Women and children have been trapped under rubble after Russian airstrikes hit a maternity hospital in the besieged south-eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it was a “direct strike,” asking: “How much longer will the world be an accomplice ignoring terror?”
Footage is heartbreaking. Ukrainian officials say at least 17 people were injured, including women in labour, with heavily pregnant women, post-partum women and babies carried out on stretchers.
Russia has continuously denied targeting civilians.
So far it’s one of the most direct and blatant examples of a war crime across the 15-day war. The outrage from the international community is palpable. With such attacks on vulnerable citizens, could this be a turning point in the international response to the war?
Push for ceasefire has been unsuccessful
United Nations secretary-general António Guterres said the attacks were “horrific”, and called for an end to the bloodshed. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said they were “depraved” and said the UK “will hold Putin to account for his terrible crimes”.
This is notable and may signal the UK’s support for Russia to be tried in the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes.
It’s not the first time civilians have been targeted: four days into the invasion Kyiv’s Okhmadyt children’s cancer hospital was struck by artillery fire, forcing those who were well enough to evacuate and sick kids into the basement.
Medical Association for Prevention of War (Australia) president Dr Sue Wareham tells Crikey the attacks were absolutely forbidden in terms of war and constituted war crimes under the Geneva Convention.
“We would hope that this would be a turning point in ensuring that there are negotiations for a ceasefire … and we must advocate for intense negotiations for as long as it takes for a ceasefire to be reached,” Wareham said, adding Russia needed to feel its concerns had been adequately considered.
But negotiated humanitarian corridors have largely been unsuccessful; Ukraine accused Russia of not honouring a ceasefire and Russia accused Ukrainian nationalists of continued fighting.
World leaders are calling for a ceasefire. Chinese President Xi Jinping said yesterday that only “maximum restraint” would prevent the war from “spinning out of control”. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called attacks on civilian areas “inexcusable”, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the world needed a “strong coordinated response” to the invasion and US President Joe Biden has said by not responding to Putin’s assault “the cost to freedom and to the American people will be even greater tomorrow”.
Russia emboldened by UN’s hands-off approach
The UN has specific definitions of war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. When the definition is met, it is supposed to spur accountability, with perpetrators tried in the International Criminal Court. In reality, this rarely happens, Wareham says.
“In recent wars, attacks on civilians or civilian infrastructure have almost become a part of modern warfare, and we’ve seen this in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq,” she said. “A good precedent has not been set for accountability in attacks like this.”
In 2015 the US attacked the Kunduz trauma hospital in Afghanistan, killing 42 people despite Médecins Sans Frontières notifying the military it was attacking patients. The US called the attack an accident and has apologised but has not gone to trial in the ICC.
“There could well be a sense within Russia that they’ll get away with this because across genocide, multiple violations of the rules for international humanitarian law and other attacks on healthcare facilities, there hasn’t been accountability held,” Wareham said.
“There’s a lot of grandstanding and bluster about how unacceptable this is, but when it comes down to actually holding all nations accountable by the same rules, then that’s missing.”
Other nations could commence war crimes prosecution
Holding perpetrators to account in the ICC is no easy feat, Australian National University international law expert Don Rothwell tells Crikey.
“The prosecutor at the ICC has now clear capacity to continue an investigation into war crimes in the conflict, so there’s no legal issue,” Rothwell said.
“But each alleged crime raises new issues in terms of who will be held responsible — who ordered the military action and who holds responsibility?”
One key difference in Ukraine is that the crimes are not historical, and are being heavily documented by international media. Instead of waiting for the UN to take action, Rothwell says, independent nations could launch their own war crimes prosecution against Russia — which Australia did during the 1990s against former alleged Nazi war criminals.
While this would “add an additional level of accountability for those who are responsible for these acts”, Rothwell says, it’s again difficult. The US has shown a degree of hostility towards the ICC, and with tensions between Europe and Russia so high it’s unlikely any country would begin proceedings.
Even if they did, “the big issue is arresting and detaining the alleged perpetrators of these international crimes … and if these persons are Russians, Russia is not going to hand these persons over”, Rothwell said.
Countries like Australia can assist the ICC by collecting testimonies and information from those fleeing conflict to assist the UN when and if prosecutions are brought.
“The US has shown a degree of hostility towards the ICC” – You don’t say – the Hague invasion act is still on the books, so they can invade the Netherlands if the ICC would take action against an American.
It’s not a war crime to bomb a hospital. The US said so back in 2015, when it bombed a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital repeatedly at 15 minute intervals for over an hour in Kunduz, Afghanistan. Patients were burned to death in their beds. Twenty health professionals died, too. Very precise strikes. Surgical. The surrounding buildings weren’t hit. This was no accident.
No ICC for the USA, because it wasn’t a war crime. They said so. Putin will too.
The Rules Based Order only works when everyone obeys the rules.
The Great Lie of the First Gulf War – OZY | A Modern Media Company The US needs a new PR company.
The standard definition of a crime from time immemorial requires both a criminal act and a criminal intent. So bombing a hospital deliberately is a crime; by accident, maybe not. The USA insists its attack in the Kunduz hospital was an unfortunate mistake. Yes it was very precise and sustained so on exactly as you say, but the USA never said it was just a stray bomb or missile. It insists its aircraft identified and attacked the wrong target due to fatally mistaken directions and there was never any intention to attack any medical facility, and the attack stopped when the mistake was notified. (Ok, there’s a lot more to it, but that’s a summary.)
The hypocrisy here is that the same defence is equally valid (or equally not valid if you like) when Flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine using Russian missiles. The intercepted communications from those who fired the missiles show they thought their target was a hostile military aircraft, which is not unbelievable in the circumstances at the time. That’s exactly the kind of mistake the USA says excuses its attack on the Kunduz hospital. But one of these incidents led to criminal charges against those involved, and one did not.
And on the subject of shooting down civilian passenger aircraft for no good reason, let’s not forget the USS Vincennes and Iran Air flight 655.
The US has lots of mistakes to live with, its foundation was the first.
Yes; most notably, if the American colonies had only remained loyal to the British Crown, the British would have continued to send their convicts across the Atlantic for as long as transportation was an available sentence, and left Australia more or less undisturbed. But those damned American rebels had to ruin everything.
Same rebels who genocide a proud Indian culture.
“Bury my heart at Wounded Knee” rings loud.
…just the one?
?
You covered the most recent, glaring examples of the Exceptional nation’s actions – many others are available – but the MH17 case also involves the Hegemon’s perfidy.
It is unarguable that its spy satellite data would show to the millimetre where the Buk were launched, all the telemetry and every syllable spoken by all involved so it would be a simple matter to provide this vital information to the current court case.
That this is not done – in a heartbeat – suggests that it does not support the common knowledge/’public facts’ of the case as suggested bythe usual suspects.
Putin will no doubt claim the Russian military thought the hospital was something else, too, SSR. Just like the USA did.
Anyone aware of the excuses the Saudis use for the repeated bombing of hospitals all over Yemen? They’ve been doing it for years and years. I’m sure they’re all “mistakes”, too. We don’t hear much about them because the Saudis are our allies. We sell arms to them so they can bomb hospitals in Yemen.
I love being a White Hat, don’t you?
There were a lot of missiles, bombs (some of them “smart”), incendiaries, bullets, grenades, shells, which were not “stray” and which killed, maimed or otherwise injured hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of civilians in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Nobody, to the best of my knowledge, ever had to appear in the Hague to answer or explain. The US of course pretends that they are not answerable to International Criminal Court anyway
And yes, let’s not forget the matter of the USS Vincennes. No apologies for hundreds of civilian deaths, no punishments either.
Because the US burnt people alive, Putin can, too.
Because the US dropped the atomic bomb, Putin can, too.
Oooh, and can Putin kill 6 million people in concentration camps because Germany (a NATO member – boo!) did it first?
So it’s OK for the US to get away with its many, many, many murders and war crimes as long as we convict Putin is it?
BTW as you seem to be too young to remember, the US threatened Nuclear War in 1962 over Cuba. It’s nothing new.
“So it’s OK for the US to get away with its many, many, many murders and war crimes as long as we convict Putin is it?”
No. Nobody should get away with war crimes. Doesn’t matter who they are. We shouldn’t ignore Putin’s war crimes just because he’s not the US.
Agree but only when and if war crimes are actually proven according to international law. Wait, the US doesn’t recognize that part of the law and neither does Russia. Two scumbag countries but we only call out one of them.
Again, one rule for the West and another for everyone else. I want one rule for all and it to be enforced!
“I want one rule for all and it to be enforced!”
Me too.
“Ash nazg durbatulûk,…”
Nobody would turn down the offer of absolute freedom, of course. But on a finite planet surrounded by other people . . . absolute freedom becomes the luxury of the most powerful.
You might need to consider your a priori opening statement – most people fear freedom more than anything else when its inconvenient conjoined twin, responsibility, is included.
‘Responsibility’ can be a bit of a weasel word, though (as can ‘freedom’).
Say, for instance, I’m an industrialist polluting nearby rivers and, consequently poisoning the fish my neighbours depend on for food, I could consider myself ‘responsible’ because the profits I make from my business provides me with an independent food source. But my neighbours would consider me ‘irresponsible’ for destroying their local food supply.
They have a dependency, but I do not. Therefore I am more free. My responsibility is to myself and my loved ones, and I am fulfilling that responsibility. My neighbours are the ones who are neither free nor responsible.
Furthermore, if my neighbours were willing to fight for more freedom and responsibility, I have the advantage of wealth, which means I can employ mercenaries to repel them.
The point, or one of them, should be that as long as Bush, Blair and their eager little helper are allowed to do what they did (on grounds now known to be laughably spurious), and live out their lives as respected elder statesmen, Putin can feel safe or even entitled to do what he likes.
That sounds a bit like blaming precedent for abhorrent behaviour.
Your Honour, I am innocent. I only kill people because I saw Bush and Blair kill people and get away with it.
Martz, with respect, I think Kathy is raising the very valid point that if you have a thing called international law and expect people to follow it, then that standard or law needs to apply equally to all actors on the international stage. You can’t simply invade a country, say Iraq, overthrow its leader, reduce the country to chaos, be a part of the subsequent deaths of tens of thousands of people all in the name of looking for weapons of mass destruction – find none (the reason for invasion), and simply move on. All the while, after the fact, say justificatory statements like Sadamm was a monster (of course he was), the world is a better place without him (most likely), and so on. That is simply self serving and dishonest. But powerful nations get away with such behaviour. And so international law is trashed and seen for what it is – a tool of the powerful to use as they will.
Thanks TS, and I totally agree. But I don’t really see what the point is.
Powerful nations do get away with disregarding international law and committing atrocities, and should always be condemned for it.
I would love for the architects and lobbyists for the Iraq war to be tried in an international court of law rather than gliding into the luxury of anonymity or continuing to participate in polite society as though they did nothing wrong. But, that didn’t happen and seems unlikely to happen.
And now Putin’s armed forces are invading Ukraine and bombing civilians, and we have all that human suffering unfolding in front of us, and it could obviously have been avoided had Putin not ordered his military into Ukraine. So, to draw equivalences at this time, when people are reacting emotionally to visceral horrors caused by a fairly obvious act of aggression, does come across as an attempt to diminish, distract from, and even excuse what is happening.
Sorry to be somewhat picky Kathy, but the rules based order is a question of ‘what rules and whose order’. The rules are our rules, that is Western rules – we make them, we enforce them, we decide when they have been broken. The order is that which we establish and recognise. Do you remember on the last days of Afghanistan, when the US blew up a number of people they said were terrorists, in a car carrying weapons to attach the west with, only to later reveal that innocent people had been killed. After an investigation by the US the US found there was no case for the US to answer. See that? By definition the west cannot break the rules. The west, it’s allies or whatever tyrant the west is supporting cannot break the rules or commit war crimes. It’s in the small print at the bottom of the page.
‘Boris Johnson said the attacks were “depraved” and said the UK will “will hold Putin to account for his terrible crimes”. This is notable and may signal the UK’s support for Russia to be tried in the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes.’
I would hold back on assuming it might signal anything, and certainly not anything more than a meaningless gesture. Boris Johnson has no concept of truth or honesty, he just says whatever suits his purpose and his present audience. As soon as it pleases him he will say something different or contradictory, and there is no connection between what he says and he does. (See Jonathan Swift’s essay ‘Political Lying‘ for more on this art.) This is the Boris Johnson who denies, and then cannot remember, if he attended drunken parties at No.10 during covid lock down despite photos of him, and who promised that Brexit would bring an extra 350 million quid a week for the NHS knowing it was a complete fabrication. And so on and on, all the way back to his days at Eton; a proper record of all his lying would fill a large book.
More to the point, the Tory Party sold itself body and soul years ago to corrupt Russian oligarchs close to Putin. It has done their bidding ever since. They buy high positions in the Tory Party, they are given knighthoods and some are in the House of Lords. The UK’s finance industry has been placed at their disposal and is run for their benefit. The UK stores their wealth, shelters it from tax and launders their dodgy income. British lawyers harass the oligarchs’ opponents and pursue them mercilessly in British courts. British property dealers make fortunes selling swathes of prime British estates and mansions to them. All these spivs and profiteers are the essence of the modern Tory Party and will fight tooth and nail to keep the Russian money flowing into their pockets.
Since the invasion of Ukraine Johnson has said various things as though he is not pleased about Russia’s actions. But he has not done much. The obstacles erected to keep out Ukrainian refugees, for example, speak louder than anything Johnson has said. He has done even less about the grip Russian money has on the UK. Johnson’s colleagues, who were expressing doubts about Johnson leading the Tories and being PM just before the invasion, now say he must be supported because of the crisis. This is of course quite mad. It is more urgent than ever that Johnson is replaced with someone who has at least a semblance of capability and integrity.
P.S. Yesterday the UK finally put sanctions on 7 Russian individuals, so that’s a start. It’s still years after it should have happened, and the EU has already acted against about 160 Russians. And I don’t know why I did not mention in the above the bog part played by Russia in getting Brexit over the line with money, social media propaganda and its influence over various Tories.
Ah, right. So the US knocks off half a million Iraqi kids, prompting 3 senior UN officials to resign, citing a “genocide”, and the world doesn’t reach a “turning point”. It invades Iraq on the basis of lies (we joined in), kills and displaces millions, sets up death squads and torture chambers where prisoners are sodomized with light bulbs and raped in front of their mothers, as Seymour Hersh reminded us, and the world doesn’t reach a turning point (incidentally the US also shelled a hospital in Fallujah). But PUTIN having the gall to do what we serially do: now THAT is something up with which we will not put. Got it, Amber. Preen much?
There has to be a ‘settlement’, once this brutal, unjustifiable WAR concludes. And those responsible held to account. Just as occurred following conclusion of WW11. The Leadership of State, Military, and those that financed, benefitted from carnage imposed. All, one by one, brought to account. For all the world to sign, affirm, their guilt. Justice. To appease those afflicted.
Happens every week in Yemen. Looks like some Crikey writers are using Murdoch scripts.
Well said. Double standard abound. A loose reading of history shows a high toleration of unjustified wars – might tends to be right. Saudi’s continuing their war, Iraqi (at least the second one). Now that we’ve left Afghanistan our Government seems to have limited interest in cleaning up its refugee failures there nor address the apparent war crimes some of our people committed there.
No doubt, Putin very happy to know he can bomb maternity hospitals with impunity until a critical mass of people on a Crikey comments forum condemn the weekly bombing of maternity hospitals in Yemen.
Any evidence Russia did it. Didn’t think so. Thanks for the worthless input.
No evidence at all. It’s all made up. Fake news.
There experts at that, doing it for a hundred years.
Their*
Not that either – for your 3rd go, try “they’re“.
Thanks.
But we do know who is bombing Yemen and who supplies the bombs. Yes/No
No evidence at all. It’s all made up. Fake news.
Yemen is all made up Huh. What a douche.
Please don’t mention world war settlements. I don’t want a world war. I don’t want a world war settlement with the US and co in charge again, either. Too many dead all over the world.
Agree we need a settlement but not just for the Ukraine. We need to bring in all the recent Western invasions eg Iraq, Afghanistan etc to ensure justice for all, not just justice for white.
And no more Security Council and FFS no more power of veto! While ever those are in place we will always end up here.
Security Council is fine if you end the Veto.
Exactly. “To appease those afflicted”
Yes, given Putin is currently bombing maternity hospitals in Ukraine, let’s focus our efforts into ensuring the US pay reparations from their invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
1.6 Million people killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Yemen and you think a few hundred white people in Europe is more important? That’s Mighty White of you.
“You think a few hundred white people in Europe is more important?”
No.
After WW11, Robert Macnamara said that if the US had been the losers, THEY would have been tried for war crimes.
Did MacNamara say that because he suspected the US and its allies killed 6 million non-combatants in concentration camps?
Don’t get me wrong, any war will involve war crimes on both sides, and all war crimes should be prosecuted. But the Holocaust, as a war crime, was on a different level.
No, it was because of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Gotta agree with him on that.
And I think Stalin got away with a fair few war crimes, too. As did the Emperor Hirohito.
Not to mention Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush Jr, Clinton, Obama and Trump. Just waiting on Biden but there is still time.