ICRC v. Jews and Bosnians
	  id NAA23068; Thu, 9 Oct 1997 13:49:57 -0400


Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

source: "Boyle, Francis" <FBOYLE@LAW.UIUC.EDU> 
8 Oct 1997 14:47:06 GMT

Dear Friends:

So after 50 years the ICRC finally gets around to apologizing to
the Jewish People for their failure to protect Jews during the Second
World War. And you will note from this story and a Reuter's report of
today's date that the ICRC relied upon the German Red Cross to assure
the ICRC that there was no real problem with the way the Nazi German
government treated the Jews. Stupidity, incompetence, arrogance, and
worse!

Today the ICRC repeated history concerning its failure to
protect the Bosnians. I would like to know if the ICRC relied upon the
Bosnian Serb Red Cross under Mrs. Karadzic to assure the ICRC that there
was no problem with the way the Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats were
being treated by her husband's Bosnian Serb Army. Did the ICRC rely upon
the Serbian Red Cross as well? Why did the ICRC refuse to protect the
Bosnians as it had refused to protect the Jews a generation ago?
Stupidity, incompetence, arrogance, and worse!

If my memory serves me correctly, in the Fall of 1993 or maybe
1994, the ICRC convened a big conference in Geneva related to the
situation in Bosnia. Bosnia's UN Ambassador in Geneva at the time, my
good friend, Mustafa Bijedic appeared and gave a speech in which he
publicly condemned the ICRC in no uncertain terms for their refusal to
protect the Bosnians. To the best of my knowledge, Ambassador Bijedic's
public denunciation of the ICRC in Geneva had no apparent effect on ICRC
behavior when it came to refusing to protect the Bosnians from genocide
and war crimes that I am aware of.

Perhaps fifty years from now the ICRC will get around to
apologizing to the Bosnians and making available to the Bosnians  in
Sarajevo the ICRC internal documents about why the ICRC  refused to
protect the Bosnians: Stupidity, incompetence, arrogance, and worse!

Francis A. Boyle
Professor of International Law
Citizen of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina>

) ) - In a reversal of policy, the
) > International Red Cross gave Israel Tuesday copies of more than
) > 60,000 Holocaust era documents, some revealing failures of the
) > Swiss-based relief organization to challenge the mass slaughter of
) > Jews.
) >    Among the documents handed to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum
) > were reports that the World Jewish Congress appealed to the Red
) > Cross early in World War II to help stop the mass murder of Jews in
) > Poland, a museum spokeswoman said.
) >    The Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
) > responded in August 1940 that the organization's German
) > representatives had found the Congress' concerns unfounded.
) >    In a ceremony at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, George Willemin, a
) > representative of the Red Cross, presented 31 rolls of microfilm
) > each containing 2,000 documents to the archives' facilities.
) >    "In order to make this transfer of microfilms possible, the ICRC
) > had to make a formal decision to change its longstanding rules
) > regarding access to its files," said Willemin in explaining the long
) > delay in the transfer.
) >    "The ICRC is conscious of its responsibility to the history of
) > the Holocaust and to the memory of all those who can no longer speak
) > for themselves," he said.
 
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