Reasons to try a tyrant
Sir: The premise of Douglas Murray’s otherwise compelling essay (‘Dictating terms’, 25 August) is mistaken. He doubts whether the conviction of malevolent dictators by the International Criminal Court acts as a deterrent to other wicked leaders. Of course it does not. Nothing will deter a monster from iniquity. The principal objective of the ICC must therefore be simple retribution. Why create an offence if a transgression is met with impunity? Tyrants who commit crimes against humanity deserve punishment, not to deter others (even the gallows is unlikely to achieve that), but because they must suffer for their evil.
Murray contends that innocent lives might be saved if, instead of being prosecuted, these ogres were given sanctuary, as Idi Amin was in Saudi Arabia. But this is cold comfort for their victims, or indeed anyone who yearns to see justice done. If the purpose is to eliminate a wicked leader, then his speedy dispatch — as with Caesar, Mussolini, and Gaddafi — would surely be a more efficient method. Even those domestic tribunals that ‘tried’ and executed Saddam Hussein and the Ceausescus offer a more expeditious solution than a safe haven elsewhere.
If, however, we acknowledge that international law — and hence the ICC — is the legitimate environment in which genocide and other heinous crimes are to be judged and penalised, then we need radically to improve the administration of the trial process itself. The court’s protracted and costly procedures must be completely overhauled. The number of witnesses on both sides should be reduced to an absolute minimum. No hearing should exceed a year. Proper case management would transform what is in danger of becoming an expensive pantomime into a genuine exercise of fair and speedy due process.
Raymond Wacks
Emeritus Professor of Law and Legal Theory, University of Hong Kong
Napoleonic example
Sir: Douglas Murray is correct in stating that the threat of potential ICC ‘victors’ justice’ encourages dictators to remain in situ hoping to defeat insurrection, irrespective of how many additional deaths are caused. A historical comparison comes to mind; if Napoleon, shortly after Waterloo, when surrendering himself to HMS Bellerophon had known that he would not be allowed to retire to a country estate in England or America but be imprisoned on St Helena, he would have joined his remaining army on the Loire, fought on, and 10,000 more soldiers would have died.
Stephen Ledger
Manchester
Too many people
Sir: Brendan O’Neill’s complacency over rising human numbers (‘Malthus’s children’, 25 August) is misplaced. The UN calculates that one billion people are undernourished, while food prices can only rise as demand for meat and dairy products increases and easy access to water, oil and soil inputs falls. While he claims that humanity will always provide, the only solution he suggests to finite resources is nuclear power, which many are wary of following Fukushima. Encouraging people to have smaller families to slow population growth is good for women’s health, women’s rights and poverty alleviation. Population concern should be part of our strategy for addressing our growing impact on the planet.
Simon Ross
Chief executive, Population Matters
London E4
Sport relief
Sir: As one who never quite got the point of rounders and would always make sure I was fourth deep so that I could spend the time making daisy chains unobserved,
I found Melissa Kite’s ‘War on Games’ (25 August) most refreshing. School team games can be pernicious, as I discovered many years later when my own daughter suffered persecution at the hands of her
PE mistress at boarding school. My daughter is a reasonable all-round athlete but wisely decided at the age of 13 that Games should be for fun and exercise only. The PE mistress thought otherwise and forced Daughter to play in a netball match in freezing rain despite the fact that she was clearly unwell. The poor child then had to spend several weeks at home recovering from the consequences but, as they didn’t say about an ill wind, good came of it. We bought her a guitar to help relieve the boredom of her enforced confinement and she became very proficient.
Perhaps music is a greater goal to aim for than hurling spherical objects around freezing sports fields.
Julia Pickles
London SW1
A broadening experience
Sir: It is all very well for Peter Jay (Books, 18 August), not underprivileged in early life, to take a sour view of National Service. For many undereducated young men who, at that time, would otherwise have stayed at home until marriage, and then stayed in the same town for ever, it was an eye-opening and broadening experience — and sometimes life-changing. As a grammar school boy from a provincial university, I expected to make a choice between taking up a sports scholarship or going to Blackburn Rovers. Following trials, they asked me to come back (for £7 a week) after National Service.
But training to be an RAF navigator at a Nato School in Canada, I fell into a cellar after a rugby match, and wrecked my cruciate ligaments. Instead of Blackburn Rovers, I joined British Overseas Airways Corporation as a trainee. I am not unique. Many have used National Service as the springboard to a rewarding career.
Sir Maurice Flanagan
Executive vice chairman, Emirates Airline and Group, Dubai
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