Russell Tribunal


The Russell Tribunal, also known as the International War Crimes Tribunal, Russell-Sartre Tribunal, or Stockholm Tribunal, was a private People's Tribunal organised in 1966 by Bertrand Russell, British philosopher and Nobel Prize winner, and hosted by French philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre, along with Lelio Basso, Ken Coates, Ralph Schoenman, Julio Cortázar and several others. The tribunal investigated and evaluated American foreign policy and military intervention in Vietnam. This had taken place in the decade following the 1954 defeat of French forces at Diên Biên Phu and the establishment of North and South Vietnam.
Bertrand Russell justified the establishment of this body as follows:
The tribunal was constituted in November 1966, and was conducted in two sessions in 1967, in Stockholm, Sweden and Roskilde, Denmark. Bertrand Russell's book on the armed confrontations underway in Vietnam, War Crimes in Vietnam, was published in January 1967. His postscript called for establishing this investigative body. The findings of the tribunal were largely ignored in the United States.
Additional tribunals have been conducted in the following decades on the same model, using the denomination Russell Tribunal. E.g., The Russell Tribunal on Latin America focused on human rights violations in the military dictatorships of Argentina and Brazil, on Chile's military coup d'état, on Human Rights in Psychiatry, on Iraq, and on Palestine. The tribunal has been subject to criticism by some historians and activists who argue against its lack of standing.

Composition and origin

Representatives of 18 countries participated in the two sessions of this tribunal, which formally organized as the International War Crimes Tribunal. The tribunal committee consisted of 25 notable figures, predominantly individuals from leftist peace organisations. Many of these individuals were winners of the Nobel Prize, Medals of Valor, and awards of recognition in humanitarian and social fields. Neither Vietnam nor the United States was directly represented by any individual on the 25-member panel, although a couple of members were American citizens.
More than 30 individuals testified or provided information to this tribunal. Among them were military personnel from the United States, as well as from each of the warring factions in Vietnam. Financing for the Tribunal came from many sources, including a large contribution from the North Vietnamese government after a request made by Russell to Ho Chi Minh.
The Russell Tribunal II on Latin America followed; it held three meetings in Rome, Brussels, and Rome again, dealing predominantly with human rights abuses by dictatorships in Brazil and Chile.

Tribunal members

The Tribunal aims were stated as follows:

Evidence presented at the Tribunal

During the First Tribunal Session in Stockholm, testimony and evidence was produced by the following witnesses:
The Tribunal stated that its conclusions were:
Prompted in part by the My Lai Massacre, in 1969 the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation organised Citizens Commissions of Inquiry to hold hearings intended to document testimony of war crimes in Indochina. These hearings were held in several American cities, and would eventually form the foundation of two national investigations: the National Veterans Inquiry sponsored by the CCI, and the Winter Soldier Investigation sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

Reasoning for verdicts

Verdict 11: Genocide

was an investigator for the Tribunal and documented that the United States was bombing hospitals, schools and other civilian targets in Vietnam. He offers first hand and documentary evidence about US war crimes. His book provides many details of US atrocities and shows the larger motivation for the Tribunal on the accusation of genocide rests from the clear need to expose documented atrocities against civilians rather than an actual ongoing genocide..
Jean-Paul Sartre bases his reasoning of genocide for several reason, but part of it rests on statements and declarations from US leaders and intention rather than conduct. "In particular, we must try to understand whether there is an intention of genocide in the war that the American government is fighting against Vietnam. Article 2 of the Convention of 1948 defines genocide on the basis of intention." And that "Recently, Dean Rusk has declared: 'We are defending ourselves... It is the United States that is in danger in Saigon. This means that their first aim is military: it is to encircle Communist China, the major obstacle to their expansionism. Thus, they will not let south-east Asia escape. America has put men in power in Thailand, it controls part of Laos and threatens to invade Cambodia. But these conquests will be useless if the US has to face a free Vietnam with thirty-one million united people." Furthermore that "At this point in our discussion, three facts emerge: the US government wants a base and an example; this can be achieved, without any greater obstacle than the resistance of the Vietnamese people themselves, by liquidating an entire people and establishing a Pax Americana on a Vietnamese desert; to attain the second, the US must achieve, at least partially, this extermination."

Subsequent Tribunals

At the closing session of the Russell Tribunal the creation of three new institutions was announced: the International Foundation for the Rights and Liberations of Peoples, and the International League for the Rights and Liberations of Peoples, and the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal.
The Permanents People's Tribunal was established in Bologna on 23 June 1979. Between its founding and April 1984, the tribunal pronounced two advisory opinions on Western Sahara and Eritrea and held eight sessions. The latter was concluded in January 1983 in Madrid.
A special hearing was conducted in Paris on 13–16 April 1984 to investigate the Armenian Genocide. The Tribunal's 35-member panel included three Nobel Prize winners—Seán MacBride, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and Professor George Wald— and ten eminent jurist, theologians, academics and political figures. The tribunal concluded that genocide was already prohibited by law at the time the Armenian Genocide took place - that though not explicitly banned by written rules it was not legally tolerated - thus the 1948 International Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was formally expressing an already existing prohibition. The tribunal concluded that the massacres of Armenians between 1915 and 1917 revealed the intention of the systematic extermination of the Armenian people, intent as specified in article II of the 1948 convention, and that it was undoubtedly a genocide, the manifestation of a policy that had emerged in the Ottoman Empire in the 1890s. The tribunal criticized as unacceptable the denial of the genocide by Turkish governments since the establishment of the Kemalist republic.
More than three decades later, the Russell Tribunal model was followed by the World Tribunal on Iraq, which was held to make a similar analysis of the Project for the New American Century, the 2003 Invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation of Iraq, and the links between these.

1974–76: On Repression in Brazil, Chile, and Latin America

After Russell's death in 1970, Senator Lelio Basso organized a second tribunal in 1973 initially focused on human rights violations in Brazil, which then expanded to include Chile in the wake of the military coup in that country, and then to all of Latin America. Basso presided over the tribunal and writer Gabriel García Márquez, historians Vladimir Dedijer and Albert Soboul, and professor of law François Rigaux served as vice-presidents.

2001: On Human Rights in Psychiatry (Berlin)

In 2001, Thomas Szasz and others took part in a Russell Tribunal on Human Rights in Psychiatry held in Berlin between 30 June and 2 July. The Tribunal brought in the two following verdicts: the majority verdict claimed that there was "serious abuse of human rights in psychiatry" and that psychiatry was "guilty of the combination of force and unaccountability"; the minority verdict, signed by the Israeli Law Professor Alon Harel and Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho, called for "public critical examination of the role of psychiatry."

2004: On Iraq (Brussels)

In 2004 the "BRussells Tribunal" took place in Brussels as a continuation of the tradition of the Russell Tribunal as part of the World Tribunal on Iraq. Philosopher Jacques Derrida praised this event, stating that "to resuscitate the tradition of a Russell Tribunal is symbolically an important and necessary thing to do today."

2009–2014: On Palestine (Barcelona, London, Cape Town, New York, Brussels)

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine was created in March 2009.
In April 2011, the association converted to a non-profit organisation, with legal status in Brussels, by, Jacques Michiels, Jacques Debatty, Nadia Farkh, Henri Eisendrath and Roseline Sonet. The former non-elected PS senator, Galand, was appointed president of the association.
The first session of the Tribunal took place in Barcelona in March 2010 This session's objective was to consider the complicities and omissions of the European Union and its member states in the Palestinian-Israel conflict. The second international session of the RToP took place in London in November 2010. It examined international corporate issues in Israel and human rights law.
The third international session of the RToP took place in Cape Town in November 2011. It asked the question: "Are Israeli practices against the Palestinian people in breach of the prohibition on apartheid under international law?"
Pierre Galand pointed out that the Cape Town session of the tribunal had a budget of €190,000; €100,000 was donated by Editions Indigene, the publisher of the book Time for an outrage. More than €15,000 was raised at a 24 September 2011 fundraising event by the Belgian support committee of the Russell Tribunal. The Caipirinha Foundation lists the RToP as a grant receiver, but does not disclose the amount or the year of its grant.
A fourth international session of the RToP took place in New York on 6–7 October 2012.
A fifth session met in Brussels on 16–17 March 2013.
An extraordinary session was held in Brussels on 24 September 2014 in response to Israel's Operation Protective Edge launched in the Gaza Strip on 8 July 2014.

Criticisms

The tribunal did not investigate alleged war crimes by the Viet Cong; Ralph Schoenman commented: "Lord Russell would think no more of doing that than of trying the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto for their uprising against the Nazis."
The Russell Tribunal was included by historian Guenter Lewy as part of a "veritable industry publicizing alleged war crimes", as increasing numbers of American servicemen were stepping forward with published accounts of their experiences with atrocities, and scholars and peace organizations were holding tribunals dealing with war crimes.
Staughton Lynd, chairman of the 1965 "March on Washington", was asked by Russell to participate in the tribunal and rejected the invitation. Lynd's objections and criticism of the Tribunal were based on the fact that Russell planned to investigate only non-North Vietnamese and National Liberation Front conduct, sheltering Hanoi from any criticism for their behaviour. Lynd wrote that "in conversation with the emissary who proffered the invitation, I urged that the alleged war crimes of any party to the conflict should come before the Tribunal. After all, I argued, a "crime" is an action that is wrong no matter who does it. Pressing my case, I asked, "What if it were shown that the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam tortures unarmed prisoners?" The answer, as I understood it, was, "Anything is justified that drives the imperialist aggressor into the sea." I declined the invitation to be a member of the Tribunal."
David Horowitz, who did some work for the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation but didn't participate in the Tribunal, wrote 30 years later about the criticism that the Russell Tribunal would not also investigate alleged Communist atrocities. In his memoirs, Horowitz wrote that Jean-Paul Sartre said, "I refuse to place in the same category the actions of an organization of poor peasants... and those of an immense army backed by a highly organized country...". Horowitz interpreted Sartre's words to mean "the Communists were, by definition, incapable of committing war crimes."
A detailed historical account of the tribunal carried out by historian Cody J. Foster, on the contrary, has argued that the evidence produced in the tribunal was reliable and well balanced, and that the initiative was very important to re-balance the American public opinion views about the Vietnam war. Furthermore, it inspired several subsequent films and documentaries on the Vietnam war.
Judge Richard Goldstone, writing in The New York Times in October 2011, said of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine that "It is not a 'tribunal.' The 'evidence' is going to be one-sided and the members of the 'jury' are critics whose harsh views of Israel are well known. In Israel, there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute."
South African journalist and human rights activist Benjamin Pogrund, now living in Israel, described the Cape Town Session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine as "It's theatre: the actors know their parts and the result is known before they start. Israel is to be dragged into the mud."
After the Cape Town session, Israeli MK Otniel Schneller filed a complaint with the Knesset's Ethics Committee against MK Hanin Zoabi, who testified at the Tribunal that "Israel is an apartheid state".
A group of Jewish South Africans protested against the court, and the organiser of the protest called it a "Kangaroo Court."
Daniele Archibugi and Alice Pease have argued that it is a rather common practice that those accused of international crimes challenge the impartiality of their accusers. And it may be the case that the organizers of opinion tribunals, as of any other tribunal, might be biased or produce insufficient evidence. But to further develop the rule of law, those which are unsatisfied about the outcomes of these tribunals should be able to produce further evidence and legal arguments rather than unsubstantiated criticism. Legal discourse, they argue, is necessarily based on the opposition of contrasting views.