Impunity Watch: Special Features

Let Games Go On, Without Fans

By:  David Scheffer

This article was originally published by The Chicago Tribune and was republished here with the permission of the author.

A Spectator Boycott Could Send China a Message

The intensified assaults on human rights at home and abroad by the Chinese government as it prepares to stage the Summer Olympics demand more than diplomatic scolding and torch-dousing protests in London, Paris, San Francisco and beyond. Sports fans planning on occupying stadium seats at the Beijing Olympics in August should stay home and shame China's repressive leaders with a spectator boycott.

This may seem a strange plea for someone from Chicago, which is competing to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. But the time has passed when egregious assaults on human rights elsewhere in the world should intimidate Chicago into silence at a time when our voices must be heard.

China has effectively reneged on its commitment to the International Olympic Committee in 2001 to protect human rights.

After more than half a century of Chinese repression, Tibetans have rushed to the streets. Violence and killings have resulted. The crackdown on Chinese human-rights activists and lawyers, political dissidents, writers, journalists, Internet users, religious worshipers and environmental advocates continues.

Abused migrant construction workers and uncompensated landowners are the brick and mortar of the Olympic stadiums in Beijing. China's legal system remains incapable of redressing human-rights violations and ensuring due process.

Although China was inexplicably removed from the "top 10" list of violators in the State Department's recent annual report on global human-rights conditions, the report still skewers China on its overall record.

China's anemic efforts to influence Sudan to stop atrocities in Darfur show few results. Hundreds of thousands suffer and die under the yoke of Khartoum's ethnic cleansing campaign. The giant Chinese oil and industrial investments in—and conventional arms sales to—Sudan trump human rights. Crimes against humanity appear imminent in South Sudan, and yet Beijing's influence to head it off appears nonexistent.

After seven years of continued repression at home and complicity abroad, the verdict is in. Any cosmetic effort by the Chinese authorities to enhance human-rights protection between now and the Olympics should be viewed for what it is: a cynical, temporary ploy to appease critics and reap the rewards of the Games.

Despite the unfortunate selection for the 2008 Olympics of Beijing, with its toxic mix of human rights violations and pollution, the athletes should compete (air quality permitting), and the international media should cover the events.

Athletes should not be manipulated with political jousts. Their quest for excellence in sports is the essence of the Games, and no one should deny them their bids for medals. Demands that national teams boycott the Olympics would be unfair to the athletes.

But the athletes, who instinctively should stand up for human rights, could advise their national fans to stay home and cheer from afar.

There is no justification in an age of instant video and Internet access about Olympic events for foreign spectators to invest in the Chinese economy and give credence to the government's assault on human rights. Although there has never before been a widespread spectator boycott, even at Adolf Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics, international human-rights law has evolved to the point of compelling one now.

More than a half-million foreign visitors are expected to attend the Beijing Olympics. Of the 7 million tickets for sale, about a quarter of them are slated for foreigners. About 53,000 tickets already have been sold to Americans. Each overseas spectator is expected to spend at least $1,100 in China while visiting, excluding air travel, most hotel expenses and costly exchange rate fluctuations.

Well-intentioned people often ask how they can make a real difference on the human-rights battlegrounds of our times. They should boycott the Beijing Olympics, even if it means losing some money on their tickets and deposits. (Beijing will fill the stadiums with Chinese anyway.) Cancel the hotel rooms and the plane reservations.

President Bush—who foolishly pledged to attend the Olympics—should lead a boycott of the opening ceremony by heads of state and other foreign officials. He has the perfectly legitimate excuse that there is not much time left to restore a collapsing domestic economy, forge Middle East peace, salvage the NATO effort in Afghanistan and help rebuild homes in Katrina-ravaged New Orleans.

Corporate sponsors should review whether their advertising money is being used to support China's economy or whether they can limit their funding solely to media coverage and direct support for individual athletes and teams.

No admirer of the Olympic Games should stand in Beijing and explain why he or she is investing in an economy—and giving credibility to a government—that fuels human-rights abuses and atrocity crimes with a cynicism that knows no bounds.

David Scheffer is a professor and director of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University School of Law. He is a former U.S. ambassador at large for war-crimes issues.

David Scheffer is a professor and director of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University School of Law.  He is a former U.S. ambassador at large for war-crimes issues.

David M. Crane's Remarks to House Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security

David M. Crane is a Professor of Law at Syracuse University and a former Founding Chief Prosecutor in the Special Court for Sierra Leone.  Professor Crane's remarks are in support of the Child Soldiers Accountability Act of 2007.

Mr. Chairman thank you for this opportunity to address this committee on what I feel to be an important international issue that impacts our country and its security and that is the scourge of children used as soldiers in armed conflict.  Before I begin I would like to note that I have submitted my testimony in writing earlier and would ask that it be submitted into the record at this time.  Thank you.

I would like to begin with a quote from an important report to the Secretary General of the United Nations in 1996 regarding the child soldier problem we as civilized nations face today and for which we are considering this important legislation, S. 2135, the Child Soldiers Accountability Act of 2007. 

These statistics [related to the impact of armed conflict on children] are shocking enough, but more chilling is the conclusion to be drawn from them:  more and more of the world is being sucked into a desolate moral vacuum.  This is a space devoid of the most basic human values; a space in which children are slaughtered, raped, and maimed; a space in which children are exploited as soldiers; a space in which children are starved and exposed to extreme brutality.  Such unregulated terror and violence speak of deliberate victimization. There are few further depths to which humanity can sink.

For the first time in history those who bear the greatest responsibility for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious violations of international humanitarian law that took place during recent wars have been charged with the use of child soldiers under the age of 15 into an armed force.

The use of children in armed conflict is an age old issue. Modern international norms, however, have identified and outlawed their use. International tribunals, such as the Special Court for Sierra Leone, of which I was its founding Chief Prosecutor, are now on the cutting edge of international criminal law in holding accountable those warlords, commanders, and politicians who turn to children, some as young as six years old, to carry out orders that in some cases result in war crimes and crimes against humanity. Only in the past ten years has the international community begun to grapple with this international problem.

I have seen atrocity beyond description perpetrated by child soldiers while seeking justice for the victims of the ten year armed conflict in Sierra Leone started by three heads of state:  Muammar Ghadaffi of Libya, Blasé Campare of Burkina Faso, and of course Charles Taylor of Liberia (indicted by me and sitting in the dock on trial for 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, to include the unlawful recruitment of children under the age of 15 into an armed force, an historic first).  This conflict destroyed an entire generation of children, perhaps as many as 35,000 in that small struggling country.

A favourite tactic to induce children to join their force was for the rebels to move in and surround a village.  The children were made to kill their parents and then were driven into the bush and forced to serve as soldiers, in many instances for years.  The numbers are not fully known, but it was in the thousands.  These children, ranging from six to eighteen years of age, roamed the battlefields hopped up on cocaine or marijuana destroying their own country.  Over time the various warring factions became their home and their families. Many forgot their real names or even where they came from. All sides to the conflict in Sierra Leone used children. 

A forty-two year old secretary, living in Sierra Leone, told a Human Rights Watch researcher, in an interview on May 20, 1999, about child soldiers used in the invasion and destruction of Freetown in January of that same year:  We feared them.  They were cruel and hard hearted; even more than the adults. They don’t know what is sympathy; what is good and bad.  If you beg an older one you may convince him to spare you, but the younger ones, they don’t know what is sympathy, what is mercy.  Those who have been rebels for so long have never learned it. 

When the conflict staggered to its bloody conclusion in 2002, just shortly before my arrival in country, an entire nation lay in ruins.  These child fighters found themselves with no families, little to no education, and a society unable to assist them in starting to rebuild their lives.  Many were physically and psychologically damaged.  The lost generation of Sierra Leone now sits by pocked-marked roads with no hope, waiting for the next “Pa” to lead them back into the only life they know--fighting, raping, pillaging, and murdering their fellow citizens.

Between 1986 and 1996 over two million children were killed in armed conflict. There have been countless more killed since then, many of them in places such as Sierra Leone.  Only when the rule of law is enforced will abusers of children be held accountable at the international level (and hopefully the domestic level) thus assisting in ending this tragic international crime. It is time for the United States to assist in making this happen.

The Child Soldiers Accountability Act of 2007, passed by the United States Senate in December of last year, is an important signal to the world that this country will not tolerate those who recruit mere children into armed forces of whatever kind.  Moreover, it gives our government the legal tools to deal with those who are in this country or seek to enter this country to deal with them by prosecution, exclusion, and/or deportation.  This is not a partisan issue, this is needed legislation.  I respectfully urge this subcommittee to champion this important bill and support its passage.

I will close with a story of thousands that I personally was involved with in my three years in West Africa relating to one child soldier:

It was a clear hot day.  The meeting hall in the school for the deaf located up country near Makeni rippled with the heat of over five hundred persons.  I had been speaking to the students, faculty, and others in one of my many town hall meetings I conduct throughout Sierra Leone.  The purpose of the meetings are to provide a vehicle for the people of this small and fragile nation to talk to their Prosecutor about the war, the crimes, their pain and other issues related to our work.  As I finished answering a question from a student near the front, a shy and small arm was raised in the middle of the hall.  I walked back to the student.  He meekly stood up, head bowed and he mumbled, loud enough for those around him to hear, “I killed people, I am sorry, I did not mean it.”  I went over to him, tears in my eyes, and hugged him and said, “Of course you didn’t mean it.  I forgive you.”

Thank you, Mr. Chairman for this opportunity to address you today about holding accountable those who destroy children’s lives by recruiting them into armed forces. I welcome your questions.

The remarks can be found complete with footnotes at Download opening_remarksthe_house_committee_on_the_judiciary.doc

A "Bout" of Russian Terror

By Ed Royce
Representative Ed Royce. California Republican, is ranking member of the Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade Subcommittee.
 

Maybe Viktor Bout got complacent. Accustomed to profiting in the world's roughest places while brazenly defying law enforcement, this notorious gun runner fell three weeks ago, arrested by Thai authorities in a Drug Enforcement Agency sting in Bangkok. An arms smuggling conviction would put this very dangerous man out of business. He is a survivor, though, and we should not breathe easy until an extradited and shackled Mr. Bout hits United States soil.

A former Soviet pilot dubbed the "Merchant of Death," Mr. Bout has fueled many brutal civil wars, mainly with former East Bloc state arsenals. In the 1990s, he dealt weapons to the several sides fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo and rebels in Angola, breaking international arms embargoes. Some have linked him to the Rwandan genocide. One good customer was the former Liberian president, Charles Taylor, who relied on Mr. Bout to arm his reign of terror in West Africa, which landed Taylor in The Hague to face war crimes charges.

This man has plagued four continents. He simultaneously armed the Taliban and the Northern Alliance; he had dealings with Hezbollah and the FARC in Colombia. Indeed, Mr. Bout thought he was negotiating a deal to provide the FARC with millions of dollars in arms when he was arrested. The deal included 100 advanced Russian-made shoulder-fired missiles, capable of downing an aircraft. Federal prosecutors in New York are seeking his extradition to stand trial for providing material support to this Colombian terrorist organization.

Viktor Bout is the model. Unfortunately there exists a class of rogues: gray-area figures who help destroy states and the rule of law while avoiding scrutiny. He and other smugglers are not small-timers. Mr. Bout has amassed a logistical capability that rivals many NATO countries, operating dozens of planes. Today the paramount concern is that his type of global delivery system might transport a nuclear weapon. Their credo is anything for money. The arrest of this man, the best known of the lot, hopefully signals a new alertness to the dangers poised by these networks.

The United States and others have spent much to build stability in Africa. We have been successful in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Millions of lives have been saved by ending these brutal conflicts. But stability is very fragile; all it takes is a few dozen rebels armed by the likes of Viktor Bout to enflame a rebuilding country. Taking on the Bouts of the world would better protect these investments.

Extradition experts give Mr. Bout only a fifty percent chance of facing justice in the United states, though. Thai police have said Mr. Bout's extradition would have to wait until he was tried in Thailand. Meanwhile, the Russian government reportedly is pressuring Thai authorities to set him free. For years, he has operated out of Moscow, in the open, despite an Interpol arrest warrant. He has ties to Russian intelligence. Beware of Russian promises to "try" Mr. Bout at home.

The diplomatic instinct in the State Department may be to play nice with Russia, especially since the Bush administration seeks a long-term agreement on U.S.-Russian relations. Recommendations to press Moscow on Mr. Bout years ago reportedly were set aside to win its cooperation in the war on terrorism. But this man is a terrorist. And there is nothing to be gained from acquiescing to yet another Russian effort at undermining the rule of law. We should be doing all we can to counter any Russian pressure on Bangkok. The arrest of Viktor Bout may signal an intolerance of an intolerable type of character. With a deadly past and dangerous future, he must face justice. Thai authorities should be commended for their cooperation, but only when Mr. Bout is securely on his way to our shores, which given likely Russian machinations, can't happen fast enough.

This article was originally published by The Washington Post and was republished here with the permission of the author.  The original article can be downloaded here:  Download wt.4.1.08.Royce oped.A Bout of Russian terror.pdf