EJJP to Gordon Brown

29-Jan-2010

Dear Prime Minister,

News reports that you and the Foreign Secretary are “completely opposed” to the process whereby a British citizen may apply for an arrest warrant under the principle of universal jurisdiction cause us considerable alarm. We are writing to you to urge that expediency in international relations should not provide the basis of an exemption from legal process.

In the half century following the end of the Second World War, it often seemed as though decent people could only be spectators to world events. We looked on, appalled and ashamed by our impotence, as rights were suspended, neighbouring states invaded and their own citizens treated with contempt and worse by national leaders, including those considered our allies.

It was as if a tacit licence had been granted, uncomfortable in principle but convenient in fact. We closed our eyes – truly a corruption of the principle of blind justice.

The political tumult of the 1990s saw the beginnings of a system that could end the culture of impunity. It was a process in which the United Kingdom was intimately involved, both in general and in the particular. Augusto Pinochet did not stand trial in the UK for his crimes, but his arrest, detention and the subsequent hearings proved to be the stimulus the Chileans themselves needed.
British law opened the door for Chilean to address something previously considered impossible, from which they and the rest of the world had, up to that point, mentally turned away.

This is perhaps the most important effect of the principle of universal jurisdiction. Where we once could shrug helplessly, responsible governance has provided a tool by which justice may be done now and we even hope that evil may be averted in the future.

It is in this sense that the arrest warrant issued for Israel's former foreign minister
Tzipi Livni over war crimes allegedly committed in Gaza should be viewed.
Speaking at a recent conference in Israel, it was reported that Baroness
Scotland said that she would seek to block such warrants being issued in the future.

At the same conference, former Israeli supreme court president Aharon Barak called on his country to end its boycott of the International Criminal Court. He believed that Israel would benefit from its participation in the court despite the risk that IDF soldiers and officers, and even Israeli politicians, may be brought to trial. He was supported by a leading article in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz said “A country that believes in the morality of its actions and those of its soldiers should not behave like a permanent suspect … On the contrary: It must fight within those institutions for its positions and justice. Joining the
International Criminal Court at The Hague will place Israel on the side of the enlightened nations, and will contribute to restraining forceful and harmful actions. Barak's recommendation deserves to be adopted. “

The instruments available to the international community to enforce international law remain few, and they are fragile. Paramount among them is the tenet that if human rights are to be seen as universal, if they are to be concretely realized and not merely recognized on paper then their jurisdiction must be no less universal.

Any exemption – for any figure or group of figures will make those tools more brittle still. The application of the law should be no less universal than the principle that saw the law come to be written in the first place.

The warrant was sought on the basis of Tzipi Livni’s role in prosecuting the invasion of Gaza in December 2008-January 2009, when she was Israel’s foreign minister. The consequences of that action are still to be seen today.

Israel continues to enforce an unprecedented siege on 1.5 million civilians, hinders delivery even of a French desalination plant, while continuing to apply its ”Dahia Doctrine” as formulated by IDF generals Giora Eiland, Siboni and
Eisenkot and applied by Minister Ehud Barak and IDF Chief of Staff Ashkenazi.

The inescapable truth emanating from the Goldstone Report is a recommendation for both parties to facilitate independent inquiries into the conduct of the fighting in Gaza. We understand that the UK government accepts the need for such independent inquiries, even as it sees flaws in the report itself.
Britain would be sending the wrong signal to were it to change its law now in order to accommodate Israeli pressures.

When Israel ratifies its signature to the Rome convention, when it decides to deploy its own legal system (as Chile did) to be less hostile to UN inquiries such as that conducted by Judge Richard Goldstone, or even to examine past events as South Africa achieved with its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, then it will become unnecessary for arrest warrants to be issued in a London magistrate’s court.

Until then, we ask that Her Majesty’s Government should continue to set a good example and stand by its support for the universal over the particular.

Yours sincerely,

European Jews for a Just Peace Convention, Paris, January 31st, 2010