reporting the findings of the tribunal. Penned by C.L.Sulzberger, the Times foreign affairs expert, the article assails Bertrand Russell with a venom that the gutter press would find difficult to match.
Entitled "Corpse on Horseback," it describes the philosopher variously as a "relic," "totem," "zombie," "unthinking transmission belt for the most transparent Communist lies," "the wasted peer whose bodily endurance outpaced his brain," "human echo chamber," etc.
Sulzberger likens Russell to the "stiffened corpse" of a dead Moorish king led into battle by his followers. He concludes:
"Russell is no more accountable for the Stockholm farce enacted in his name than were the dead Moors accountable for battles they no longer understood but into which their swaying corpses were borne."
The tribunal itself, with the exception of Jean-Paul Sartre, is dismissed as "several mediocrities playing the role of yes men."
Nowhere is any attempt made to refute the evidence of the tribunal. The extreme embarrassment of the U.S. imperialist rulers at the findings of the tribunal couldn't be plainer than in this resort to the vilest slander and character assassination.
As to the actual mental state of the "wasted peer," this was testified to by the noted historian Isaac Deutscher during a recent visit to the United States. Deutscher (one of the members serving on the tribunal) commented:
"I can only hope that when I am his age I have half the intellectual vigor and keenness of mind that Lord Russell displays today to such a remarkable degree."
Jean-Paul Sartre responded to many of the charges raised against the tribunal by clarifying the body's aims in his opening address as executive president:
"What we wish is to maintain...a constant contact between ourselves and the masses who in all parts of the world are living and suffering the tragedy of Vietnam. We hope that they will learn as we learn, that they will discover together with us the reports, the documents, the testimony, that they will evaluate them and make up their minds about them day by day, together with us...
"Yes, if the masses ratify our judgment, then it will become truth...
"'What a strange Tribunal: a jury and no judge!' It is true: we are only a jury, we have neither the power to condemn, nor the power to acquit, anybody...
"We the jury, at the end of’ the session, will have to pronounce on these charges: are they well-founded or not? But the judges are everywhere; they are the peoples of the world, and in particular the American people. It is for them that we are working."