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Volume IV · Page 498
| was there any legal procedure to punish the
offenders. Humanity could only plead at the doors of the mighty for a crumb of
sympathy and a drop of compassion. But now it has been seen that humanity need not supplicate for a tribunal in which to proclaim its rights. Humanity need not plead for justice with sobs, tears, and piteous weeping. It has been demonstrated here that the inalienable and fundamental rights of common man need not lack for a court to proclaim them and for a marshal to execute the court's judgments. Humanity can assert itself by law. It has taken on the robe of authority. Following the London Agreement of 8 August 1945 between the four Allied powers, 19 other nations expressed their adherence to that agreement. In giving effect to the London Agreement and the Charter pursuant thereto, as well as the Moscow Declaration of 30 October 1943, the Allied Control Council formulated its Law No. 10 which treated, among other things, of crimes against humanity. Those who are indicted under this provision, however, are not responding alone to the nations which have approved the principles expressed in the London and Moscow Agreements, they are answering to humanity itself, humanity which has no political boundaries and no geographical limitations. Humanity is man itself. Humanity is the race which will go on in spite of all the fuehrers and dictators that little brains and smaller souls can elevate to platforms of tinsel poised on bastions of straw. Crimes against humanity are acts committed in the course of wholesale and systematic violation of life and liberty. It is to be observed that insofar as international jurisdiction is concerned, the concept of crimes against humanity does not apply to offenses for which the criminal code of any well-ordered state makes adequate provision. They can only come within the purview of this basic code of humanity because the state involved, owing to indifference, impotency or complicity, has been unable or has refused to halt the crimes and punish the criminals. At the 8th Conference for the Unification of Penal Law held on 11 July 1947, the Counselor of the Vatican defined crimes against humanity in the following language: |
"The essential and inalienable rights of man cannot vary in time and space. They cannot be interpreted and limited by the social conscience of a people or a particular epoch for they are essentially immutable and eternal. Any injury * * * done with the intention of extermination, mutilation, or enslavement, against the life, freedom of opinion * * * the moral or physical integrity of the family * * * or the dignity of the human being, by reason of his opinion, his race, caste, family or profession, is a crime against humanity." |
