COPENHAGEN – Today Belgium feels the lash. Yesterday so did Denmark and tomorrow, we are promised, so will Taiwan. But none of these three sturdy, self-confident nations is going to buckle. If anything Big Brother publicly humiliating them has toughened their sinews.

Belgium came under direct fire last week from Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. Defence Secretary, who threatened to move NATO headquarters out of Brussels unless Belgium agrees to re-write its controversial human rights legislation that allows non-Belgians to be tried in Belgium for alleged war crimes on the basis of the now widely accepted principal of international jurisprudence, universal jurisdiction. The principle is enshrined in the statutes of the new International Criminal Court. (Although it gives the right of first crack of the whip to the courts of the country of the accused, an often overlooked point, particularly in the Bush Administration.)  It was also recognized by the British House of Lords when considering the appeal of former Chilean president, Augusto Pinochet, not to be sent for trial to Spain on charges of authorizing the torture of political opponents. The law lords upheld Spain’s right to try him, arguing that universal jurisdiction written into the UN Convention Against Torture (which the U.K., Chile and the U.S. had all ratified) applied in this historic case.

In his usual blunt, rather crude manner, Rumsfeld told a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels last week that Belgium had “turned its legal system into a platform for divisive, politicized lawsuits against the officials of its NATO allies” and that the U.S. would have to “seriously consider” whether to continue to allow its senior officials to continue to visit Brussels, which is not only the HQ of NATO but of the European Union too.

Rumsfeld seems incapable of learning how counterproductive he is. If he finds it difficult to see the picture clearly when he himself is part of it, he should look at the reaction inside Taiwan last week when Beijing’s foreign ministry denounced it. By some tortuous line of convoluted reasoning Beijing believes that Taiwan’s decision to put “Taiwan” on the front of its passports is an affront to Chinese sovereignty and China’s claim to be the legitimate ruler of Taiwan. But all that China succeeded in doing was to make a majority of Taiwanese feel even more determined to stand their ground.

It was China that six years ago tried the same bully tactics on tiny Denmark. Denmark had had the temerity to sponsor a resolution at the UN Human Rights Commission criticizing China’s egregious human rights performance. Beijing threatened Copenhagen with a dire threat, saying its criticism would be “A rock that smashed down on the Danish government’s head”. Denmark’s partners in Europe laid pitifully low. The Danes themselves, however, were four square behind their government. This was after all the same nation occupied by Nazi Germany who protected its Jews with tenacity and smuggled those in danger out across the narrow strip of dividing sea, the Oresund, to neutral Sweden. .

This attitude of small country defiance is one that neither Beijing nor Washington finds easy to accept. Rumsfeld has certainly not learnt anything from the counterproductive way he harangued German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer before the war in Iraq. All it did was solidify even conservative German opinion behind the former left wing firebrand and ensure that Germany would have nothing to do with the war, or indeed any other wars that President George Bush might be planning.

The Bush Administration, Rumsfeld in particular, needs to take a deep breath and pause a moment for introspection.  How would it feel if European politicians decided at various meetings they regularly attend inside the United States to whip the Americans into shape with direct attacks? There are all sorts of easy targets- U.S. executions of under age minors, for example. Europe could threaten loudly and publicly to halt all cooperation with America’s court system unless this barbaric practice is suspended. Or America’s behavior over its attempt to undermine the International Criminal Court- Europe could campaign to remove the UN headquarters from New York to Geneva, if a UN institution created by the solemn wish of an overwhelming majority of its members is going to be shredded by unilateralist American arm twisting and bullying.

U.S.-European relations would soon be in tatters. However, tit for tat never got anybody anywhere. As Gandhi said “an eye for an eye just leaves everybody blind”. But that also means Bush needs to wake up to what his Defence Secretary is doing.

Schoolyard bullies only prosper in the short term. In the end everyone gangs up on them. People on the receiving end, even if they are small and vulnerable, are obviously not prepared to take it on the chin as once they might.

I can be reached by phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com

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40th Anniversary of Amnesty International

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