by P.S. Sahni & Shobha Aggarwal
Sir,
The world is witnessing genocide of Palestinians by Israel. The USA, UK, France & Germany are aiding and abetting this crime against humanity. Israel, like an absconder state, is refusing to come under International Criminal Court (ICC) proceedings on the technical plea that it has not ratified the Rome Statute. Israel has gone to the extent of informing the UN that it has no intention of ratifying this treaty and by implication it reserves the right to massacre people with no accountability. Under the circumstances an independent International Investigative People’s Tribunal is urgently needed.
When the US government was slaughtering Vietnamese in the 1960s, a person of the stature of Bertrand Russell, a philosopher statesman initiated a process leading to investigations by the International War Crimes Tribunal (Russell-Sartre Tribunal or Stockholm Tribunal). The findings of such a tribunal puts tremendous worldwide pressure on the government committing crimes against humanity.
As a public intellectual of unimpeachable integrity and with global acceptability your efforts to get such a tribunal into motion will send a strong message that humanity is alive. Your association with it will act as a balm to the wounds of Palestinians inflicted by the ruling class politicians (right wing & ultra-right wing) of the Jewish state of Israel.
May we dare say that intellectuals will have to step on public streets to protest against this genocide. If even not now, then when?
Yours sincerely,
P.S. Sahni & Shobha Aggarwal
Email: [email protected]
[P.S. Sahni is a qualified orthopaedic surgeon. He has worked extensively with the victims of Sikh Genocide in 1984; amongst victims of 1992 anti-Muslim violence; and at the India-Bangladesh border during the Bangladesh Liberation War resulting in 1971 Bangladesh Genocide.
Shobha Aggarwal is an independent legal researcher and lawyer. She has done the ‘Advanced International Study Program in Peace and Conflict Transformation’ from the European University Center for Peace Studies, Austria. She attended the Pretoria Summer School on International Law in 2002.
