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Existentialism
Jean Paul Sartre (1905 - 1980)
Russell vietnam war Crimes Tribunal
Inaugural Statement
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Nous
sommes un condamné à mort qui se prépare bravement au
dernier supplice, qui met tous ses soins à faire belle
figure sur l'échafaud et qui, entre temps, est enlevé
par une grippe espagnole. |
Our
Tribunal was formed, on the initiative of Lord Bertrand Russell,
to decide whether the accusations of ‘war crimes’
levelled against the government of the United States as well
as against those of South Korea, New Zealand and Australia,
during the conflict in Vietnam, are justified.
During this inaugural session, the origin,
function, aims and limits of the Tribunal must be clarified:
the Tribunal means to explain itself, without sidetracking,
on the question of what has been called its ‘legitimacy’.
In 1945, something absolutely new in history
appeared at Nuremberg with the first international Tribunal
formed to pass judgement on crimes committed by a belligerent
power. Until then there had been a few international agreements,
for instance the Briand-Kellogg pact, which were aimed at
limiting the jus ad bellum; but as no other body had
been created to implement them, the relations between the
powers continued to operate under the law of the jungle. It
could not be otherwise: the nations which had built their
wealth upon the conquest of great colonial empires would not
have tolerated being judged upon their actions in Africa or
Asia.
From 1939, the Hitlerian furies had endangered
the world to such an extent that the horrified Allies decided,
since they were to be the victors, to judge and condemn the
wars of aggression and conquest, the maltreatment of prisoners
and the tortures, as well as the racist practices known as
‘genocide’, unaware that they were condemning themselves,
in this way, for their own actions in the colonies.
For this reason, that is to say because
they were recognizing the Nazi crimes, and because, in the
more universal sense, they were opening the way to a real
jurisdiction for the denunciation and {63} condemnation of
war crimes wherever committed, and whoever the culprits, the
Tribunal of Nuremberg is still the manifestation of a change
of capital importance: the substitution of jus ad bellum
by jus contra bellum.
Unfortunately, as is wont to happen whenever
a new force is created by historical exigencies, this Tribunal
was not free from serious faults. It has been said that it
was a diktat of the victors to the vanquished and,
which comes to the same thing, that it was not really being
international: one group of nations was judging another. Would
it have been more worthwhile to have taken the judges from
neutral countries? I cannot say. What is certain, however,
is that, although the decisions were perfectly just by ethical
standards, they did not convince all Germans. The legitimacy
of the magistrates and their sentences is contested to this
day. Also, it has been declared that, if the fortunes of war
had been otherwise, a tribunal of the Axis could have condemned
the Allies for the bombing of Dresden or for that of Hiroshima.
Such a body would not have been difficult
to set up. It would have sufficed that the body created for
the judgement of the Nazis had continued after its original
task, or that the United Nations, considering all the consequences
of what had just been achieved, would, by a vote of the General
Assembly, have consolidated it into a permanent tribunal,
empowered to investigate and to judge all accusations of war
crimes, even if the accused should be one of the countries
that had been responsible for the sentencing at Nuremberg.
In this way, the implicit universality of the original intention
would have been clearly defined. However, we know what did
happen: hardly had the last guilty German been sentenced than
the Tribunal vanished and no one ever heard of it again.
Are we therefore so pure? Have there been
no war crimes since 1945? Have we never had further resort
to violence or to aggression? Have there been no more ‘genocides’?
Has no large country ever tried to break by force the sovereignty
of a smaller one? Has there never been reason for denouncing
more Oradours or Auschwitzes?
You know the truth: in the last twenty
years, the great historical act has been the struggle of the
underdeveloped nations for their freedom. The colonial empires
have crumbled, and in {64} their place independent nations
have grown or have reclaimed ancient and traditional independence
which had been eliminated by colonialism. All this has happened
in suffering, sweat and blood. A tribunal such as that of
Nuremberg has become a permanent necessity. I have already
said that, before the Nazi trials, war was lawless. The Nuremberg
Tribunal, an ambiguous reality, was created from the highest
legal principles no doubt but, at the same time, it created
a precedent, the embryo of a tradition. Nobody can go back,
stop what has already existed, nor, when a small and poor
country is the object of aggression, prevent one from thinking
back to those trials and saying to oneself: it is this very
same thing that was condemned then. In this way, the hasty
and incomplete measures taken and then abandoned by the Allies
in 1945 have created a real gap in international affairs.
We sadly lack an organization which has been created and affirmed
in its permanency and universality and which has irreversibly
defined its rights and duties. It is a gap which must
be filled and yet which no one will fill.
There are, in fact, two sources of power
for such a body. The first is the state and its institutions.
However, in this period of violence most governments, if they
took such an initiative, would fear that it might one day
be used against them and that they would find themselves in
the dock with the accused.
And then, for many, the United States
is a powerful ally: who would dare ask for the resurrection
of a tribunal whose first action would be to demand an inquiry
on the Vietnam conflict? The other source is the people, in
a revolutionary period, when institutions are changing. But,
although the struggle is implacable, how could the masses,
divided by frontiers, unite and impose on the various governments
an institution which would be a true Court of the People?
The Russell Tribunal was born of this
doubly contradictory conclusion: the judgement of Nuremberg
had necessitated the existence of an institution to inquire
into war crimes and, if necessary, to sit in judgement; today
neither governments nor the masses are capable of forming
one. We are perfectly aware that we have not been given a
mandate by anyone; but we took the initiative to meet, and
we also know that nobody could have given us a mandate.
It is true that our Tribunal is not an institution. But, {65}
it is not a substitute for any institution already in existence:
it is, on the contrary, formed out of a void and for a real
need. We were not recruited or invested with real powers by
governments: but, as we have just seen, the investiture at
Nuremberg was not enough to give the jurists unquestioned
legality. . . . The Russell Tribunal believes, on the contrary,
that its legality comes from both its absolute powerlessness
and its universality.
We are powerless: that is the guarantee
of our independence. There is nothing to help us except for
the participation of the supporting committees which are,
like ourselves, meetings of private individuals. As we do
not represent any government or party, we cannot receive orders.
We will examine the facts ‘in our souls and our consciences’,
as we say, or, if one prefers, in the full liberty of our
spirits. None of us can state, today, how the discussions
will turn out and whether we answer yes or no to the accusations,
or whether we will come to a conclusion at all, perhaps deciding
that the evidence, though real, is insufficiently proven.
What is certain, in any case, is that our weakness, even if
we are convinced by the proof brought before us, would not
enable us to condemn. What can even the lightest sentence
mean if we do not have the means to put it into effect? We
will therefore limit ourselves, should this arise, to declaring
that this or that act does in fact fall under the jurisdiction
of Nuremberg, and that it is therefore a war crime and that,
if the law were applied, it would be appropriate for this
or that sentence to be carried out. In this case, if possible,
we will name the guilty. Thus, the Russell Tribunal will have
no other function in this inquiry and its conclusions, but
to make everybody understand the necessity for international
jurisdiction - which it has neither the means nor the ambition
to replace and the essence of which would be to resuscitate
the jus contra bellum, stillborn at Nuremberg, and
to substitute legal, ethical laws for the law of the jungle.
From the very fact that we are simple
citizens, we have been able, in coopting ourselves from all
over the world, to give our Tribunal a more universal structure
than that which prevailed at Nuremberg. I do not only mean
that a larger number of countries is represented; from this
point of view there are still many gaps. But, most of all,
whilst in 1945 the Germans were represented only in the dock,
or sometimes as witnesses, here {66} several members of the
jury are from the USA. This means that they come from the
country whose very policy is our subject and that they have,
therefore, their own ways of understanding it. Whatever may
be their conclusions, the intimate relation with their own
country and its institutions and traditions will necessarily
be reflected in this Tribunal’s conclusions.
Whatever may be our wishes for impartiality
and universality, we are very conscious that this does not
legitimize our undertaking. What we would really like is that
our legitimation would be in retrospect, or a posteriori.
In fact we do not work for ourselves nor for our own edification,
and we do not presume to impose our conclusions like a thunderbolt.
In truth, we would wish, with press collaboration, to maintain
constant contact between ourselves and the masses all over
the world who are painfully watching the tragedy in Vietnam.
We hope that they will be learning while we learn, that they
will watch and understand, and come to their own conclusions.
These conclusions, whatever they may be, we would wish to
be reached individually and independently of those we come
to ourselves. This session is a communal undertaking for which
the final term should be, as a philosopher said, ‘une
verité devenue’. If the masses agree with
our judgement, it will become truth, and we, at the very moment
when we step back so that they will become the guardians and
powerful supporters of that truth, will then know that we
have been legitimized. When the people show their agreement
they will also show a greater need: that a real ‘War
Crimes Tribunal’ be created on a permanent basis, that
these crimes may be denounced and not sanctioned anywhere
and at any time.
These last remarks reply to a critical
comment made, without ill-feeling, in a Paris newspaper: ‘What
a strange Tribunal: jurymen but no judge!’ It is true,
we are only jurymen, we have no power to condemn, nor to acquit
anyone. Therefore, we are not prosecutors. There will not
even be a real accusation. Maître Matarasso, President
of the Legal Commission, will read you a statement of the
charges registered. The jurists, at the end of the session,
will have to pronounce on these statements: are they justified
or not? But judges exist everywhere. It is for the peoples
of the world and, in particular, the American people that
we are working. {67}
Ce
qu'on fait n'est jamais compris mais seulement loué ou blâmé.
Nietzsche, Gay Science |
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