A brighter light on Russian war crimes
On Monday at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, Secretary of State Antony Blinken seemed to send a subtle and timely message to officials in the Kremlin. He designated the military slaughter of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority in 2016-2017 as genocide. The possible message: Any official in Russia who assists in the intentional mass killing of civilians in Ukraine could someday face a similar prospect of international justice.
“By learning to spot the signs of the worst atrocities, we’re empowered to prevent them,” Mr. Blinken said.
With the announcement, the United States has now concluded that genocide has occurred eight times since the Holocaust, bringing legal weight to prosecuting war crimes in various courts while encouraging other countries to follow suit. Not every designation has resulted in prison time for perpetrators, yet each one may have served as a deterrent. Top officials in a dictator’s inner circle, for example, might rebel or try to thwart a slaughter to later avoid capture and prosecution.
In 1945, a top Nazi official surrendered German troops in Italy in an apparent deal to escape prosecution at the Nuremberg trials. In the case of Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine, fear of prosecution could possibly cause an official under President Vladimir Putin to save Ukrainian civilians from harm.
Fear may not be the only incentive. When enough countries cite war crimes, it could prick the conscience of those in the midst of committing atrocities and they could then replace evil with good by, for example, offering up evidence for a later trial.
Ukraine itself has played an important role in the history of legal terms for the worst in wars, according to scholar Philippe Sands in a 2016 book, “East West Street: On the Origins of ‘Genocide’ and ‘Crimes Against Humanity.’”
In the western city now known as Lviv, two law scholars who went to the same university in the 1920s, Eli Lauterpacht and Alex Lemkin, introduced the concept of war crimes as World War II developed. Lemkin coined the term “genocide” in 1944 to describe the mass killing of Jews. Lauterpacht introduced the idea of crimes against humanity. Their work was later adopted by the United Nations.
Today, the use of universal principles to curb war violence is now commonplace. Myanmar’s military, for example, could face legal hazards for its crimes if a pro-democracy civilian rebellion succeeds. The International Criminal Court is investigating crimes against humanity related to the military’s forced deportation of more than 740,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh. “The day will come when those responsible for these appalling acts will have to answer for them,” said Secretary Blinken.
The wheels of international justice grind slowly. But as they grind, they could force war criminals to think twice.
