The Hindu : War crimes tribunal on Iraq sought

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 23, 2003

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War crimes tribunal on Iraq sought

Eleven peace activists from South Asia have written an open letter to the Amnesty International Secretary-General, urging that an independent war crimes tribunal on Iraq be set up. The following are excerpts from it:

"On behalf of the peace and human rights community of South Asia we send you this open letter in the wake of the devastating war on Iraq by coalition forces led by the United States and the United Kingdom... This letter contains appeals as well as our expectations that you will take certain concrete steps that will enable the global human rights community to appropriately and effectively respond to some of the worst human rights abuses in the course of the war.

"We do not know when this war will end. Meanwhile, violations of human rights laws and humanitarian laws continue, with murders of tens of thousands of people, amounting to a continuing and undeclared genocide. The partnership of the two leading powers of the coalition forces, and their way of declaring and conducting war, has already created serious predicaments for and questions about the working of the United Nations and the future of human rights.

"The question that we must address now goes, therefore, beyond the issue of monitoring how this war was conducted, because given the history of systematic violation by the Allied powers of the U.N. Charter and the abuse of its programmes, the paramount concern has to be: Is not this war by itself the greatest violation of human rights?...

"The international human rights community must take immediate and appropriate steps towards establishing a war crimes tribunal to keep the movement for accountability and end of impunity alive in the sphere of popular consciousness.

It is to this direction that we address this open letter to you with the hope that Amnesty will take the lead. If it does not, it will fail the entire human rights community."

The signatories are: Paula Banerjee (University of Calcutta), Tapan K. Bose, Rita Manchanda and Ranabir Samaddar (all of South Asia Forum for Human Rights, Kathmandu), Meghna Guhathakurta (University of Dhaka), Ram Narayan Kumar (Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab, Chandigarh), Dinesh Mohan (Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi), Gautam Navlakha (Pakistan-India People's Forum for Peace and Democracy, India), Subodh Raj Pyakurel (INSEC, Kathmandu), Sushil Pyakurel (National Human Rights Commission, Nepal, Kathmandu) and I.A. Rehman (Human Rights Commission of Pakistan).

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