A) Irving V Lipstadt
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University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/55823 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. ''''11111!1''''_t4ti._-~-- The Coming of Age of Cosmopolitan Law Crimes Against Humanity and their Prosecution By David Hirsh Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Sociology) Sociology Department at the University of Warwick April 10, 2001 This work is dedicated to Dora ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to Alexandra for her warmth, energy and love. Thank you to Robert Fine, my supervisor, to whom lowe a considerable debt, both personal and academic for help, inspiration, advice and support that he has given me over many years. He ought to be more generally recognised as one of the most profound contemporary social theorists. Thank you to Alison Diduck for reading a draft of this work and buoying me up with sufficient confidence to enable me to finish it. Thank you to Stephan Feuchtwang who as well as teaching me at City University, has subsequently been interested in my research and ideas and has taken time to discuss and clarify them with me. Thank you to David Seymour for his encouragement, help and friendship. Thank you to Margaret Archer and Jim Beckford who taught me at Warwick University and to John Cowley who taught me at City University. Thanks are also due to Gillian Rose who taught me at Warwick while she was dying of cancer. Thank you to Katie Kennedy for reading a draft and giving me the benefit of her skills as an editor. Thank you to my mum and dad, Deborah and Judy, for their support and for looking after the baby while I finished the work. Thank you to Fella, Fischel, Rushka and Yidl, members of my family who survived the Holocaust and told their stories. ABSTRACT In the era of globalization many writers (e.g. Hannah Arendt, David Held, Robert Fine) have argued that the ideology of nationalism is being challenged by the growth of cosmopolitan developments, ideas and institutions. This thesis takes off from the evolution of 'cosmopolitan criminal law' out of international law. It argues that implicit in the elaboration and use of the 'crimes against humanity' charge at Nuremberg and at the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda (ICTY and ICTR), is the admission that genocide and ethnic cleansing are the business of the whole of humanity and that perpetrators may no longer hide behind the principle of national sovereignty. I argue that the establishment of the principle of individual criminal responsibility for such crimes is not simply a legal fiction. I further argue that the greatly expanded role for short-term instrumental rationality which prevails in modem society (e.g.Zygmunt Bauman) does not limit social actors to a choice of either complicity in or a stepping out of society. The evidence shows that perpetrators do make choices for which they may be held responsible and are not simply puppets of rational structures. The thesis looks at three responses made by the international community to ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia: the peace at all costs policy, which allowed ethnic cleansing to go unhindered in Bosnia; the bombing policy which failed to stop but reversed some of the effects of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo; and the establishment of the ICTY which is judging some of the perpetrators. I use the trials of Dusko Tadic and of Tihomir Blaskic as case studies to investigate the working of the first international criminal tribunal. I also investigate the trial of Andrei Sawoniuk, held in London in 1999, for his actions during the Holocaust in Belarus, and the libel trial in which David Irving sued Deborah Lipstadt. Using these four cases, I examine the functioning of cosmopolitan criminal trials, the different contexts in which they are held, their use of evidence and law, the extent and limits of the justice they achieve, and their role in the production of authoritative cosmopolitan narratives. ABBREVIATIONS BNP British National Party HV Army of the Republic of Croatia HVO Army of the Bosnian Croats ICJ International Court of Justice ICTY The Ad Hoc International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia Since 1991 ICTR The International Criminal Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Genocide and Other Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of Rwanda and Rwandan Citizens Responsible for Genocide and Other Such Violations Committed in the Territory of Neighbouring States, between 1 January 1994 and 31 December 1999 IR International Relations JNA Yugoslav National Army KLA Kosovo Liberation Army NA National Alliance NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation TO Bosnian Territorial Defence SDS Political party of the Bosnian Serbs UN United Nations UNHCR United Nations High Commission for Refugees UNPROFOR United Nations Protection Force CONTENTS Abstract Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction 1-25 Notes on Methodology Chapter 1 The theory of cosmopolitanism and international law 26-51 a) Absolute national sovereignty: the development of a remarkably stable and enduring principle b) Cosmopolitanism: the doctrine of absolute national sovereignty begins to break down c) Hannah Arendt: beyond the nation state d) David Held's Cosmopolitanism: A new world order or castles in the sky? e) International law develops quickly and boldly Chapter 2 Individual responsibility and cosmopolitan law 52-77 a) Modernity and the Holocaust: Bauman's critique of rational choice b) Rationality and the Holocaust reconsidered c) Police battalion 101 and individual responsibility d) Adolf Eichmann and individual responsibility e) Conclusion on individual responsibility Chapter 3 Crimes against humanity: the development of a universal 78-110 a) The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg b) Crimes against humanity c) The Genocide Convention and the problems of defining genocide Chapter 4 Peace, security and justice in the former Yugoslavia 111-144 a) Peace before justice: Srebrenica and Dayton b) Peace and justice without risk and at a price: Kosovo c) Omarksa: an intimate concentration camp d) The UN response: the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Chapter 5 Case studies from the ICTY: the trials of Tihomir Blaskic and Dusko Tadic 145-172 a) The case of General Tihomir Blaskic b) The case of Dusko Tadic c) Towards an international criminal court Chapter 6 The trial of Andrei Sawoniuk: a cosmopolitan trial under national law 173-223 a) The ordinary and extra-ordinary Andrei Sawoniuk b) Ben-Zion Blustein: Holocaust memoir and legal testimony c) The Evidence of the Local Witnesses d) Sawoniuk under cross examination Chapter 7 Irving v Lipstadt: the legal construction of authoritative cosmopolitan Narrative 224-250 a) Irving v Lipstadt b) Towards a global social memory Chapter 8 Conclusion 251-267 Bibliography 268-275 INTRODUCTION On 28 January 2000 I was at the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand, in London. Outside the building was a large, angry, noisy demonstration consisting mainly of Chileans, displaying hundreds of photographs of individuals who had been murdered by the Pinochet regime. Augusto Pinochet was attending an appeal by the Kingdom of Belgium against the British Home Secretary's decision that the general was unfit to stand trial for crimes against humanity due to his poor health. Upstairs in the same building, judges were hearing the unsuccessful appeal of Andrei Sawoniuk against his conviction for the murder of Jews in Belorus during the Holocaust. In court 73 there was a collection of Jews, historians, Nazis and journalists watching the Irving v Lipstadt libel trial. In the Pinochet case the court confirmed the principle of universal jurisdiction for crimes against humanity and torture. In the Sawoniuk case the court upheld the conviction of a man for crimes committed as part of a genocide in another country. In the Irving case the court produced a lengthy closely argued judgement which placed the Nazi propaganda of David Irving outside of what may be properly referred to as historiography. That sunny winter's day in London it felt as though something interesting was happening. On the same day, there were crimes against humanity trials being routinely heard by international courts in the Hague, in relation to ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and in Arusha, in relation to the genocide in Rwanda. In recent years there have been trials and campaigns for trials in many countries which were occupied by the Nazis; also in Cambodia in relation to the genocide there; in Korea in relation to the organised mass rape of the so called 'comfort women' by Japanese soldiers; in East Introduction 2 Timor in relation to the mass killings carried out by the Indonesian regime. In the summer of 1998, 120 states agreed in Rome to set up an international criminal court; an extension of the ad hoc tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda into a permanent institution. There has been much darkness in the twentieth century; genocide, racist ethnic cleansing, torture, industrialised humiliation and the mass production of terror have been commonplace. Those who perpetrate such cruelties, the ideological, the greedy, the enraged victims of some previous injustice, the stupidly loyal, the sadists; they move stealthily in their self-created dusk. The bright winter sunshine in London was not as illuminating as it seemed. The image of enduring brilliant light penetrating all the shadows of totalitarianism was illusory.