STOPPING IMPUNITY —CAN POPULAR ACTION TRIUMPH WHERE INSTITUTIONS HAVE FAILED? (Frederick Spielberg)
[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about why there still is no effective mechanism for seeking justice over inhumanity and blatant human rights violations. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
[As every-now-and-then happens, I find a piece that I want to share with you verbatim. This is the case of this article by Fred Spielberg, originally published by United Against Inhumanity].
1. On the spool of recorded history, human societies have seen countless episodes of brutal atrocities: Egyptian pharaohs, Persian satraps, Mongol hordes, Roman legions, Hunnish invaders, Frankish crusaders, Spanish conquistadores, Western slave-traders, European colonizers, Fascist armies, US bombers, and the various 20th Century ‘genocidaires’ in Namibia, Ottoman Turkey, Rwanda, and Bosnia.
2. We view each of these waves of inhumanity withan appropriate chronological distancing and academic objectivity, as simply a part of the inevitable march of history, the repeated attempts by old-fashioned, authoritarian regimes to impose their iron will on unfortunate, weaker societies. How lucky, we muse, that we have evolved beyond those barbarians.
3. Precisely because we are accustomed to separating ourselves from the horrors of the past, it proves so difficult to make sense of the actual massacres, take the occupied Palestinian territories in this third decade of the 21st Century and how we are bombarded by broadcast in real-time on television and social media. These horrors do not seem comprehensible in today’s modern, civilized world.
4. And yet, in today’s world, there is still no effective mechanism for seeking justice over such inhumanity and blatant human rights (HR) violations, no international arbiter to which we may turn to demand a modicum of accountability for the grotesque evil of total modern warfare.
5. We have a tired, old Security Council of the United Nations in New York, slanted by design in favour of the five winners of a World War fought 80 years ago, any one of which said powers may exercise their veto and block meaningful action on outright injustice. We have the UN-affiliated International Court of Justice in the Hague, whose legalistic rulings to cease and desist have absolutely no teeth and no chance of enforcement in today’s ossified, multi-polar balance of nuclear rivalry.
6. We have an independent International Criminal Court, also located in the Hague, that may issue subpoenas and arrest warrants against the presumptive authors of massacres, but cannot enforce them in the least. We have an Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, that can make measured statements against the latest abuse of the rules of war (international humanitarian law) and basic human rights (international HR law), as long as said statements do not overly offend the superpowers which fund the budget of the UN system.
7. What recourse do we have, then, when a rogue state undertakes a plausible genocide against the people whose land it occupies for the past 75 years, armed and abetted by a rogue super-power like the USA, which is chiefly interested in ensuring profits for its arms manufacturers and geostrategic access to natural resources in the region?
The conceivable answer lies in popular action
8. Absent any strong global mechanism to rein in the devils among us, we must organize ourselves as communities of angels to use the few tools at our disposal: Protests and mass demonstrations in public spaces (including marches on capitals); boycotts of products and services coming from rogue states (no more Big Soda or Starbucks, no Israeli dates or pomelos); cultural isolation of nations led by genocidal authoritarians (barring them from Cannes, Eurovision, the World Cup and all academic exchanges); lobbying for divestment from any industry doing business with a criminal regime (pressure on the pocketbook). Above all are needed, teach-ins and popular education to raise awareness about the inhumanity being perpetrated before our eyes.
9. These modest tools may seem ineffectual when compared with the massive support, trade, and armaments proffered by great economic powers like the USA, Germany and the UK. But concerted people power has worked in the past: against the Vietnam War in the 1960s; against South African apartheid in the 1970s and 1980s; and against Indonesia’s invasion of Timor Leste in the 1990s. In 2024, the university students have given us an object lesson in the power of mass mobilization. Within the space of only a few months, we have seen campus demonstrations spread from New York and Paris to Sydney, Dhaka and Santiago.
10. Students, social activists and an increasingly sympathetic public around the globe have shown a level of solidarity with oppressed civilian populations the world over that would have been unthinkable even a year ago. Western European countries that had once seemed staunch, immovable allies of Israel have formally recognized Palestinian statehood. Multimillion-dollar institutions are actually re-evaluating their portfolios to assess their ties to companies doing business in occupied territories. The entire discourse around such humanitarian law and HR violations has changed now to include terms that were formerly forbidden in this context, terms such as apartheid, ethno-nationalist state, fascism and settler colonialism.
11. Who knows? Concerted demonstrations of popular repudiation for genocide and HR violations anywhere may eventually light the way for a mass movement against the rogue super-powers as well…
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
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