E-Library ’71 – recent additions – (April 2010, week 1)
Librarians’ Note: This E-Library is maintained by the War Crimes Strategy Forum (WCSF), a strategic coalition of activists and organisations sharing the common goal of assisting the prosecution of war criminals of Bangladesh 1971. Only the members registered to this site will enjoy FULL-TEXT download-access to the entries. It is advised that you open your free-account today by clicking the Registration link. To be able to download full-text of the items stored on this library, or to add new items, you will need additional user-rights which can be requested from the Library-Admin at the Feedback-Address. You are also welcome to suggest new records to the library database. We hope the resources made available on this site will facilitate serious research of high standard on issues relating to the Liberation War of Bangladesh and the prosecution of war criminals.
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Pilkington, Richard D. “A “Time when Principles Make best Politics?” – The United States’ Response to the Genocide in East Pakistan.” Master’s thesis. Department of History, Concordia University. 2006.
Abstract: During nine months of military operations in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), the West Pakistani army along with their local collaborators butchered at least one million people. Though very much aware of the nature of the atrocities in East Pakistan, and despite vociferous public criticisms at home, the US Government not only refused to intervene militarily or economically, but also failed to publicly condemn the actions of Islamabad (ie, West Pakistan) authorities. President Richard Nixon, and his National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, dominated the US foreign policy at the time of the crisis. In his memoirs, Kissinger argued that US inaction during the emergency was justified on strategic grounds involving US China relationship and Yahya’s role in it. In contrast, using evidence from declassified documents, the thesis argues that the US reaction was divided into two phases. Only after 27 April 1971 did the secret China initiative come to dominate Nixon and Kissinger’s foreign policy. Up until that watershed moment, a complex mixture of more mundane motives drove the US response. This revisionist posture, therefore, directly contradicts Kissinger’s contention.
Abstract: This article examines and anlyses the rules of evidence and procedure applied in the trials of major war criminals at Nuremberg and Tokyo and in a representative sampling of the trials that have followed. It reaches several conclusions. First the rules of procedure were devised by American lawyers who based them on American law. second, the intentionally amorphous nature of those rules left room for fair or unfair trials, for just or unjust results. Finally, the authors echoes Telford Taylor to emphasize the importance of studying the historical lessons to inform the shaping of legal proceedings in the future
Morehouse, Ward (ed). Bangladesh: The Birth of a Nation. Madras: M. Seshachalam, 1972.
Abstract: Published in 1972, this textbook was prepared for university students (primarily students majoring in International Relations) briefing them about the cultural and political history of newly liberated but ’little studied’ Bangladesh. This book contains several important documents like US congressional hearings about Bangladesh, Indira Gandhi’s international networking efforts, proclamation of Bangladesh Independence etc.
Abstract: In the Genocide case the ICJ placed a broad interpretation on the obligation to prevent genocide, enshrined in Article I of the Genocide Convention. For the Court, this obligation has an operative and non-preambular nature with respect to the other obligations laid down in the Convention. In addition, it would necessarily imply the obligation for states themselves not to commit genocide. This latter finding is not entirely convincing for it is not in keeping with the historical foundations of the Convention and in addition results from an interpretation that, instead of clarifying the meaning of a treaty rule, infers a new obligation from it. The paper suggests that under international law the criminal liability of individuals and state responsibility for genocide are not triggered by the violation of the same primary rule. The contrary view is not corroborated by state practice and international case law: while the crime of genocide can be committed regardless of the existence of a state genocidal policy, the state’s international responsibility necessarily requires such a policy. Also, for the international responsibility of the state to arise there is no need to demonstrate that the state as such, or one or more of its officials, harboured a genocidal intent in the criminal sense. The Court’s finding is based on the notion that the state’s international responsibility for genocide presupposes that of an individual acting on behalf of the state. This approach is fl awed: in criminal matters the presumption of innocence only allows criminal courts to satisfy themselves that a person committed a crime. The Court could have confined itself to interpreting the obligation to prevent and punish genocide set out in Article 1 as endowed with an autonomous content and concluding, as in fact it did, that Serbia had violated both of them. It did not need to embark upon a construction of the Convention substantially marred by a misapprehension of the difference between genocide as an international wrongful act of state and genocide as a crime involving individual criminal liability.
Abstract: The author looks at one component of transition to democracy: the strategies successor elites develop to deal with injustice committed by the previous, authoritarian regime. He compares post-transition justice in Belgium, France, and The Netherlands after World War II and in Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism. He discusses several factors that influence policy choices. Among the most influential are the legacy of the past regime, the international legal context at the time of the passage to democracy, and the mode of transition and its ensuing impact on the balance of power between the old and the new order.
Abstract: The author appraises the contribution of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to substantive and procedural international criminal law. He portrays it as a evolutionary innovation. Its substantive features include: a definition of crimes falling within its jurisdiction which is more specific than in existing international law; and impressive detail in spelling out general principles of international criminal law such as actus reus, mens rea, nullum crimen and nulla poena, as well as various forms of international criminal responsibility (for commission of crimes, aiding and abetting, etc.). Certain of the substantive provisions, however, may be considered retrogressive in the light of existing law. These include: the distinction between international and internal armed conflicts, needlessly perpetuated in Article 8; an insufficient prohibition of the use in armed conflict of modern weapons that cause unnecessary suffering or are inherently indiscriminate; the excessively cautious criminalization of war crimes offences; the omission of recklessness as a culpable state of mind at least for some crimes; and excessive breadth given to the defences of mistake of law, superior order and self-defence. The author considers the ICC’s major contribution to be procedural. The Statute has set up a complex judicial body with detailed regulations governing all the stages in the criminal adjudication. The prerequisites to the exercise of jurisdiction, however, depend greatly on the willingness of all states parties concerned in the prosecution to cooperate with the Court. In its present form, the author argues, the Statute is somewhat too deferential to the prerogatives of state sovereignty, a fact which could impair the ICC’s effectiveness.
Abstract: This is an unclassified file of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service released on September 3rd 1992. Bangladesh is the subject and most of the reports are derived from Bangladeshi newspapers during that time period. You will be able to find Golam Azam’s citizenship and his jail sentence issue, movement of the Ghatok Dalal Nirmul Committee and other important events during that time period. These are very interesting historical documents having relevance to present day War Crime Trial issue.
Hitchens, Christopher. “The Case Against Henry Kissinger.” Harper’s Magazine.February (2001).
Abstract: The “ex-post-facto” clause of section io of Article I of the Constitution provides flatly that “no State shall pass any ex post facto Law.” In the ninth section of the same article, there is a similar provision which applies to Congress. It is thus evident that “ex post facto Laws,” whatever they are, were thoroughly disapproved by the framers of our government and were intended by them to be completely impossible under our system. Literally, “an ex post facto Law” is simply a law that is retrospective; that is, a law made after the doing of the thing to which it relates, and retroacting upon it. Such laws are generally deemed unfair, because, in the nature of the case, the person, or persons, involved in the behavior to which such a law relates, can have had no notice, when the behavior took place, of such an after-made law which applies to it. The unfairness varies, however, from case to case. It is non-existent in cases of the doing of heinous things in reliance on legal technicalities; in other cases, supervening unforeseen events may give rise to equities which wipe any unfairness out; and the public welfare sometimes demands that legislation be passed, which, in some measure, disregards individuals’ strict antecedent rights.
Abstract: The subject of war crimes and collective wrongdoing – whether in the name of ethnic cleansing or a more veiled form of nationalism – is in the forefront of contemporary discourse in politics, international affairs, and political philosophy. This volume addresses urgent questions about the nature of war crimes, nationalism, ethnic cleansing, and collective responsibility. In fourteen newly written essays, a distinguished team of international scholars consider war crimes and collective wrongdoing from a variety of moral, political, and legal perspectives. There is a substantial introduction from Anthony Ellis and each group of essays is followed by an afterword from the editor and suggestions for further reading. Consistently probing and provocative, War Crimes and Collective Wrongdoing promises to be of enduring interest to students and scholars alike.
Abstract: The courtroom trials of such figures as Joan of Arc, Socrates, Sacco and Vanzetti, Eichmann, and Angela Davis are reviewed in this book. Reviewing the book, Kirkus Reviews (VNU Business Media) observes: “only a handful of these trials were actual legal landmarks, but the defendants — from Socrates and Joan of Arc through Dreyfus and Oscar Wilde, the Nuremberg war criminals and the Chicago Eight — in some way challenged the conscience of their time and influenced the history of ideas. Aymar and Sagarin do a truly impressive job of summarizing conflicting evidence in such cases as Sacco and Vanzetti and the Rosenbergs, or reviewing changing historical interpretations of such political cases as Johnson’s impeachment trial, and of capturing the drama of the courtrooms in excerpted testimony. Considering the volumes of investigation and commentary each one of these twenty-four trials has inspired, this one-volume survey can be only a sampler, but the concise record, contemporary illustrations and photographs and extensive bibliography preserve the living controversy in each of the twenty-four cases”.
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