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Threats the First Step to Genocide

[The Australian] Dore Gold - The debate over the applicability of the genocide convention to the threats of mass murder made by Iran's President Ahmadinejad is part of a larger global movement to find effective ways of stopping Iran from carrying out its declared plan to dominate its neighbors and wipe Israel off the map. During a recent military parade in Tehran, Ahmadinejad's threatening slogan was draped over a Shihab-3 missile, capable of reaching Israeli territory. In 1946, as the horrors of the Holocaust sank into the conscience of the newly formed UN, the genocide convention evolved into a binding international treaty, conceived to punish the crime of genocide and to prevent genocide. To accomplish this goal, article three of the convention stated that "direct and public incitement to commit genocide" was a punishable act. The most recent case where legal proceedings were initiated on the crime of incitement to genocide was in the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, established by the UN Security Council in 1994. Ultimately, the UN's Rwanda tribunal convicted more than a half dozen Rwandan Hutus for incitement to genocide, as well as the Rwandan prime minister at the time, Jean Kambanda. To threaten the use of force against a fellow UN member state is a blatant violation of the UN charter. Yet Ahmadinejad gets away with it. The failure of the international community to even register any serious complaint only whets his appetite.
2007-10-19 01:00:00
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