Russia’s war crimes
Sir: In his article ‘Vanity Bombing’ (15 October), Simon Jenkins quivers with contempt at MPs digging ‘deep into the jaded rhetoric of a superannuated great power’ and ‘shouting adjectives and banging drums’. But he does Parliament and decent, careful motivation a deep disservice. I don’t know what preceded his splenetic outburst, but Syrian analysis deserves better.
The position is very simple. The Russians are committing war crimes and using their position as a veto-wielding member of the United Nations Security Council to shield themselves from international humanitarian law. They are not bombing formations of Assad’s military; they are hitting hospitals with bunker-busting bombs and attacking civilians cowering in cellars. They are using cluster and incendiary munitions.
The Germans and Italians did to the League of Nations in the 1930s precisely what Russia is now doing to its successor. We are in danger of seeing the same results for an international rules-based system. To say we will stand by our responsibility to protect innocent civilians from this barbarism is not jingoistic or superficial. It is the assertion of a doctrine the entire international community endorsed after Rwanda, Srebrenica and Bosnia, and promised to uphold. Perhaps Sir Simon concluded these were just the weasel words of a cynical international community and the foolish and third-rate politicians whom he believes populate the House of Commons.
On a previous occasion he wrote about deterrence resting ‘on the assurance of collective response’. On that occasion he was entirely correct.
The Rt Hon Andrew Mitchell MP
Royal Sutton Coldfield
Summer Time blues
Sir: I am glad that there is someone else in the country who feels as strongly as I do about the absurd timing of the reversion to British Summer Time in spring (Wiki Man, 8 October).
But if it is sensible not to change the clocks to Greenwich Mean Time until the first Sunday in November, when sunrise in London is around 7 a.m.
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