Make them pay for killing innocent people

international | anti-war / imperialism | opinion/analysis Saturday July 26, 2003 22:14 by Irish

Is there no law or court in the world that can really protect innocent civilians from being killed and injured by the US and UK military? The US and UK government and military are unaccountable for the tens of thousands of innocent lives they destroy so they will continue to do so.

Above The Law Forever?
Will the US and UK political and military organisations always remain above the Law in relation to killing and injuring innocent civilians? Please comment.

"sovereign immunity" The legal system that the US and British governments have succeeded in establishing to protect themselves against responsibility for war crimes they have commited also ensure that other perpetrators of war crimes like Pinochet and Mugabe are immune to prosecution.

The British government privately considered using the defence of "sovereign immunity", the legal doctrine which protects states from being prosecuted for criminal acts, to prevent relatives of some of the 33 people killed in the 1974 Dublin-Monaghan bombings from suing it in the Dublin courts, according to confidential Whitehall letters and memos which have been obtained by the Sunday Tribune.

On 29 August 1975 10-year-old Stephen Geddis became the first and the youngest person to die after being hit by a plastic bullet in Belfast. While soldiers said they had fired at stone-throwing children in a nationalist area, the government eventually paid compensation to the family. Some £1m in compensation has been paid out in similar cases, regarding plastic bullet victims in Northern Ireland, but no member of the security forces has been convicted of offences linked to the deaths.

Why is it that innocent Iraqi Civilians who are injured or the families of those innocents who are killed by US and UK forces cannot secure the same basic legal right to sue for compensation?
The truth is that there is no International Law that really guarantees the human rights of innocent individuals who are injured or killed by US and UK forces operating in Iraq. Innocent Iraqi war victims have no real protection under any law against attack by US and UK forces. There is no obligation for the US or UK forces to minimize what they call collateral damage because they will never have to pay out compensation for the thousands of innocents who are injured or killed during their military operations and they will never be brought to court for these killings under current international law.

Even though the US and UK forces are telling the world that their military operations in Iraq or Afghanistan are to bring democracy and justice to these places, the first and most obvious reason we have not to believe them is the means by which they take power in these places, killing and injuring tens of thousands of innocent civilians who will never be compensated for what has been done to them.

International law can only be effective when and where the most powerful nations in this world collectively uphold the laws; therefore there is really no such thing as International Humanitarian Law. The recent attack on Iraq by the US and Britian was deemed illegal but who can or will do anything about that? Who can prosecute them for their actions?

What convictions have been made or compensation payments secured as a result of the International War Crimes Tribunal of 1991? which found the following people guilty of war crimes; President George H. W. Bush, Vice President J. Danforth Quayle, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf Commander of the Allied Forces in the Persian Gulf, and others...... which stated, ' We urge the Commission of Inquiry and all people to act on recommendations developed by the Commission to hold power accountable and to secure social justice on which lasting peace must be based.'

"It has never happened in history that a nation that has won a war has been held accountable for atrocities committed in preparing for and waging that war. We intend to make this one different. What took place was the use of technological material to destroy a defenseless country. From 125,000 to 300,000 people were killed... We recognize our role in history is to bring the transgressors to justice." Ramsey Clark. Ramsey Clark served as U.S. Attorney General in the administration of Lyndon Johnson. He is the convener of the Commission of Inquiry and a human rights lawyer of world-wide respect. This report was given in New York, May 11, 1991.

So we see now that there are no results from these tribunals and it seems pointless to pursue these issues any more, wouldn't you agree?

While the mass media will never show the extent of civilian casualties during the wars waged by the US and UK forces, public opinion is therefore not a concern either to these military forces and will not affect their lack of concern for civilian casualties.

The United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC) was set up to financially compensate people and organisations who suffered as a result of the Gulf War 1. The Iraqi peoples oil resources are to be used to pay for these compensation claims which have amounted to 200 billion US dollars. Iraqi Civilians however are not entitled to claim compensation under the UNCC rules. This UN Scheme offers compensation to everybody involved in the conflict apart from innocent civilian victims and pays the compensation claims with the natural resources which rightfully belong to these same civilians who have suffered most of all.

Very few precedents exist for financially assisting civilian casualties as a result of US military actions. There are only a handful of cases where the US or UK have paid compensation as a result of their military actions. Regan called for compensation for the US downing of Iran Air Flight 655 in 1988, Compensation was paid for personal damages and structural damages in relation to the 1999 Belgrade Chinese Embassy bombing by US forces, provided for victims of the Chinese Embassy bombing by the U.S. in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which were provided through the US Foreign Operations Appropriation Act of 2001, 17 Afghan families were compensated after relatives were killed by friendly fire while fighting for US. Compensation provided to the Swiss for mistaken bombings during World War II, which were provided through US Supplemental Appropriation Act of 1950. Compensation provided for property damage resulting from a cable-car incident involving a United States Marine Corps aircraft in Cavalese, Italy which was provided through US Defense Appropriation Act of 1999.
Is there any way that the few precedents there are can be used to pursue more claims for compensation or even an internationally accepted law regarding this kind of compensation?

Great Britain participates in the International Criminal Court and acknowledges its jurisdiction; the United States does not.
Will the International Criminal Court ever become a reality when it requires that all nations accept its jurisdiction before it can really enforce any of its convictions? If the president of the United States was found guilty of war crimes; how would the International Criminal Court arrest and jail the president? How would they force the US army to deliver their president? No! There is no way any court of justice will ever be able to bring these forces to justice for crimes they commit.

A former oil worker who went partially blind and suffered nerve damage while being held hostage in Iraq in 1990 has received $1.75 million in damages from Iraqi funds frozen by the U.S. government. How can the US legal system make a compensation payment like this and at the same time not recognise the rights to compensation for children who have been orphaned and left without arms and legs as a result of US bombing of their family homes. These are double standards at their worst.

Calls for creating a US government fund to assist civilian victims of US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are growing but of course there will not be any positive response to these calls from the US government. See Global Exhange and Peaceful Tommorows websites for more information.

Is there to be no accountability under international law even when the targets of US and UK bombs are hospitals? Does anyone in the legal profession have anything to say about how these cases have failed to secure war crimes convictions?
Scores of hospitals and clinics were said to have been hit by U.S. bombs in the last dozen years; sources differ on the numbers of raids and casualties. Iraqi hospitals were bombed under George H. W. Bush in his 1991 Persian Gulf War and under William J. Clinton starting in December 1998. During the Clinton-NATO war on Yugoslavia, air attacks on hospitals in various cities, including Belgrade, Nis, and Surdulica, took lives in April and May 1999. In George W. Bush's war on Afghanistan, 2001-2002, bombs struck hospitals in Herat, Kabul, and Kandahar; some reports placed the death toll in the hundreds. In the latest Iraq attack many more hospitals, civilian shelters and even the International Red Cross have been targeted by the US and UK military forces.

When will there be justice for innocent victims of military operations by the worlds most powerful nations? Is there no judicial system in the world that can offer protection to innocent people from casual targeting by US and UK military forces? What incentive is there for these people to fight for justice when in reality there is no justice? If financial compensation for innocent victims of all military operations was established in law as a basic human right, wouldn't it be fair for these individuals who have had their lives wrecked, wrecked by military forces whose governments claims to be fighting for democracy are upheld by the most powerful nations in the world.

The responsibility of financial compensation to innocent victims during war would surely affect the way the US and the UK conduct their military operations because if these 'invisible and silent' foreign war victims were given the same justice that is afforded to US and UK civilians, the law suits against the US and UK for the tens of thousands who they have maimed and killed in Iraq and Afghanistan alone, would cripple their economies overnight.

The US and UK are secretly planning many more military operations like the recent ones in Afghanistan and Iraq, so something really needs to be done to secure financial compensation rights for innocent victims of their wars, or else we will continue to see tens of thousands of innocent people casually targeted by the US and UK forces. These wars are all about Profit over People, the US and UK capitalist systems survive by forcefully extracting capital and resources from foreign nations on a regular basis. Profit is all they are concerned about so making them pay huge sums of money for injuring and killing innocent people in these resource wars would have a huge effect on how they fight future wars and would save thousands of innocent lives in every future war, it could even prevent wars. It would at least be a first real incentive for the US and UK to stop their casual butchery of innocent people during their military operations.

Of course there will be many more people who join the ranks of so-called terrorist organisations because these organisations are the only source of alternative justice available to them. By joining so-called terrorist organisations, people who have suffered at the hands of the US or UK forces without a means to pursue justice for the crimes committed against them and their families, do find an opportunity for revenge through attacking US or UK forces, the next best thing to real justice. Until there is a real international justice system that offers protection to innocent people from injury, death and oppression by foreign superpowers like the US and UK, the number of wars and the number of innocent civilians killed in them will continue to grow. Protection through legal rights for all innocent civilians worldwide needs to be established in an International Court of Law that has the power to prosecute the US and UK government and military. We must find a way to bring justice to all these innocent people who are butchered without a care by the US and UK military.