WHENEVER a war crimes tribunal is mentioned, people instinctively think of
Nuremberg. It is not a very good example of such a tribunal because it was set up by the victors to try some of the surviving leadership of the vanquished.
The Nazis had surrendered and Germany was comprehensively beaten. Nobody had any difficulty in bringing the surviving Nazi leadership before the tribunal. The judges were nationals of the victorious states. So were the prosecutors.
Today we have, in relation to the former Yugoslavia and to Rwanda, a more complex situation. Two war crimes tribunals were set up to try indicted people for crimes allegedly committed in the conflicts in these two areas. Although these two tribunals have been in existence for the best part of two years, very few people have been arrested and tried.
One of the consequences of this inaction by the international community is that confidence is waning in the system of war crimes tribunals. The survivors of genocide, of mass rape and of other serious crimes perpetrated in conflict situations are increasingly coming to the view that the only way they will see justice done is to wreak vengeance themselves.
The concept of an impartial international tribunal that will act objectively is losing credibility rapidly. One of the consequences of that will be to prolong the conflict both in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda and the Great Lakes region of Central Africa. The conflict will be prolonged and intensified by the anxiety of the oppressed to gain revenge.
It is a commentary on the primitiveness of international society at the end of the 20th century that neither individuals nor ethnic groups grievously wronged can get justice from the international community acting through the United Nations, the European Union or any other body.
It is not that the international community is physically unable to arrest and deliver up these people. There are 55,000 Ifor troops in former Yugoslavia, mainly in Bosnia. There is an uneasy temporary peace there because of their presence. They could arrest all of the 60 or more indicted war criminals in the morning if their governments so wished. Their governments do not so wish.
Not alone do they not arrest them; they even sup with them. It was recently reported that a man named Gojkio Jankovic, who has been indicted for mass rape, is a policeman in Foca in Bosnia and was recently spotted sitting in a cafe next to a table of Ifor troops.
ANOTHER indicted for mass rape in Bosnia is Dragan Gagovic. Not alone is he not arrested, he has been appointed chief of police in Foca.
Apart from genocide mass and individual rape has been a feature of the horrendous crimes carried out in Yugoslavia and Rwanda. These can only be successfully prosecuted if the women victims are suitably protected when they come to testify. One of the handful of Bosnian Serbs actually arrested was a man called Dusko Tadic, but the rape charges against him had to be dropped at The Hague because the crucial woman witness was too terrified to testify.
One of the depressing results of the unwillingness of the free world to do its duty and bring alleged war criminals before these tribunals has been the resignation of Judge Richard Goldstone from the Hague tribunal last October.
He left in despair and disillusionment. He felt there was no point in having a tribunal if its chief sponsors were unwilling to arrest the indicted criminals, even though it is perfectly easy for them to do so.
The United States and some of the larger EU countries are unwilling to arrest people lest it draw their troops into conflict.
Their willingness to appease a criminal regime is reminiscent of what happened in Europe in the late 1930s.
A conference was held in London in the first week of this month on the first anniversary of the Dayton agreement to review the position.
So little was achieved at or by that conference that the EU External Affairs Commissioner, Mr Hans van den Broek, hinted that force would have to be used to ensure compliance with the Dayton agreement and the arrest of war criminals.
Mr Van den Broek's views were not contained in the draft communique agreed by the other parties present, who confined themselves to the usual useless EU verbal exhortations. It is profoundly disappointing that Ireland, as the presidency of the European Union, will not strike out on its own in its foreign policy in support of human rights, but is happy to shelter behind the do-nothing policies of our EU partners whose principal concern is to serve their own vested interests.
Ireland may have neither the economic nor the military power to do a great deal, but the lack of economic or military power does not prevent one from speaking the truth.
Serbia continues to support the so-called Republika Srpska established as an ethnically-cleansed Serb statelet in Bosnia. Only this month, Human Rights Watch documented the ongoing commission of human rights abuses and ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs and of moderate Bosnian Serbs in areas of the Republika Srpska.
It drew attention to the extent to which international organisations are contributing by their silence and by their collusion to the ultimate failure of the civilian provisions of the Dayton peace plan, and to the subversion of human rights to political goals.