Alleged war crimes in Ukraine: Are UN and EU toothless bulldogs? (1)

NEWS media all over the world continue to be awash with the reports of the alleged war crimes being perpetrated by Russia in its unprovoked war campaign in Ukraine. From deliberate attacks on civilian population in hospitals, make-shift shelters and train stations, the Russian war is nothing more than a reign of terror on innocent civilians. The US Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken, in a press statement, noted as follows:

‘Since launching his unprovoked and unjust war of choice, Russian President Vladimir Putin has unleashed unrelenting violence that has caused death and destruction across Ukraine. We’ve seen numerous credible reports of indiscriminate attacks and attacks deliberately targeting civilians, as well as other atrocities. Russia’s forces have destroyed apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, critical infrastructure, civilian vehicles, shopping centers, and ambulances, leaving thousands of innocent civilians killed or wounded. Many of the sites Russia’s forces have hit have been clearly identifiable as in-use by civilians. This includes the Mariupol maternity hospital, as the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights expressly noted in a March 11 report. It also includes a strike that hit a Mariupol theater, clearly marked with the word “дети” — Russian for “children” — in huge letters visible from the sky. Putin’s forces used these same tactics in Grozny, Chechnya, and Aleppo, Syria, where they intensified their bombardment of cities to break the will of the people. Their attempt to do so in Ukraine has again shocked the world and, as President Zelenskyy has soberly attested, “bathed the people of Ukraine in blood and tears.”

Every day that Russia’s forces continue their brutal attacks, the number of innocent civilians killed and wounded, including women and children, climbs. As of March 22, officials in besieged Mariupol said that more than 2,400 civilians had been killed in that city alone. Not including the Mariupol devastation, the United Nations has officially confirmed more than 2,500 civilian casualties, including dead and wounded, and emphasizes the actual toll is likely higher. Last week, I echoed President Biden’s statement, based on the countless accounts and images of destruction and suffering we have all seen, that war crimes had been committed by Putin’s forces in Ukraine. I noted then that the deliberate targeting of civilians is a war crime. I emphasized that Department of State and other U.S. government experts were documenting and assessing potential war crimes in Ukraine. Today, I can announce that, based on information currently available, the U.S. government assesses that members of Russia’s forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine’

According to study.com, war crimes can be defined as unwarranted acts of violence or brutality, violations of treaties, or violating customs that govern military conflicts. War crimes are most often committed by military personnel but can also be committed by politicians and civilians. Russia’s war crimes include the alleged kidnap of about 120,000 children from Ukraine, and in a 11th April 2022 report of UK’s The Sun, there was report with the caption: ‘Boy, 11, raped by Russian Troops in Front of His Horrified Mother as She Was Tied to a Chair and Forced to Watch’. The report further stated that five Russian soldiers also allegedly sexually assaulted a 14-year-old, kidnapped children across the Russian border, and raped another 16-year and 78-year-old Ukrainian women.

IN CASE YOU MISSED THESE FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE

The resort of Russian troops to rape as a warfare tactic is not only appalling but has been decried in the international community. According to a Harvard University Journal captioned “Rape as a War Crime: The Position of International Law since World War II”, international attention first focused on the use of rape as a tactic of warfare in Bosnia between 1991 and 1995. Rape was also employed by Hutu troops against Tutsi women in the genocidal campaign in Rwanda in 1994. In December of 1993, The United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, and with that the international community acknowledged its global dimensions. During the Bosnian war of 1992-95 Yugoslav women and hundreds of other Muslim women were systematically raped and tortured in a clear attempt to advance the cause of ethnic cleansing. Several of the women took to court, and testified against, three Bosnian soldiers in the courtrooms of the Yugoslav war-crimes tribunal in The Hague. The ruling made on the rape cases between Yugoslav women and the Bosnian Serb army is a landmark in establishing that systematic rape during conflict is not merely a violation of the practice of war but a crime against humanity.

War crime tribunals

At the end of the Second World War, the victorious governments of the allied nations, including the now-defunct Soviet Union, set up the first international criminal tribunals to prosecute high-level political officials and military authorities for war crimes and other wartime atrocities. The International Military Tribunal (IMT) was set up in Nuremberg, Germany to prosecute and punish war criminals. The proceedings, which were tagged The Nuremberg Trial, saw the IMT preside over a combined trial of senior Nazi political and military leaders, as well as several Nazi organizations. Generally, the Nuremberg Charter provided that the IMT had authority to try and punish persons who commited:

Crimes against peace – which included planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements, or assurances

War crimes – i.e., violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity, and

Crimes against humanity – including murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of domestic law of the country where perpetrated.

The IMT prosecutors indicted 22 senior German political and military leaders and sentenced them to punishments that ranged from death by hanging to fifteen years’ imprisonment.

In Africa, the International Criminal Court had, at one time or the other, indicted persons of the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes or aggression. One of such was Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the successor to Muammar Gaddafi. He was indicted on 27 June 2011 on two counts of crimes against humanity with regard to the situation in Libya. According to Wiki, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, in conjunction with Muammar Gaddafi and his inner circle of advisers, allegedly planned a policy of violent oppression in response to the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions that was implemented in the early weeks of the Libyan civil war. They allegedly murdered hundreds of civilians and committed “inhuman acts that severely deprived the civilian population of its fundamental rights”. Another popular case was Laurent Gbagbo who was indicted on 23 November 2011 on four counts of crimes against humanity with regard to the situation in the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire.

To be continued

AARE AFE BABALOLA, OFR, CON, SAN, LL.D (Lond.)