There is a quiet revolution happening in human rights. Just ask
Laurie King-Irani.
King-Irani is the North American coordinator of an
international effort to indict Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon and other Israelis and Lebanese for a massacre committed
nearly two decades ago in Lebanon. Some of the survivors filed a
complaint last June in a Belgian court against the Israeli
leader.
The survivors allege that the September 16-18, 1982 massacre
in Beirut’s Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by Lebanese
Phalangist fighters and the Israeli military was planned,
enabled and directed by Sharon, then Israel’s defense minister
and the commander of the Israeli Defense Forces. Israel had
invaded Lebanon on June 4, 1982 after an attack on an Israeli
official in London.
At the beginning of the onslaught against the refugees three
months later, Israeli forces sealed off and surrounded both
camps. Those trapped inside were defenseless Palestinian and
Lebanese civilians.
Then, Israeli officials claimed that they were pursuing
terrorists. Recently, Israeli officials made a similar claim
before attacking the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West
Bank, where evidence of another atrocity by Israeli forces is
emerging, according to the April 25 London Independent.
In 1982, Mrs. Sana Mahmoud Sersawi lived in the Sabra camp.
According to her statement in the complaint against Sharon:
“The Israelis submitted the young people to an interrogation,
and the Phalangists delivered 200 people to them. And that’s
how neither my husband nor my sister’s husband ever came
back.”
Mrs. Amal Hussein is another plaintiff who survived but lost
family members, including her brother and two sisters. She
stated that: “All of a sudden, the armed Phalangists invaded
the area. No one could leave the house. All we could hear was
the screaming of babies and women screaming. They started
killing people.”
The complaint against Sharon includes the crime of genocide,
crimes against humanity and war crimes (http://www.mallat.com/articles/comp.htm).
According to Chilbi Mallat, counsel for the plaintiffs, “In
international law, command responsibility—also known as
indirect responsibility—is more severe than the responsibility
of those who actually do the killing.”
Such principles of universal justice were applied to German
Nazi officials. They crafted policies of genocide against Jews
and others during World War II.
Violations of civilians' human rights during armed conflicts
or in situations of military occupation are, by definition,
crimes of war. However, King-Irani noted that this principle of
international justice has not been equally enforced.
“Nobody has been punished or tried for these crimes in
Lebanon,” said King-Irani during a recent speaking tour in
Northern California. “This is an indication that the public
has little knowledge of this.”
In particular, the American people are under-informed about
such history. Their scant knowledge fits with the Israeli
version of the past and present echoed by compliant U.S.
corporate news media, reliant on official sources and dismissive
of others.
Nevertheless, the case against Sharon is revolutionizing the
world’s notion of universal justice, said King-Irani. The
plaintiffs in the Sharon complaint are proof of that: regular
people bringing charges of war crimes against the head of a
legal state.
By contrast, during the Cold War, nation-states were sole
arbiters of international law, a process rarely exercised. But
that was then.
Now, activists around the world are complementing the efforts
of the Sharon plaintiffs.
Peter Tatchell is a human rights activist who has sought the
arrest of Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. Secretary of State,
for the "killing, injuring and displacement" of 3
million people in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam during America’s
Vietnam War, a violation of the Geneva Conventions Act 1957.
Activists have also been the driving force behind the
indictment of Augusto Pinochet, Chile's former leader who was
indicted in Spain in Oct. 1998. Pinochet led the U.S.-backed
military overthrow of the nation’s democratically elected
President Salvador Allende in 1973, resulting in the deaths of
thousands, Chileans and Americans.
King-Irani said that a final pre-trial hearing in the
complaint against Sharon is set for May 15, with lawyers for the
plaintiffs making their final arguments. By this July, the
Belgian court will rule if the complaint can proceed.
The legal immunity of the world’s tyrants is being tested
by people who share a common belief in the virtue of human
rights. The complaint against Sharon is part of that silent
revolution, indeed.
Seth Sandronsky is an editor with Because People Matter,
Sacramento’s progressive newspaper [email protected]