TRIBUNAL SENDS FIRST TRAM OF INVESTIGATORS TO VIETNAM
Paris
The first investigating team of the recently organized War Crimes Tribunal left here December 29 for an intensive inquiry into the extent of indiscriminate bombing by American military forces in north Vietnam.
They plan to visit the areas of intensive destruction, gather relevant information, interview witnesses and survivors and prepare the results of their finding for the consideration of the tribunal itself which is scheduled to meet in Paris this spring.
The team members are Roger Pic, the well-known photographer; Leon Matarosso, a French jurist; Dr. Malcolm Caidwell, British authority on Southeast Asia; the American expert in Latin-American affairs Dr. John Gerassi; Professor Jean-Pierre Vigier; and Professor Setsure Tsurishima, a Japanese economist and specialist in urban development.
They will coordinate their work with a ten-man team already in Vietnam which was sent there by the Japan Committee for the Investigation of United States War Crimes. The latter body has the support of 1,700 Japanese scientists.
The first investigation will be carried out during January. A second team is now preparing to leave within a few weeks to follow up the preliminary work. This will be followed by a third and fourth team.
Each group will have its own specialists and will concentrate on whether or not there is evidence of the use of noxious chemicals, gas, napalm, the torture of prisoners, etc.
The governments of both the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and Cambodia have indicated that they will do everything possible to facilitate the inquiry.
The- cost of the investigative work is being borne entirely by the War Crimes Tribunal. A worldwide appeal is being made for financial support. National affiliates of the tribunal have already been set up in various countries to mobilize such support and to keep the public informed of the progress of the investigation.
The pressure against the tribunal is very heavy. The December 15 issue of the New York Herald Tribune, an English-language newspaper published in Paris, reported that the State Department has cancelled Ralph Schoenman's passport. Schoenman is an American associated with.the Bertrand: Russell Peace Foundation who is now serving as the general secretary for the War Crimes Tribunal. The State Department move is considéred here to be a petty maneuver aimed at harassing the work of the tribunal.
The State Department, it is believed, is quite concerned about the work of the tribunal and is anxious to block publicity for its inquiry which it views as a "propaganda trial." Many prominent newspapers appear to share the State Department's worry. Quiet pressure is being applied, it seems, to close off normal channels of publicity around the War Crimes Tribunal.
The facts reported by Harrison Salisbury of the New_York Times are a good indication, however, that the inquiry launched by the War Crimes Tribunal will uncover a good deal of material. Salisbury's accounts of what he alone has seen in north Vietnam shocked circles that have hitherto remained skeptical about charges that. the Johnson administration has been committing war crimes.
A series of teams can be expected to uncover further evidence in great detail.
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CHINA AS I SAW IT IN