War crimes
War crimes consist of such ethical breaches as murdering unarmed noncombatants, executing or torturing prisoners of war. Some analysts evaluate the ethical standards of countries by the degree to which they tolerate war crimes in their own armed forces.
Use of human shields
Using a civilian or other protected person as a shield for military operations is a clear violation of International Humanitarian Law. The Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) defines as a war crime in international armed conflicts “the use of the presence or presence of a civilian or other protected person to prevent certain military objectives from being the object of military operations.”
International Humanitarian Law {IHL) considers persons who voluntarily act as human shields as being considered to be taking a direct participation in hostilities, since they are physically obstructing an attack on a lawful military objective.
Principle of Distinction
The International Red Cross maintains an International Humanitarian Law data base that serves as the foundational document when it comes to the Law of War. Part of this data base are a series of rules which address what is known as “the Principle of Distinction.”
Rule One in this regard states clearly that “the parties to the conflict must at all times distinguish between civilians and combatants. Attacks may only be directed against combatants. Attacks must not be directed against civilians.”
Rule Seven notes that “the parties to the conflict must at all times distinguish between civilian objects and military objectives. Attacks may only be directed against military objectives. Attacks must not be directed against civilian objects.”
The 1977 Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions holds that “the presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favor or impede military operations. The Parties to the conflict shall not direct the movement of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military operations.”
Thus, the Additional Protocol I rule applies to the use of any civilians to shield military operations. Note that the prohibition addresses only the use of civilians and not civilian objects.
Rule Eight of the International Humanitarian Law (IHL) Principle of Distinction” defines a military object as being “limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose partial or total destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.”
Rule Nine defines civilian objects as “all objects that are not military objectives.”
Rule Ten further notes that “Civilian objects are protected against attack, unless and for such time as they are military objectives.”
Rule Sixteen also declares that “each party to the conflict must do everything feasible to verify that targets are military objectives.”
Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions states that “in case of doubt whether an object which is normally dedicated to civilian purposes, such as a place of worship, a house or other dwelling or a school, is being used to make an effective contribution to military action, it shall be presumed not to be so used.”
The United States holds that the Additional Protocol I wording “is not customary and is contrary to the traditional law of war because it shifts the burden of determining the precise use of an object from the defender to the attacker, i.e., from the party controlling that object to the party lacking such control. This imbalance would ignore the realities of war in demanding a degree of certainty of the attacker that seldom exists in combat. It would also encourage the defender to ignore its obligations to separate civilians and civilian objects from military objectives.”
Using a civilian or other protected person as a shield for military operations is a clear violation of International Humanitarian Law (IHL). The Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) defines as a war crime in international armed conflicts “the use of the presence or presence of a civilian or other protected person to prevent certain military objectives from being the object of military operations.”
Holocaust
- See also: Holocaust
The Holocaust was thr systematic destruction by the Nazis of Jewish culture, society, and, in die Endlösung (the Final Solution), the lives of Jews, Slavs, the disabled, Communists, Roma, and all others viewed as racially inferior.
The systematic killings started in 1941, as the SS under Heinrich Himmler rounded up all the Jews they could find in the areas under Nazi control, and ultimately killed about 6 million through mobile SS death squads, the Einsatzgruppen, and in the extermination camps. In 1945, only 11% of European Jewish children that were alive in 1939, survived. Millions of non-Jews were also killed in separate Nazi operations.
Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal
- See also: Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal
The Nuremberg Trials[1] were a series of 13 trials held in Nuremberg, Germany from 1945 to 1949. They tried German Nazi leaders, and accused them of deliberately starting a war of aggression (World War II), along with crimes against humanity, including mass murder and enslavement. These trials were a new development in international law.
Bucha massacre
- See also: Ukraine propaganda war
The New York Times was in Bucha, Ukraine on April 2, 2022 and did not report a massacre. Instead, the Times confirmed the Russian withdrawal was completed two days after the mayor of Bucha said it was, and that the Russians left “behind them dead soldiers and burned vehicles, according to witnesses, Ukrainian officials, satellite images and military analysts.” The Times said reporters found the bodies of six civilians. “It was unclear under what circumstances they had died, but the discarded packaging of a Russian military ration was lying beside one man who had been shot in the head,” the paper said. In Bucha, the Times was close to the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, whose soldiers appear in the newspaper’s photographs. The Times suggests that Azov Nazis may be responsible for the killings:
“Something very interesting then happens on [Saturday] 2 April, hours before a massacre is brought to the attention of the national and international media. The US and EU-funded Gorshenin Institute online [Ukrainian language] site Left Bank announced that:
The Russian military has by now completely left the city, so this sounds for all the world like reprisals. The state authorities would be going through the city searching for ‘saboteurs’ and ‘accomplices of Russian forces.’ Only the day before [Friday], Ekaterina Ukraintsiva, representing the town council authority, appeared on an information video on the Bucha Live Telegram page wearing military fatigues and seated in front of a Ukrainian flag to announce ‘the cleansing of the city.’ She informed residents that the arrival of the Azov battalion did not mean that liberation was complete (but it was, the Russians had fully withdrawn), and that a ‘complete sweep’ had to be performed.” |