It was big news that President Clinton in his final days in office had directed the signing of a U.N. treaty to create an International Criminal Court. Such a court could prosecute and imprison Americans for alleged war crimes. Clinton had opposed the treaty, because of Pentagon fears the court would go after American military personnel, and it had no chance of ratification. But Clinton signed it anyway.

One of the reasons for Clinton's action, besides a desire to tie the hands of his successor, was a fierce lobbying campaign by organizations such as Human Rights Watch. Seizing on Clinton's statement back in 1998 that he would support such a court, Human Rights Watch had sent a December 13, 2000, letter urging Clinton to sign the treaty. It had pressured Clinton by saying that a failure to sign would mean that Clinton had broken his promise.

Representatives of Human Rights Watch were quoted in some articles about Clinton signing the treaty, but its lobbying role and curious background were ignored. Its name implies concern about human rights, but the group administers the Hellman/Hammett grant program, named for two American writers, Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett, who were notorious communist sympathizers and were even described as supporters of Stalinist Russia. Stalin, of course, killed millions of people, especially peasants in the Ukraine who resisted his policies.

The grant program is financed by money from the estates of Hellman and Hammett. But Human Rights Watch, in its description of the grant program, ignores their pro-Communist outlook and contends they were merely "victims of political persecution" who came under investigation by Congress in the 1950s. Needless to say, this raises questions about the political outlook of Human Rights Watch and what it and other similar groups with influence at the U.N. have in mind for the International Criminal Court, the ICC.

Human Rights Watch contends the ICC is a natural follow-up to the Nuremberg trials after World War II. But those were presided over by the U.S., the Soviet Union and their allies to hold Nazis accountable. The Soviet Communists, led by Stalin, had committed atrocities against their own people that were never prosecuted. The Black Book of Communism makes the point that while the Nazis continue to be prosecuted for their crimes, the Communists have largely escaped accountability for their crimes. The U.N.'s International Criminal Court will be, for all intents and purposes, an agency of the U.N., whose top governing body, the Security Council, includes Communist China and Russia, the successor to the Soviet regime run by a former KGB officer. How can such a court ever hope to hold the Communists accountable for their crimes?

Human Rights Watch has not suggested that Fidel Castro be prosecuted for his crimes. Instead, it was part of the effort to put Chilean General Augusto Pinochet in prison because he saved his country from communism. The group has talked about prosecuting the Communist Khmer Rouge, who killed several million in Cambodia, but NOT their patrons in Communist China, who killed tens of millions. Human Rights Watch and its new U.N. criminal court are frauds that should be exposed. (30)

 

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