It is hard to believe that a newly appointed diplomat can have a start as bad as this. The Pakistan high commissioner to Bangladesh the other day claimed that the question of the trial of war criminals had been resolved by the Simla agreement, and, therefore, Bangladesh should not break that international agreement and try the war criminals.
The statement is problematic, not because it is ill-designed but because the diplomat -- the representative of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan -- was mistaken. Let me elaborate on the point.
In order to understand the gravity of the issue of the trial of war criminals, we need to have a preliminary idea about international crimes -- i.e. crimes under international law. While international law typically imposes human rights obligations upon states, it also imposes some responsibilities directly upon individuals, making them liable to criminal punishment.
This principle of "individual responsibility" was recognised and enforced in the trial of major war criminals at Nuremburg and other post-world war prosecutions, more recently in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, Cambodia, Lebanon, etc.
Principle six of the charter of the Nuremburg tribunal mentioned crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity as international crimes and, therefore, punishable under international law, whether by an international tribunal or by any state court exercising universal jurisdiction.
The Nuremburg judgment very aptly provided the rationale of such trial of war criminals: "That international law imposes duties and liabilities upon individuals as well as upon States, has long been recognised …Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced."
Thus, Nuremburg set the standard and, today, after more than six decades of progressive development, it is settled that prosecuting international crimes is a state responsibility and any state may prosecute such crimes exercising universal jurisdiction.
International crimes are committed against humanity and civilisation at large, and no single state or government, not even the international community, has any right to forgive and decline to prosecute persons accused of the commission of such heinous crimes.
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