Vol. 4, No. 29 : September 30, 1966
- DE GAULLE BANS VIETNAM WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL
De Gaulle has been reaping a good deal of publicity putting up a show of "independence" in relation to Washington and its dirty colonial war in Vietnam. He nevertheless knows how to make a cheap concession aimed at pleasing the White House. On September 19, the Paris correspondent of the New York Times reported that "On one point France wants no further aggravation of relations with the
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United States. This is the ‘international war crimes tribunal’ that Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher, has been organizing to decide whether the United States and its ranking officials are guilty of a crime against humanity. The announced meeting place was Paris. The French Government does not want it here, and presumably has the power to prevent it."
It is possible that the State Department hinted to the French that a ban would be well received. The tribunal is headed by such figures as Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Isaac Deutscher and Lazaro Cardenas. Its hearings can prove highly embarrassing to Johnson, Rusk and McNamara.
On August 28 the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation announced that a letter had been sent to President Johnson requesting his appearance at the hearings of the tribunal "in your own defense." The letter charged that "Within living memory, only the Nazis could . be said to have exceeded in brutality the war waged by your Adminis- tration against the people of Vietnam, and it is because this war is loathed and condemned by the vast majority of mankind that demands are heard throughout the world for a formal international tribunal to hear the full evidence."
Another site for the tribunal is under consideration. According to the Times it may be held in Sweden.