Sévane Garibian

Crimes against humanity and international legality in legal theory after Nuremberg

L’etude de la litterature anglo-saxonne et continentale ayant immediatement suivi le jugement de Nuremberg met en lumiere deux strategies differentes, visant a refuter l’argument fort connu selon lequel le Statut du Tribunal heurte le principe de legalite penale : soit les auteurs admettent, en echo au raisonnement des juges, la fiction selon laquelle le Statut n’est que l’expression de normes preexistantes de droit international et donc que le droit de Nuremberg est conforme au principe de legalite – mais en taisant la question de la nouvelle incrimination de crime contre l’humanite ; soit ils reconnaissent que le Statut est createur de droit nouveau retroactif, et donc que le droit de Nuremberg n’est a priori pas (ou n’est que partiellement) conforme au principe de legalite – mais en justifiant alors, dans un second temps, cette entrave au principe. Quelle que soit la strategie adoptee par la doctrine, elle vise a demontrer que le probleme de compatibilite du droit de Nuremberg avec les exigences legalistes est un faux probleme. Dans les deux cas de figure, cette experience inedite offre la premiere grande occasion, pour la doctrine, de s’interroger sur le sens meme de la legalite penale, sur sa portee et ses limites dans l’ordre juridique international.

A Commentary on David Scheffer's Concepts of Genocide and Atrocity Crimes

David Scheffer’s article is extremely rich and provides cause for thought concerning the concepts of genocide and atrocity crimes. His two proposals, liberating the use of the term genocide from manipulation by governments and international organizations and, more generally, substituting the new concepts of atrocity crimes and atrocity law for the actual legal, political and public terminology used regarding the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, call for some observations.

Über den Bruch des Konsenses: Der Fall Perinçek, der armenische Völkermord und internationales Strafrecht

Das hundertste Gedenkjahr des Volkermords an den ArmenierInnen ist auch das Jahr, in welchem das Urteil des Europaischen Gerichtshofs fur Menschenrechte (EGMR) vom 17. Dezember 2013 zum Fall Dogu Perincek v. Switzerland durch die zweite Instanz, die Grose Kammer des EGMR uberpruft wurde. Wir werden uns hier auf eines der Argumente des EGMR konzentrieren, welches dem Schweizer Entscheid widerspricht, namlich das problematische Argument des Fehlens eines „allgemeinen Konsenses“ im Hinblick auf den Volkermord an den Armeniern von 1915. Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es, Licht auf die Paradoxien und Konsequenzen eines solchen Arguments zu werfen – ein Argument, das bemerkenswerter Weise eine historische Sichtweise und insbesondere einen Blick auf die Geschichte des internationalen Strafrechts erfordert.

The Death of the Perpetrator, or the Uncountable Time of his Eternity

To the Videla family, Here is the body. Without filing a request for habeas corpus, you have the body. A few forms to fill, and it is yours, you can take away your relative’s mortal shell. You have a body. You will notice that it is delivered to you without any burns or bruises. We could at least have given it a richly deserved beating. We, however, prefer not to do the things that the body that you are going to bury did. We did not throw it out of a plane, we did not encourage it to “squeal” using electric shocks. To squeal, for example, about where our bodies, those of our comrades, are. We did not rape it. We did not put its child on its chest while we cranked the generator. We did not shoot it in order to pretend that it died in a stand-off. We did not encase it in concrete. We did not bury it in an unmarked grave somewhere. We did not steal its grandchildren. Here, the body is yours.

“Commanded by my Mother’s Corpse”: Talaat Pasha, or the Revenge Assassination of a Condemned Man

ABSTRACT Talaat Pasha, the chief instigator of the Armenian genocide, died at the hands of an assassin in 1921 in Berlin, where he was living in hiding under a false name. His killer, the survivor and avenger of the genocide, Soghomon Tehlirian, sought to use his own trial as a platform to condemn the acts of the murderer of his people – a murderer who had already been sentenced to death in absentia in his own country by a court martial in Constantinople. This perpetrator now lies in a mausoleum built in memory of the “heroes of the fatherland” on the hill of the Monument of Liberty alongside his erstwhile Minister of War, Enver Pasha, in the very heart of Istanbul. This chapter aims to shed light on the link between the perpetrator’s violent end, the treatment of his remains, and the negationist policy which is still in place in Turkey.

Seeking the dead among the living

La politique etatique des disparitions forcees en Argentine (politique planifiee et executee durant la dictature militaire de 1976-1983) a encore, au present, un effet frappant : en l’absence du corps des disparus, les familles cherchent les morts parmi les vivants. Il s’agit pour elles de donner corps, par le droit, aux victimes disparues et mises de ce fait hors la loi. Si « le comble de la disparition, c’est sa propre disparition » (Jean-Louis Deotte), alors resoudre juridiquement l’enigme de la disparition revient a traiter du disparu (en tant que disparu, precisement, non en tant que defunt) a travers le droit dont il est, du point de vue du bourreau, exclu puisque non-existant. C’est dans cette configuration tout a fait singuliere d’une violence etatique de masse qui se construit sur l’effacement systematise des corps de ses victimes (donc des traces et de la preuve materielle du crime), qu’il est interessant d’apprehender le corps disparu comme objet d’un triple enjeu : l’etablissement des faits, pour la mise en lumiere, la (re)construction et la connaissance du recit de ce qui a eut lieu ; la revelation du crime et le jugement des responsables ; la cessation du crime et l’acces au deuil. Il s’agira alors de penser le corps disparu/absent comme generateur de droits individuels et d’obligations etatiques.

Ravished Armenia (1919): Bearing Witness in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

The challenges raised by genocides and by the multiple forms of testimony which narrate, translate, process, represent, and bring them, so to speak, into the present, are considerable.2 Given these difficulties, a return to the writings of Walter Benjamin proves useful insofar as these contain tools vital for the construction of a nonlinear thought-process, one which is awake and aware of its own fragmented, de-systematized reflection.3 In this article we set out to establish a dialogue between two of his most important works — “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction” (1939) (Benjamin, 1973/1939: 211–244) and “Theses on the philosophy of history” (1940) (Benjamin, 1973/1940: 245–255) — by considering a truly extraordinary film. Although barely known, if not entirely forgotten, this film nevertheless carries within it the seeds — avant la lettre — of the Benjaminian concept of a “cinematic history,” of the cinema as a potential mode of “historical awakening”.4 A film which can be seen as both a simulacrum and a revelation.