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 labour camps been created, has there been deporta-
tion of the population or other acts tending to the extermina-
tion of the population and which can be characterised
juridically as acts of genocide? Two things immediately strike us on reading these questions. One is that the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation has in the past answered "yes" to most of them; we too would answer "yes" to most of these questions, and we are confident that a great deal of evidence could be produced to support this answer. Uowever, for a tribunal to ask such questions when its sponsoring body has already given the answers has naturally given rise to the charge that the questions are rhetorical and the answers a foregone conclusion, and that the tribunal therefore is not impartial. Nevertheless, the tribunal members state:
"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 documents. No evidence
relevant to our purposes will be refused attention....
We invite the government of the United States to present
evidence or cause it to be presented, and to instruct
their officials or representatives to appear and state
their case." Bertrand Russell, answering the criticism of partiality, says:
"This tribunal is bound to establish faultless procedures
for evaluating evidence and testimony and for arriving
at its conclusion. That no-one today questions the facts
established at the Nuremberg trials proves the merit of
rigorous methods, not the impartiality of the victorious
allies."
The tribunal will meet in March, and its work is expected to take about twelve weeks; among its members are lawyers from France, Turkey, Italy, Pakistan, Japan and Yugoslavia. It will have every opportunity to prove the rigorousness of its methods, and no judgment need be made about this now. However, at this stage there does seem to be some doubt as to whether the tribunal will be impartial, as its members claim, or partial but rigorous, as Lord Russell claims.
The second point about the tribunal's five questions reinforces this doubt. It is that the investigation is entirely directed towards the conduct of the war by the United States and its allies. Nowhere are similar questions asked about the conduct of the National Liberation Front or the North Vietnamese.
At last week's press conference, the tribunal was asked why this was so. Isaac Deutscher replied that the tribunal's job was to investigate the charges it had been asked to investigate, which were the charges against the U.S. and its allies. However, the tribunal would examine any evidence put to it. This seemed to imply that the tribunal would investigate charges of atrocities committed by the NLF forces; but he had not long sat down when Ralph Schoenman, who is Lord Russell's secretary, a director of the Russell Foundation, and general secretary of the war crimes tribunal, jumped up to add that "there is a distinction between aggression and resistance to aggression."
Mr. Schoenman's remarks are backed by Lord Russell's statement:
"Our foes and even some of our friends have argued that
in any war, both sides are guilty of committing atrocities
and, by inference, must be held equally responsible. Let
it be clear that this tribunal would never think of
refusing to examine any evidence which supports this
hypothesis. At the same time, we must be adamant on the
necessity to distinguish between sporadic incidents in
the course of a war of resistance fought by a colonised
people and the acts systematically practised by the
American forces in Vietnam. The tribunal must not focus
on isolated episodes; rather it must uncover the pattern
of acts committed in a systematic fashion and on higher
orders by the U.S. military forces in Vietnam."
This is a most unfortunate statement. Its tone of seeking to give orders to the tribunal ("the tribunal must not focus... it must uncover ... we must be adamant") conflicts with the
tribunal's own statement that “our purpose is to establish, without fear or favour, the full truth about this war." Lord Russell and Ralph Schoenman appear to have come to an a priori conclusion about what constitutes a war crime - that it is a crime committed by an aggressor. If this is so, and if the tribunal accepts their definition, the value of its work will in our view be seriously weakened. If the tribunal wishes to establish, “without fear or favour," the full truth about the war, it surely has an obligation to examine the conduct of all parties in the war. It may then come to the conclusion that the United States is far more guilty than the NLF; it would be quite entitled to do so, and we suspect that its conclusions would carry more weight than if it so defines the nature of a war crime as to say that only one side is capable of committing them. In this connection, it is interesting that Lord Russell takes his stand on the Nuremberg tribunal. It is quite true, as he says, that no-one questions the facts which emerged at Nuremberg. But he also appears to think that the partiality of the allies does not matter, and although he admits that "inhibiting factors ... call in question certain of the Nuremberg procedures," for him Nuremberg is a good precedent to cite in order to justify a partial tribunal. It is at this point that we and many others would disagree. By what right did the allies at Nuremberg presume to judge the defeated German leaders? It will be answered, by the fact that the allies fought for democracy against Nazism, which (as the trials showed) was a barbarous slave system, guilty of multiple atrocities. But did the allies have clean hands? Did they never kill innocent civilians or experiment with new weapons or weapons forbidden by the laws of war? Was the bombing of Dresden a war crime? Hamburg? Hiroshima? Nagasaki? Did the resistance forces in Europe, even though they were fighting against oppression, commit no crimes? What is & war crime, anyway? And so today in Vietnam: have the "Viet Cong" not shelled and mined the centre of Saigon, using fragmantation weapons and killing and wounding civilians? Have they used no terror methods in the areas they control? To ask these ouestions is not, as Lord Russell says, to hold both sides equally responsible. This paper has always held that the Saigon regime and the Americans bear the greatest degree of responsibility for the origin and the character of the war. But we also hold that both sides in the war are responsible for it; we do not see how any attempt to discover the truth about the war can avoid asking these questions about the part played by the forces of North Vietnam and the NLF. One of the difficulties at last week's press conference was to distinguish the war crimes tribunal from the Russell Foundation. As they entered the room journalists were presented with a document folder which contained statements about the Foundation as well as the tribunal, and items such as a pamphlet by Ralph Schoenman entitled "A Glimpse of American Crimes in Vietnam." Many were irritated to find that they could only ask questions about the tribunal, and not about the Foundation. Thus, having established that the tribunal was not being paid for by any government, but was receiving a large loan from the Foundation,
it was then impossible to find out any more about the Foundations finances. Vladimir Dedijer, who was in the chair, was curt and stern with journalists who wanted answers to some of these forbidden questions. At the time, it looked as though Dr. Dedijer was trying to stage-manage the press conference, But amplified whispers from the platform made it clear that he, like others present, was very displeased at the 35-minute delay to the conference caused by Lord Russell's late arrival. He also intervened when Ralph Schoenman seemed about to get into an embarrassing conflict with a reporter, saying: "Mr.,Schoenman is speaking in his own name." It could be that Dr. Dedijer was trying to keep the tribunal as independent in fact as it is said to be on paper, and was anxious to avoid entangling the tribunal in arguments about the policy of the Russell Foundation. However this may be, it is clear that unless the war crimes tribunal is content to rely on the minority press, it is unlikely to get the kind of attention and coverage it wants in the West until it can give straight answers to reasonable questions and make a clearer claim to impartiality than it can at present. A British peace movement executive commented after the press conference: "If they make a mess of this, they will bring us all down." This may be an exaggeration, but it will be tragic if this opportunity to reveal the truth about the war is lost. We fear it will be lost if the tribunal, however faultless its procedures, is founded on a commitment to one side in the war,