[Deathpenalty] FW: [aalshumanrights] Civil Resistance to State Crimes

Wed Jul 21 16:06:46 CDT 2004

The DP is a State Crime too. fab.

Francis A. Boyle
Law Building
504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
Champaign, IL 61820 USA
217-333-7954 (voice)
217-244-1478 (fax)
fboyle at law.uiuc.edu <mailto:fboyle at law.uiuc.edu> 
(personal comments only)

-----Original Message-----
From: Boyle, Francis [mailto:FBOYLE at LAW.UIUC.EDU] 
Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2004 2:48 PM
To: AALS Human Rights
Subject: [aalshumanrights] Civil Resistance to State Crimes

--
aalshumanrights: an e-mail forum for law professors on human rights
--

Francis A. Boyle
Law Building
504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
Champaign, IL 61820 USA
217-333-7954 (voice)
217-244-1478 (fax)
fboyle at law.uiuc.edu <mailto:fboyle at law.uiuc.edu> 
(personal comments only)

-----Original Message-----
From: Robison, Carol 
Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2004 2:22 PM
To: Boyle, Francis
Subject: Precis

The Right of Civil Resistance to Prevent State Crimes

by

Francis A. Boyle

            With the Regan/Bush administrations' ascent to power in January
of 1981, the peoples of the world have witnessed governments in the United
States of America that have demonstrated little if any respect for
fundamental considerations of international law, international
organizations, and human rights, let alone appreciation of the requirements
for maintaining international peace and security.  What we watched instead
is a comprehensive and malicious assault upon the integrity of the
international legal order by a group of men and women who were and still are
thoroughly Machiavellian in their perception of international relations and
in their conduct of both foreign policy and domestic affairs.  This is not
simply a question of giving or withholding the benefit of the doubt when it
comes to complicated matters of foreign affairs and defense policies to a
U.S. government charged with the security of both its own citizens and those
of its allies in Europe, the Western Hemisphere, and the Pacific.  Rather,
the Reagan/Bush administrations' foreign policy represented a gross
deviation from those basic rules of international deportment and civilized
behavior that the United States government had traditionally played the
pioneer role in promoting for the entire world community.  Even more
seriously, in many instances specific components of the Reagan/Bush
administrations' foreign policy constituted ongoing criminal activity under
well-recognized principles of both international law and U.S. domestic law,
in particular the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the
Nuremberg Principles.

            In direct reaction to the Reagan/Bush administrations' wanton
attack upon the international and domestic legal orders, tens of thousands
of American citizens engaged in various forms of civil resistance activities
in order to protest against distinct elements of a U.S. foreign policy that
grossly violated basic principles of international law and human rights.
These citizen protests led to numerous arrests and prosecutions by federal,
state, and local governmental authorities all over the country.  Soon
thereafter, this author began to give advice, counsel and assistance to
individuals and groups who had engaged in acts of civil resistance directed
against several aspects of the U.S. government's foreign policy:  the
Nuclear Freeze Movement, the Sanctuary Movement, Greenpeace International,
the Anti-Apartheid Movement, the Plowshares Movement, the Pledge of
Resistance Campaign, Gulf War resisters, among others.  I also participated
in the defense of individuals who were not part of formal movements but
nevertheless resorted to civil resistance to protest against the U.S.
government's policies on nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence, Central
America and the Caribbean, Southern Africa, Europe, the Middle East, etc.

            In addition, I have also helped defend active duty members of
United States armed forces who were persecuted and prosecuted because of
their acts of conscience and principle.  For example, in the fall of 1990, I
served as Counsel for the successful defense of U.S. Marine Corps Lance
Corporal Jeff Paterson, the first military resister to Bush Sr.'s Gulf War
I.  Then I represented U.S.M.C. Lance Corporal David Mihaila in a successful
effort to obtain his discharge from the Marine Corps during Bush Sr.'s Gulf
War I as a Conscientious Objector.  Corporal Mihaila was the Clerk of the
Court for the Paterson court-martial proceedings and was motivated to apply
for CO status as a result of my oral argument for Corporal Paterson.

            Then at the start of 1991 I served as Counsel for the defense of
Captain Dr. Yolanda Huet-Vaughn, who was court-martialed by the U.S. Army in
part because of her refusal to administer experimental vaccines to soldiers
destined to fight in the Bush Sr. Gulf War I.  Later on, I served as Counsel
for the defense of U.S. Army Captain Lawrence Rockwood, who was
court-martialed for his heroic efforts to stop torture in Haiti after the
Clinton administration had illegally invaded that country in 1994.  Most
recently, in 2004 I served as Counsel for the defense of U.S. Army Staff
Sergeant Camilo Mejia, the first military resister to Gulf War II by the
Bush Jr. administration.

            Upon their incarcerations, both Capt. Dr. Huet-Vaughn and Staff
Sgt. Mejia were designated as Prisoners of Conscience by Amnesty
International.  We Americans like to delude ourselves into believing that
there are no Prisoners of Conscience or Political Prisoners inhabiting the
Gulag Archipelago run right here by the United States government in ". . .
the land of the free, and the home of the brave."  In fact, there are many.
Both Captain Dr. Yolanda Huet-Vaughn and Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia are
America's equivalent to Vaclav Havel, Andrei Sakharov, Wei Jingsheng, Aung
San Suu Kyi, and others.  They are the archetypal American Heroes whom we
should be bringing into our schools and asking our children to emulate, not
those wholesale purveyors of violence and bloodshed adulated by the U.S.
government, America's power elite, the corporate news media and its
interlocked entertainment industry.  

            One generation ago the peoples of the world asked themselves:
Where were the "good" Germans?  Well, there were some good Germans.  The
Lutheran theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the foremost exemplar
of someone who led a life of principled opposition to the Nazi-terror state
even unto death.

            Today the peoples of the world are likewise asking themselves:
Where are the "good" Americans?  Well, there are some good Americans.  They
are getting arrested and going to jail for protesting against United States
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) whose power for human extermination far
exceeds even the wildest fantasies of Hitler and the Nazis.  Or else for
protesting against illegal U.S.. military interventions around the world.
As my friend and colleague former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark once
said:  "Our jails are filling up with saints!"  

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