A word from the Editor-in-Chief, Alexander (Sami) Kardos-Nyheim   The last edition of the Journal ended with these words, from Léon Bloy:   ‘Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering, in order that they may have existence’.   This edition is ultimately about human suffering and how it has affected the domains of law, politics, and art. These three domains have been shaped to a significant extent by what Robert Burns might have called ‘Man’s inhumanity to Man’, and the urge to limit it and prevent its reoccurrence. Law, politics, and art are not just three fields that are external products of a society. They are projections of what is going on within us as human beings; of the instinct to understand the world, structure it, control it, express oneself upon it, appreciate its complexity and beauty, and to live a fuller life. Human rights abuses have brought tragedy to the world; but they have also prompted huge developments in the fields of law, politics, and art. Amidst the destruction—past and present—there is a human instinct to learn from mistakes and achieve a higher level of consciousness. This is one interpretation of Bloy’s words: that inhumanity forces us, in turn, to forge new levels of humanity.     I started the Journal because I wanted to create a forum for balanced and calm thinking at a time of clash and chaos. Nowhere is this harder to achieve than with this subject matter. As illustrated by the actions of American soldiers against German officers during the liberation of Dachau in April 1945, it is difficult to remain calm and balanced when faced with human atrocities. Undoubtedly this edition reflects that difficulty. But this edition also constitutes an important collection of individuals from our three fields of focus who have wrestled with this challenge throughout their professional or personal life, and significantly contributed to the world.   I am pleased to present our first Special Edition, and our third published edition since I started the Journal three years ago. These have been three rich years in which we have grown a community of contributors spanning Nobel Laureates to Cypriot monks, Supreme Court Judges to national museum curators, artists to law students. We are also blessed with a wide community of engaged readers from around the world.   To that community, I present the risk that this Special Edition also carries. Focusing on a specific theme requires curation. That is precisely what I was trying to get away from when the Journal began. I wanted to allow for free thinking not constricted by categorisation or intrusive editorial intervention. On the other hand, to address a theme coherently, a level of structure is required—and we have ensured that our editors continue the Journal ’s practice of light-touch revisions. To break up the structure and introduce space to think, we have woven in freestanding arts articles that do not fit into specific chapters, but which are relevant to the wider subject matter of this Special Edition. See these as an opportunity to draw breath between powerful and at times heavy articles.   ‘The Sleep of Reason produces Monsters’, reproduced below, is the 43rd plate from an album of prints by Francisco de Goya entitled Los Caprichos  (‘The Fantasies’). It can be found in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and is perhaps Goya’s best-known etching. The point, while overused, is clear: reason promises an escape from base human instincts. My fear, however, is that we are ‘over-reasoning’ in today’s political and legal discourse, which at times feels disembodied from the heart and the creative instinct—or whatever you call that which cannot be explained but makes us human.   What is less known about this particular plate of Goya’s is this added inscription, by the artist:   Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of all arts and the source of their wonders.   Just as reason should not abandon imagination, nor should imagination abandon reason. With only one of these, we are indeed liable to become monsters; with both, we become capable of something better. This is why we are The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art .

We are all responsible for what happens in our world.  ​ In the intricate tapestry of global affairs, we face a stark reality: amidst a global crisis, fundamental human rights are besieged, as the gravest international crimes are perpetrated by both state and non-state actors. In this tumult, what can be done?   The development of international law (including in public international law, international human rights law, international humanitarian law, and international criminal law) since World War II has been fundamental for averting another world war. It constitutes the universal framework safeguarding individual rights and establishing a rules-based international order (RBIO) that mandates states to uphold principles such as territorial integrity and peaceful conflict resolution.   Yet, despite the promise and hope imbued by the post-World War II or ‘never again’ generation, international law is increasingly branded as too weak or even a failure altogether. Many are of the impression that international law is ‘regularly side-lined’ and ‘ignored or depreciated’ when matters of great political and economic importance arise.[1] Whilst most states abide by international law most of the time, outrageous violations by powerful states create the perception that the law lacks ‘compliance pull’, fostering an expectation that states will not abide by their international obligations and an environment where international law is likely to deteriorate.[2]   Whilst not unjustified , such a wholly negative narrative f ails to capture the full breadth and complexity of international law’s role in shaping global affairs. Beyond the realm of visible failures and shortcomings, there exists a vast network of customary international norms and treaty obligations that underpin the fabric of our RBIO. The invisible but present day-to-day functioning of customary international law and the international treaties that drive global political and diplomatic relationships is too often disregarded. Thanks to the ​Convention on International Civil Aviation, you can enjoy air travel; thanks to international agreements through the WTO, you could enjoy your orange juice this morning; thanks to territorial sovereignty, many of you likely did not wake up in an armed conflict. Further, the language of the law enables leaders to speak of the ‘enemy’ not just as barbarians and killers but as criminals, transgressors of established international standards of conduct.[3] This consensus is paramount not only for establishing liability but also for deterring future violations. Finally, the law’s universality creates ‘the expectation of expectation’ that builds and maintains society. The regularity of state behaviour is what consequently creates stability, makes planning possible, enhances security, spreads the cost of enforcement, and regulates conflict.[4]   We must be assiduous in upholding and enforcing these rules. Undermining the value of international law in our RBIO has the dangerous consequence of establishing a world that is too forgiving, one becoming gradually indifferent to gross human rights violations and international conflicts. Otherwise, the direction we are heading will be unimaginably grave: an RBIO driven and enhanced by emotions, military power, inhumanity, and violence without restraint. This is a moment of truth for the integrity of our RBIO.   We therefore have an opportunity and a duty  to reshape our understanding of our relationship to international law, in order to continue to strengthen its frameworks and address its shortcomings. All states have a legal (and moral) duty to address human rights violations and international crimes, to seek accountability, and to serve justice for victims. This duty, however, does not solely rest with the decision makers. The most powerful catalyst to inspire change is one who is able to draw attention to conflicts and violations, and influence and pressure decision makers to act: the everyday civilian. The civilian that can provoke discussion in their community, the civilian that can vote, the civilian that can protest against non-human rights-abiding corporations and controversial government policies, the civilian that can help refugees coming into their country, the civilian that can support the legitimacy of international courts, the civilian that can support institutions and NGOs exposing the violations and can help spread awareness. That civilian is You .    In this spirit, I am pleased to present the forthcoming volume, ‘The Human Agenda’. Through an interdisciplinary lens taking in Law, Politics, and Art, this volume draws upon the insights of leading practitioners, judges, politicians, scholars, and artists. It aims to spread awareness and to deepen our understanding of the root causes of conflict and injustice, while also exploring potential pathways towards lasting peace and reconciliation. It further collects interviews and artwork from heroic survivors of human rights abuses, to share their stories and provide a personal understanding of what is at stake for humanity.    Ignorance is a perilous refuge. By awakening to the realities of our world and assuming our role as conscientious stewards, we can compel decision-makers to honour their obligations under international law, safeguarding the promises of peace forged in the aftermath of World War II.   It is my hope that, in reading this volume, you not only are able to enhance your understanding of the current imminent threats to our RBIO, but also understand your role in it.   We are all responsible for what happens in our world.   Nadia Jahnecke Legal Editor and Founder of ‘The Human Agenda’   Acknowledgements: I wish to express my sincere gratitude to our Editor-in-Chief, Alexander Kardos-Nyheim,  whose   belief in my vision and steadfast support was instrumental in bringing to life CJLPA ’s Special Edition on human rights. A very special recognition is owed to our Managing Editor, Jack Graveney , without whom this volume would not have become a reality if it were not for his endless devotion in helping me manage the team and getting over 100 articles and interviews across the finish line, both online and in print. Thank you to our exceptional Legal Researchers, whose passion and commitment to human rights shine through every page of this volume: Nour Kachi, Shahad Alkamas, Aidan Johnson, Anaëlle Drut-Desombre, Solomon Njombai, Sarthak Gupta, Angelina Spilnyk, Abigail Dore, Eleanor Taylor, Kenan Korn, and Alexandra Marcy Hall . Finally, I want to express my deepest gratitude to all our contributors . Your belief in this mission and your willingness to share invaluable insights, knowledge, and perspectives have made this volume a profound contribution to the discourse on human rights. [1] Gerry Simpson, ‘International Law in Diplomatic History’ in James Crawford and Martti Koskenniemi   (eds), The Cambridge Companion to International Law (CUP 2015) 26. [2] Thomas Franck, Fairness in International Law and Institutions  (Clarendon Press 1995) 99. [3] Vivek Bhatt, ‘A Visible College: Pub lic Engagement with International Law(yers) During the Ukraine Invasion’ ( OpinioJuris , 8 March 2022) < https://opiniojuris.org/2022/03/08/a-visible-college-public-engagement-with-international-lawyers-during-the-ukraine-invasion/ > accessed 10 April 2024. [4]   Isabel Hull, A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law During the Great War  (Cornell University Press 2014).

The three broad categories of the title express overlapping perspectives of human difference. Read together they comprise the topic of Human Rights which is the focus of this volume. It exemplifies Lady Arden’s appreciation that The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art is likely to expand our horizons by bringing together subjects which often sit in splendid isolation from each other. The premature loss of Michael Taggart leaves to others his insight that Norman Birkett’s judgment in the case of the slave’s grandson and peer Leary Constantine against Imperial Hotels in 1944[1] for not accommodating him because of his colour,[2] could and should have evolved into an overarching human rights principle of entitlement to equal treatment. The point was taken up by Lord Bingham in A(FC) v Secretary of State for the Home Department  (2004),[3] where he held disproportionate and unlawful the detention of non-UK suspected terrorists, when UK terrorist suspects were exempt from such arrest. In the first Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence ,   Professor Donald Harris QC (Hon) endorsed the opinions of Jeremy Bentham and Herbert (HLA) Hart that there is no concept of law beyond what is humanly created, to which in a New Zealand Privy Council appeal Lord Hoffmann added Kant’s similar conclusion: there is no law an sich . Harris responded to my initial Oxford tutorial essay about a political philosopher, reproducing what had been written about him by others, with the real point—‘yes, but what do you  think?’ That for me gave Law’s answer to its own question of source, which in physics is ‘where does the universe come from?’—namely, by simply creating it. In numerous contexts,[4] the Court’s law-making role is described as ‘incremental’, which mathematicians define as ‘denoting a small positive or negative change’. But while using that term, dissenting, in JD (FC) v East Berkshire Community Health NHS Trust ,[5] the next year in, Barclays Bank , Lord Bingham wrote: I incline to agree with the view…that the incremental test is of little value as a test in itself, and is only helpful when used in combination with a test of principle which identifies the legally significant feature of a situation.[6] In the same case Lord Mance, reviewing prior authority, considered: ‘Incrementalism’ was…viewed as a corollary of the rejection, now uncontroversial, of any generalised liability for negligently caused economic loss, rather than as necessarily inconsistent with the development of novel categories of negligence. Having said that, caution and analogical reasoning are generally valuable accompaniments to judicial activity, and that is particularly to in the present area. Lord Mance’s ‘caution’, read with Lord Bingham’s rejection of ‘incremental’ as a definitive limit to judicial law-making, recalls Chief Justice Corstens’ criteria, using French in his final speech in The Netherlands: ‘la prudence et l’audace’. The Corstens / Bingham / Mance policy, of adopting an approach sensitive and appropriate to context, promotes optimum law, with legislative and judicial contributions forming a seamless whole, the judges discharging their duty to ‘do right’ by developing the common law ‘after the laws and usages of the realm’, especially when those are evidenced by recent legislation. Anthea Roberts’ best-seller Is International Law International? ,   sees the Australian scholar, experienced also in England and the USA, describe the range of senses in which ‘international law’ is employed; as is sharply evidenced by the law of England, which in some spheres regards international law as binding, in others as optional.[7] In Keyu v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs , Lord Mance wrote: Speaking generally, in my opinion, the presumption when considering any such policy issue is that [Customary International Law], once established, can and should shape the common law, whenever it can do so consistently with domestic constitutional principles, statutory law and common law rules which the courts can themselves sensibly adapt without it being, for example, necessary to invite Parliamentary intervention or consideration.[8] He later added: The role of domestic courts in developing (or…even establishing) a rule of customary international law should not be undervalued. [T]he intermeshing of domestic and international law issues and law has been increasingly evident in recent years…The underlying thinking is that domestic courts have a certain competence and role in identifying, developing and expressing principles of customary international law. [9] In summary, Law concerns the rules needed to manage human difference; Politics their creation and change; and Art connotes the cultures that contribute to and illuminate each. The categories are not discrete. The first category—decent Law—reflects the elements of the judges’ treble undertaking under the Promissory Oaths Act 1868: [1] I will do right to all manner of people; [2] after the laws and usages of this realm; [3] without fear or favour, affection or ill will. In the United Kingdom, as to the second category—Politics including rule-making—Parliament has and executes plenary authority. Yet the judges’ role of making, applying, and where necessary updating the common law is a major feature. Its functions include the assertion of Parliament’s role, and adjudication of disputes in accordance with the values of the rule of law. These include principles of international law which in practice largely requires enforcement by the domestic laws of individual states. Fundamental to both first and second categories is the third—the Art of understanding the evolving cultures of society, which is also essential to political success. This special edition of the Journal  addresses current profoundly troubling situations of human difference, each engaging Law, Politics, and relevant Art. Overarching all of them is the crucial need to achieve Reconciliation of difference, the capital denoting its importance. Each of the situations discussed entails competing claims for inconsistent rights, which may be procedural or substantive. Lord Mansfield’s celebrated procedural conclusion in Somerset v Stewart  (1772),[10] that alien status was no bar to habeas corpus for a slave held in custody on the Thames, was endorsed by the US Supreme Court in the Guantanamo Bay case Boumediene v Bush .[11]   There has been procedural delay of international Law and Politics since the end of WWI in finding Art to protect former Palestinian residents of the Ottoman Empire   There is then the substantive inability of the law to date to respond to aggression—allegedly committed in Ukraine by the then chair of the Security Council—which, though in Nuremberg singled out for response, awaits answer.   That our generation has been slow to respond to the ultimate challenge of global warming is of a piece with the appalling human rights statistics, including 108.4 million people around the world who are forcibly displaced; failures since 1937 to implement the Terrorism Report for the League of Nations, and more generally to grip the death toll in international migration; the disgrace of modern slavery; the division in the General Assembly between North (or West) and South; and the continued abuse of civil rights of women and children.   The tragedies of Ukraine, Israel, and Palestine recall, in the case of the Russian Federation, its obligations, as Permanent Member and in February 2002 Chair of the Security Council with primary responsibility under Article 24 of the UN Charter, to use Chapter VII powers to enforce Article 2’s prohibition of the use of force against any state; in the case of Israel the country readings from whose Old Testament inspire decency throughout the world; and, in the case of Palestine, the Prophet whose advocacy of non-violent means to resolve disputes exemplified the rule of law. The Swiss theologian Hans Küng’s writings on the close relationships among the three monotheistic religions point to the Art of Reconciliation among them. Each society, and the other members of the world community, well know that the promotion of peace by human creativity and achievement is essential to answering the greatest challenges their peoples face.   That is the context of the following essays identifying urgent problems of Human Rights, and potential responses by Law, Politics, and Art, which contribute to the classic University function as critic and conscience of society. Sir David William Baragwanath KNZM KC Sir David William Baragwanath KNZM KC is a retired New Zealand judge. He was a member of the Appeals Chamber of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon at the Hague, serving for a term as President. [1] [1944] KB 693. [2] In New Zealand, a deserved response to description by a pompous speaker as being among ‘coloured brethren’ was ‘I reply to my colourless brother’. [3] [2004] UKHL 56, [2005] 2 AC 68. [4] As by Lord Steyn in his much-cited opinion in Marc Rich & Co. A.G.   v Bishop Rock Marine Co. Ltd [1996] AC 211, 234 B-C. [5] [2005] UKHL 23, [2005] 2 AC 273 para 50. [6]  Her Majesty’s Commissioner of Customs and Excise v Barclays Bank plc [2006] UKHL 28, [2007] 1 AC 181. [7] Anthea Roberts, Is International Law International?  (OUP 2017). [8] [2015] UKSC 69, [2016] 1355. [9]  Al-Waheed v Ministry of Defence [2017] UKSC 2, [2017] AC 821 . [10] Lofft 1. [11] 553 US 723 (2008).

Marcus did not know what to expect. The man with whom he had spoken on the phone made little sense. A number of names had been mentioned, people he had never heard of, and at times Marcus thought the voice on the other end of the line must have been speaking in a foreign language, unfamiliar noises which were sometimes guttural and heavy and sometimes airborne and breathy, and sometimes somewhere in the middle. All he had been able to make out was a time and address, which he scribbled down in his pocket notebook, a present from his mother. He mentioned the phone call to his colleagues at the firm afterwards and they had laughed and told him to ignore it. Marcus got the impression that they knew the precise identity of the caller; they cast each other and him a withering glance, one of exhaustion with acts of naïve moral charity. This glance and all it contained failed to dissuade Marcus. It was his first year working as a tree surgeon, a job he had obtained thanks to no small hardship on the part of his mother. School had not been for him, and he had left glad to see the back of the place but with the impression of stepping out into a great black void, a world which held precious little for him. He enjoyed being at home with his mother, helping around the house, tending the allotment down the road. Whilst he worked the family’s small plot, the world came alive and spoke to him in a voice he could understand. It radiated an energy which he greedily harvested, inhaling dirty gulps of wisdom. When rain fell, he lay there and felt dirt turn to mud underneath his skin, droplets pitter-pattering against one cheek as the other pressed down into the soil. In the corner of the allotment stood the carapace of an old oak tree. From time to time, Marcus would crawl into its cyclopic orifice, mummified in a cocoon of bark, and summon thoughts of regrowth. After a while, the tree would be whole again, his twisted legs rooted deep and gorging themselves on water, his rigid torso elephantine and stark upright, his fractal of arms and digits craning outwards to a thousand ripe eyes enthralled by a feast of light. Each time, Marcus murdered this resplendence. He had no choice. When the hollow birthed him into the sunken night, he would feel a death within him and hear a groan of ancient mortality reverberate between his bones. He could sustain but one being at a time. Marcus found himself winding his way along a country lane, towards the address he had been given on the phone. Bordering the lane was a ribbon of deep-set and seemingly impenetrable hedgerow, adorned with protuberant knuckles of red. Tarmac soon gave way to gravel, gravel to agitable dust, and a thatched cottage came into view. Densely packed behind strabismic windows Marcus could make out piles upon piles of books, blotchy embossed spines of deep burgundy and myrtle. Reading had always been a struggle for him; his aptitude for languages extended only to those of nature, of incremental growth and seasonal change. Words on the page seemed too deeply engraved, too inarguably fixed and unamenable to care. In the instant between Marcus opening his van’s door and stepping out onto the shoddy earth, the cottage’s occupant had appeared outside and was waiting expectantly for him. This transition was noiseless. It was as if the occupant, a bald and elderly man of slender proportions but penetrating gaze, had intangibly passed through his wooden door. Marcus hollered an abrupt greeting and gestured to the logo glaringly emblazoned on the van behind, as if to assure him that the visit was legitimate and well-meant. The man, whose name he would later discover was Reginald, remained silent until Marcus had almost reached him. Then, softly, he spoke: ‘Would you show me your hands?’ The request’s ambivalent innocence captivated Marcus. Its tone was that of an infant, yet it lacked any hesitation. It was conscious of its own importance but would not deign to insist. Marcus’s hands rose and presented themselves, palms up, to Reginald, who fixated upon them as on a ritual totem or unearthed relic. His mien was that of a primitivist artist stopped dead, undone in all pretensions by a deep-set nobility tantalizing close and yet utterly alien. Darting eyes inventoried their particularities, caressing each crease, mentally untangling the knot of palm lines. Each grope for understanding teetered on wonder’s precipice. The older man’s eyes widened, and his breathing deepened. After a time, Reginald took Marcus’s hands in his. These were immaculate, as if smoothed to marble over decades by the desert’s swirling sands. They were luxuriously, almost grotesquely unblemished. Conjoined with Marcus’s torn and callused digits, they evoked a coupling of the sacred with the profane. Suddenly, the old man broke off and, in a manner now sprightly and invigorated, pulling books from shelves, grandly gesticulating at framed images, almost dancing now upon his feet, indicated for Marcus to follow him inside. Marcus understood little of what was said, but he picked out names, names which evidently bore weight and yet floated, floated daintily through the room, weaving and darting between the stacks of books as if making for the exit, as if possessed of a life of their own, yet dragged inexorably back in by Reginald’s orbit, by his intimate need for them and them for him. Names like Calvino, like Petrarch, like Havemann, Joyce, Gass, like Améry or Handke, Swinburne, Enzensberger, or De Quincey, names which meant nothing to Marcus, nothing at all, yet whose pace and structure and rhythm, whose atmosphere, entranced him. Behind this cosmos of names hung a painting, a painting of a large room, large and empty, devoid of furniture, chopped in half at the waist as if looked down upon, empty that is save for three men, prostrate on their knees with their arms extended before them, their heads bowed and tilted, their hands hard at work, for they are scraping the floor, hard at work scraping the floor, and the product of their labour is curled around them in ringlets like snakeskin. Reginald finally halted and drew breath, but the atmosphere which now thronged throughout the room survived his voice. It seemed to take on mass and effervescent direction, carrying the two men out of the backdoor and into the garden. Here Marcus set about to work, unbidden, unable to hold himself back. His hands grew into tools, his fingers became sharp and incisive, tweaking and upending, his palms moulding and sifting through material. He held nothing, it was part of him, it was all part of him. And as he worked Reginald read, perched in a rocking chair which tumbled gently back and forth, his fingertips resting against the delicate gold lettering of the work’s spine, his thumb and forefinger darting forward to turn each page, his voice – his voice breathing magic into every word, magic which poured into Marcus’s ears as he worked. The young man bathed in these words, they supported him like a hammock tied between two trees, and though still he could make neither head nor tail of most sentences they upended him all the same. The saplings tilted their nascent trunks in hope of finding the voice, and the sun itself leaned back and listened as it sliced its way through the sky. In this ecstasy, this synaesthetic rapture, Marcus laboured deeper into the garden. Beyond the saplings, the hedgerows, the beds of flowers, he emerged into a glade. At the centre of this clearing stood – and here his spine tingled with sublime excitement – the carapace of an old oak tree. It could not be the same as that in the allotment, but to Marcus it seemed a homecoming nonetheless. Down on hands and knees he went, pulling himself inside, the dead and dying wood coyly scratching his skin, until he was sealed within, his thoughts focused on one end: resurrection. Spurred on by the undulation of Reginald’s voice, its variant speed and rhythm, as if he were a shaman summoning up some forest sprite or more ancient chthonic brute, this came quickly. In what felt like a matter of instants, this symbiosis of word and plant and man was complete. From his sumptuous vantage point, Marcus surveyed the garden, the house, the small smooth figure of Reginald, a smile woven across his face, his hands still clasped around the book from which he was reading. The sun was setting by now, leaving him alone in the sky. When night fell, he saw the old man rise from his rocking chair and re-enter the cottage, which also settled into sleep. The idea of returning to his prior state, of slaughtering what he and Reginald had wrought, was a sin too great for Marcus to consider. The intermingling was too narrow, the metamorphosis irreversible. He was a stylite and this tree his pillar. It was with the contentment of radical and unremitting self-sacrifice that he finally rested. The next morning, he awoke to music. Raindrops dabbled against his branches. Reginald’s words rang loud and clear. Their harmony left nothing to be desired. Jack Graveney Jack Graveney graduated 2022 with a Starred First in History and German from the University of Cambridge, and will soon be heading to Oxford for a Masters, writing his thesis on labour, happiness, and community in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. His work has been published in German Life and Letters , The Oxonian Review , The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art , and the Cambridge Review of Books . Jack is the Managing Editor of CJLPA .

Issa Amro is a Palestinian human rights defender who has lived in Hebron (West Bank) since his birth. For over two decades, he has been advocating for Palestinian rights, with his unwavering dedication earning him international recognition by the European Union, the United Nations, Amnesty International, and US Senator Bernie Sanders. He founded Youth Against Settlements, an organisation advocating for resisting the occupation through peaceful means and through empowering the Palestinian community. Issa is also involved in several other non-violent movements, such as the Hebron branch of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), the Arab Non-Violence Network, and the Hebron Defenders. He is involved in monitoring the application of international human rights and humanitarian law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. CJLPA : Good morning, Mr Issa Amro. On behalf of The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art , we would like to thank you for your time today to provide valuable insight on your experience as one of Palestine’s most highly prominent activists. You were named Human Rights Defender of the Year by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the European Union. Your work has made a real meaningful impact on the decades-long Israel-Palestine situation, and we look forward to further learning about it in order to engage the wider international community and fight against the ongoing human rights violations. We would like to begin by asking how your early years such as your childhood or your teenage years in Hebron have inspired you to choose the activist path? Issa Amro : I am happy to contribute and thank you very much for interviewing me. I hope that this interview will enrich people’s awareness and knowledge about the reality of the situation on the ground. I am a Palestinian who was born in Hebron City. I was born very close to an Israeli illegal settlement in the old city of Hebron. I suffered from the presence of the settlers, and I suffered from the presence of the Israeli soldiers. A main memory for me was the Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre, which happened in 1994, when Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli retired army doctor, broke into the Ibrahimi Mosque and killed 29 Palestinian worshippers in the early morning who were praying. That was the main shock for me—to see that someone can just kill innocent people in the mosque. The consequences of the massacre affected me. I did not attend school for four months. It was really difficult for me as a child, that time. We lost one student who played football with us every morning at school. The streets were closed, segregated, and shops were closed. So, we were the victims of the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre, and we were punished under the hands of the Israeli military operation because we are ‘weak’ and they are the main power. Nonetheless, I continued my education at high school, then I graduated from high school, and I went to university to study engineering. My dream was to become an engineering professor. I was doing very well in school and at my university, and I continued to pursue academic achievement to fulfil my dream to become a professor. Unfortunately, in the last year of my degree, Bachelor’s Degree, the Israeli military closed my university. I went to the university in the morning, I found the campus sealed, the doors were welded by the Israeli military and the porter paper said that the university is closed indefinitely, without giving any explanation. I became very disappointed, very angry. I wanted to get my degree by any means. It was about education for me, not about occupation. So, I went home, broken, disappointed, and very angry. I searched ‘how to create a revolution’ on Yahoo’s search engine. I wanted to create a revolution. Luckily, I firstly came across Martin Luther King, involved in the civil rights movement in the United States, Gandhi, and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. I studied these non-violence campaigns and I started a campaign with other students to reopen the university to get our degree. It was about education, because Palestinians on the daily, all over Palestine, fight to get to their schools, fight to get to their universities. We believe that education will empower us to make us stronger, to resist the Israeli occupation and to be able to keep our identity and keep our steadfastness as Palestinians who are living under Israeli military, apartheid, and oppression. And from that point, I graduated from the university as an engineer, but also as an activist. From there, I started campaigning, creating non-violent committees, organisations, movements, up to the point where I am now. CJLPA : We are inspired to hear that through your passion, you wanted to emphasise the importance of education. You have lived in Palestine all your life and your work is in the heart of the occupied city of Hebron. How would you say the situation has changed since you started your career? IA : I started my activism 20 years ago, and as time passes, it is getting much worse. There is a war against our rights as Palestinians. We live under Israeli military law without any basic rights. Imagine that non-violent resistance, according to the Israeli military law, is not allowed, and it is illegal. Personally, I was indicted, and I was convicted in the military court, arrested for practicing non-violent resistance. By the Israeli military law, we are guilty until we are proven innocent. It is the opposite of the civilian law. So, whenever I am arrested without evidence held against me, I have to prove to the judge, to the court, that I am innocent. This can be really difficult. So, it is not easy to see that in my 20 years as an activist, to control Palestinians, there are more checkpoints, more restrictions, advanced technology to track them, spy on them, to violate our privacy, and to intimidate us. I feel and see that every day, we face further challenges. Their policy is that they do not evict you directly from your home, but they make it impossible for you to remain in your home. How do they make it impossible for you to remain in your home? By making you not feel safe. At any given point, I know that the settlers and soldiers may break into my home and arrest me, attack me, or shoot me. I do not feel safe in my house now. I do not have access to any protection. I am afraid for my safety, I am afraid for my neighbours’ safety, and I am afraid for my friends’ safety. We live in fear all the time. Secondly, there are no services—electricity, plumbing, or even ambulance services! If I were to require access to an ambulance now, I would need coordination for the ambulance to come in and assist me. So, you skip all the emergency cases, the doctors because there are no services at all. From checkpoint to checkpoint. Thirdly, there is no social life. Part of our culture is the social life. How is it that there is no social life? Public events are not allowed. Visitors from outside the area are not allowed. We have 22 checkpoints within less than one square kilometre. It is up to the soldiers to decide who gets into the area. Imagine that the soldiers decide if you may bring friends into your home or not. The soldiers decide if you may throw a birthday party or not. So, there is no social life, there are no services, and there is no safety. This is the situation. And it is getting much worse. There are more restrictions. There is more ‘blue and white’, they call it. They are building more and more settlements; they are closing more and more streets, they are closing the markets, etc. They are working to displace the Palestinians and to make them lose their homes, they make them not think about freedom. Instead, they keep us busy struggling for basic rights, in order for us not to call for freedom. We do not ask for equality. We do not ask for justice. Freedom is a dream for us. Justice is a dream for us. Equality is a dream for us. But we do not have any of that. CJLPA : I was particularly interested to hear that the Israeli authorities track Palestinians, and I have not heard of this before. So how does that work? Do they just track where Palestinians are going or what kind of technology is being used? IA : The whole world is utilising artificial intelligence to make human being lives’ easier, but unfortunately, in Israel, the Israeli occupation is using artificial intelligence and advanced CCTV cameras with facial recognition, eye recognition, and body recognition in order to track and spy on Palestinians. I have no privacy. They know everything about my life. This interview, it is recorded by the Israeli authorities. When I talk to my friends, it is recorded. They track us on social media on our daily lives on social media—they know who gets into my house, who comes to visit me, what is going on around me, my location wherever I go. They then create a profile of me holding information without my consent – they have all my history of activism, my personal status, my personal needs, they have it on their profile without my consent. I cannot say ‘no, do not do such research on me’. They use two types of technologies now. One is called Blue Wolf. Blue Wolf is a mobile application whereby Israeli soldiers approaching you with a phone and taking a photograph of your face, can access all the information about you. Imagine, 19 or 20 year old soldiers, with a military system that provides them the ample space to act according to their ideology, come to you and know that you are a human rights defender and you are against the occupation, even if it was in the form of peaceful resistance. This happened to me a few times this year. I was detained and ill-treated by the Israeli soldiers because they dealt with me as per their ideology. Additionally, settlers may access this app as well, because there is no difference between Israeli settlers and Israeli soldiers. The other application is Red Wolf. For the Red Wolf app, the Israeli military have installed CCTV cameras everywhere. In my house, from one direction, there are three CCTV cameras. From the other direction, there are two more. So, the families feel monitored inside their homes. The women in our community, when they are in their homes—considering that it is a conservative culture—they do not want others to be able to see them, especially a stranger being able to see their hair and their body. They close the curtains when they are in their homes. Some women have asked me, ‘Issa, can these cameras see us inside our bedrooms?’ That is the fear, that intimidation, so this is the technology that they use. The Red Wolf is to do with CCTV cameras and computers in order to track Palestinians. However, a very important point is that these cameras are not used to track Israeli settler violence. So, whenever the Israeli settlers attack us, attack our homes, they do not use their footage to prove that settlers attack Palestinians. It is only used against Palestinians. And we do not know what they do with it. Perhaps, they do medical research, or other kinds of research into our bodies or behaviour in order to then sell this data to big companies. There is Smart Shooter at the main checkpoint— a private company from Tel Aviv. They came to install the security Smart Shooter in Hebron by the checkpoint: first, to intimidate me and then to be used us as a simulation object. They do simulations on us for their technology. So, they are misusing the artificial intelligence against the Palestinians to withhold our right to privacy and our right to live equally without fear. CJLPA : It is shocking to see that such basic rights to privacy can be violated, leaving Palestinians live in this state of paranoia. With regards to the settlements, how does the process work with regards to the expanding illegal settlements over time? IA : Unfortunately, Israel is building more and more settlements every day and building infrastructure for these settlements all over West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Hebron—bypass roads, industrial zones, agricultural zones. On the one hand, they fight the Palestinian presence through the idea of not evicting Palestinians directly, but by making it impossible for them to stay—by cutting off water, electricity, etc. On the other hand, they encourage Israeli settlers to build commercial centres, educational centres, universities, bypass roads and infrastructure to annex the West Bank without the Palestinians. High Israeli officials say ‘we should remove that city’ or, ‘we should remove and burn that community’. There are many Palestinian communities now in areas where they are facing eviction and the lack of water. The Israeli army just last week put cement in water wells in order to cut off Palestinians’ access to drinking water. Imagine that in some areas the agriculture is restricted, because they don't want us to have any infrastructure for basic rights in certain areas. This is happening in H2 in Hebron, in East Jerusalem, and in Area C, in general, in Palestine, to displace the Palestinians. And the over-turning of the Israeli judicial system is a tool to legitimise and to get legal approval for all their actions against the Palestinians because we are the ‘weakest’ group in this situation, it is not easy for us at all. We are fighting for our existence; we are fighting for basic rights. We do not talk about more than basic rights these days. But, even with basic rights, we do not have access and our existence is in danger. There are hundreds of new settlements every month; thousands this year, which is the highest it has been in a long time. Settler violence is the worst it has been in the last, maybe, 20 years, and without any accountability. Something that is very important about settler violence: they steal your property, they attack your house, they attack you physically, and all without any kind of accountability, with full impunity. There are organised programmes against Palestinians by Israeli settlers’ militia, and they are now getting more guns, more weapons from the Israeli government. I see settlers in the neighbourhood here, they never have machine guns, automatic machine guns or semi-automatic machine guns. That is an indicator that we are facing a very dark future and that maybe, we are facing massacres in certain areas to force the Palestinians to leave so to take over their land. I can see that what happened 75 years ago at the time of the Palestinian Nakba, it will be repeated if we do not stop these current extremists who now are the government as well. What the Israeli army cannot do legally, the Israeli settlers’ militia do it by themselves with the protection and escort from the Israeli military, the Israeli government, and the Israeli media. I was attacked last February by an Israeli soldier when I was working with a famous American writer. And I was attacked. I was the victim of that soldier. Meanwhile, the Israeli military accused me of being in an illegal area. The army and the Israeli army spokesperson said that I am the problem. Then, the Israeli media accused me of being a provocateur, and said that I deserve what happened to me. The Israeli National Security Minister also tweeted that I deserve what happened to me and that the soldier should be backed up. So, the Israeli government did nothing to make this soldier accountable, and the Israeli public treated the soldier as a hero. This is a small example of the atmosphere of the Israeli soldiers’ and settlers’ violence. CJLPA : It is truly unbelievable to hear about the type of propaganda that is being spread and the support for these violations. With regards to other activists in Hebron, is it also common for them to be attacked by or harassed by the authorities? IA : I am not an extraordinary human rights defender. I am a Palestinian and the majority of Palestinians face harassment and ill-treatment from the Israeli military, the Israeli government, and the Israeli settlers. So, it is a phenomenon—using this level of oppression against Palestinian women, Palestinian children, and Palestinian human beings, this is a phenomenon. If you are a human rights defender, or a journalist, you are further targeted because they want to silence the voices of those who are trying to expose the Israeli oppression, the Israeli occupation, and the Israeli apartheid. So, we became the target as a means to silence our voices. For example, Shareen Abu Akhleh was assassinated. She was a famous Palestinian journalist who was assassinated by the Israeli military. She was shot, killed, and the killing was confirmed by the Israeli army, without any accountability for who killed her. So, it's a common phenomenon to target journalists and human rights defenders, so as to not allow us to tell the story of what is going on the ground. Mainly, what's happening to me is because I tell the truth, because I document the truth, because I give a first-hand testimony to the international community about what Israel is doing. When we say Israel is not defending itself, it is because Israel is defending its occupation, its apartheid and its settlements. When we say that Israel is not a democracy, it is because I live under the Israeli military law without any basic rights while Israeli settlers live under the Israeli civilian law. So, when there are two sets of law, for different people, we say it is an apartheid, it is not a democracy. It is a democracy for its own people. I do not choose or vote for the authorities who are controlling me. Israel does not want that. Israel wants to play the western country, which respects human rights, which respects democracy, but that is not the truth, it is fake. It is so obvious that it is fake when I tell my story as a Palestinian human rights defender who believes in non-violent resistance as the best method to obtain our rights. This is about our rights as Palestinians who are calling for freedom, justice, and equality. Israelis do not want that—they are not ready to give us our rights or to be equal with them. They do not want us to hold them accountable for their violations of international law and for their violations of our basic rights. CJLPA : It is almost as if Palestinians and Israelis live in completely two different countries, despite living on same land. Can you please share some details of how Palestinians are attacked, tortured, and killed specifically by those authorities? IA : If you are passing a checkpoint or in a certain area, you may be shot and killed. Or you may be arrested. I was arrested many times without any reason. They detain me between four to eight days in a military detention centre without me seeing a charge. This has happened to me many times and to many other Palestinians. There are now 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in ‘administrative detention’, also known for us as jail. You do not know why. Your lawyer does not know why. The judge sometimes does not know why. Imagine that there are 1,000 Palestinians—among them children and women—in administrative detention, without trial where they may intimidate you and beat you. That is against international law. They can also make your day really hard and impossible to get through: they can close the streets, close the cities, or impose collective punishment. It is truly not easy for us. A further very important note is that we feel the supremacy of the Israeli soldiers over us. The way they treat us—they dehumanise us at the checkpoints by treating us less than they would treat animals. They see us as suspect and treat us like extremists all the time, despite the fact that we all are civilians and it is the soldiers who are the extremists violating international law. And they are the violence machine. This is the worst feeling for me, that they dehumanise me. Imagine at the checkpoint, there is the layer of advanced security artificial intelligence, and there is another human layer to provoke you, to dehumanise you, and to really intimidate you. In winter, they force you to take off your shoes on muddy ground. When it is very sunny, they close a checkpoint and make you wait. They say bad things to you, they harass the women when they pass the checkpoint, without any accountability and without any kind of mechanism to address complaints, or even to bring awareness of what is happening to us. It is not reported on in mainstream media, and our content is highly restricted on social media these days. So, we escaped from the mainstream, biased media to the social media. They followed us to the companies, to the social media companies, to restrict our content. Imagine that I posted Shireen Abu Akleh’s photo on social media and my account was then restricted. Shireen Abu Akleh was an American, Christian and a very famous journalist, assassinated by the Israeli military and almost everybody around the world showed sympathy with what happened to her. I posted Shireen Abu Akleh’s photo on social media and social media deleted my post and restricted my account for posting her photo. This is the life we live under as Palestinians. CJLPA : The international community is beyond disheartened with the attack on the Jenine refugee camp last month. Do you have comments on the situation and how Palestinian refugees are affected by such attacks? IA : When the international community talks about Jenine, they forget that those camps were created 75 years ago, that those people who are living there were evicted from their cities, from their communities, and from their properties. They are refugees, and they are the victims of Israel. They are the victims of the international community’s double standards. How is it that for so long, for 70 years, those people are unable to travel a few kilometres back to their homes, to their villages, and to their land? And for 75 years, these camps have been in a very bad condition. They do not have well-built roads, they do not have sewage systems, they do not have enough water, they do not have enough electricity. It is so tense to live there—the density of people is so high, it is house to house, and they spent all their money to build small houses to live there with basic rights. Then, the Israeli bulldozers, the Israeli advanced army, go in, destroy everything, and kill nearly anybody who was in their way. A Palestinian was merely running, and he was killed. A young girl was filming Israeli soldiers raid the camp, she was also killed. We say the Palestinian Nakba is continuous, it is being repeated every day. It is not easy to describe the situation in the camp. You are a refugee, and the Israelis are working to make you a refugee again. It is not acceptable whatsoever that those refugees are targeted by the same offenders who made them refugees in the first place and that the international community blames the refugees for what is happening to them. The international community is not holding Israel accountable for its violence, for its occupation, for its apartheid and for its eviction of the Palestinians 75 years ago. CJLPA : Moving on to your organisation, Youth Against Settlements, which works to strengthen the community of Hebron against the illegal expansion of settlements and to document human rights violations. What are some memorable achievements of your organisation and other organisations you are involved in, such as the human rights solidarity movement, or Non-violence Network and Hebron defenders? Additionally, what are the challenges faced by such organisations? IA : Our centre was raided many times by Israeli soldiers and settlers. The soldiers confiscated all our belongings a few times, while the Israeli settlers attacked our centre and destroyed our property, such as the water pipes, fences, etc and stole our CCTV cameras. We are under continuous pressure. The organisation has different focuses. Firstly, we conduct direct action through rallies in order to increase awareness about what is happening. We document the human rights violations that occur and also train families to document such violations using video cameras. We also undertake legal work and organise a lot of campaigns, such as the Open Shuhadah campaign. To bring back Palestinian families to the community, we work to help them feel more safe by making patrols on the streets, walking the children to the school, or teaching women to speak English and Hebrew. Another very important point is to keep our narrative alive, to protect the identity of the Palestinians. It is Free Palestine. The Palestinian flag is everywhere here, even in the middle of an area which is targeted by the Israeli occupation. So, we do not say that we are merely victims, but we are fighters using non-violent resistance to make the occupation costly and this is my message to everybody. Make fighting the occupation part of your daily routine. Think and be creative as to how the occupation can be made costly to the media and the economy. And a very important work is to level up Palestinian voices by boosting Palestinian culture, education, sports, economy. This is very important to do—along with making Israel accountable for its occupation and apartheid and telling the truth to the world. I would like for the international community and the international people to act according to their principles, according to their morals. This is something very important because it is about equality. It is about justice. It is about freedom. How can we live as slaves in our own communities, without basic rights? Do the international people accept to live as slaves in their own land, in their own homes, without security, without social life and without any form of services? We are not asking for much, we are asking for equality, justice, and freedom as Palestinians. We practice non-violent resistance on the ground to act and we have many achievements. The house I live in was a military base, and I took the soldiers out of it. We established a kindergarten, we established a women's centre, we are now establishing a cinema public space, to show that the land is Palestinian it. It is Palestinians’ land, but we really want to affirm it and still stand strong in front of the soldiers and the settlers without fear and without giving up. We do not want to give up our rights and in no way do we want to become refugees again. This is what we tell the families—we pick them up, we stay with them, we support them, and we will continue to do so in spite of the challenges we face. Challenges such as violence, smear campaigns, the false rumours about us, the propaganda, and the attack our social media. We struggle for donations to survive as activists, and we do our best to fundraise, but it is not easy. It's almost impossible with the attacks and the restrictions imposed on us. CJLPA : We truly commend your efforts through your organisation. In addition to bringing awareness to the violations, you empower the community and foster a mindset of resilience, despite the struggles. We are aware that Open Shuhadah Street project is a big project part of the Youth Against settlement. We wanted to know more about this and what does Shuhadah Street mean for the Palestinians? Why is it so significant? IA : Shuhadah Street is the main street in Hebron, similar to Oxford Street in London and Times Square in New York. It is the main street, the historical area, it has the most markets, the symmetry, so it is really the main street of the city. So, we chose the campaign, Open Shuhadah Street campaign, to increase awareness as to how is it that we are segregated in our own streets. How is it that I am not allowed to walk in my own street because of the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre in 1994? How is it that we were the victims of the Israeli terrorists who went into the mosque and killed 29 Palestinians, and we were the ones punished, even though we were the victims? Open Shuhadah Street campaign means no to the occupation, no to the Israeli apartheid, no to the Israeli segregation. Palestinians are bringing awareness to the situation, by fighting and resisting peacefully and commemorating the Palestinian massacres. We will not forget and we will not forgive, until we get our rights, until we make Israel accountable for its occupation and apartheid, according to international standards. It is a symbolic campaign to inform the international community about who the Palestinians are. I want the world to understand that we are human beings and that we have our own characters, our own education, our own culture, our own habits. This is part of what we do to show the human side of Palestinians and that we are just like any other nation. We want to be treated as a nation who has freedom and justice. We don't want to be treated as animals who are seeking shelter. CJLPA : We want to touch on the point you said earlier about the administrative detention. You said that sometimes, the soldiers, the lawyers, the judges are not even aware of the reason a detainee is in detention. So, in that case, what happens to these people in detention? How long are they kept for and what is the procedure, or challenges in this procedure? IA : They come to your house, they arrest you, they tell you that you are under administrative detention. That is the end. You will be in jail until they decide when you may leave—it could be four months, six months, one year, two years, or ten years. This is administrative detention. When you go to court, the judge does not open the file, there is no trial, and your lawyer does not know why. This is the reality—only Israeli intelligence decides how long you stay. And a further very important point is that your family does not know the end of it, does not know what you are charged for, and will be continuously waiting for you. CJLPA : With regards to children, what are the prison conditions like for children and other Palestinians? IA : The worst experience for me when I was arrested was to be arrested with children. I was arrested one time, and I found children in the detention centre handcuffed, blindfolded, intimidated, and harassed, left without water or being able to go to the restroom. They were crying, they were ten or eleven-year-old children. My heart was broken, how were they able to treat them this way? How could they make them confess to throwing stones when they did not do so? How can they refuse to give them their legal rights, intimidate them, try to destroy their dignity, as young children? The children are a target for the Israeli military, they try to make people afraid for their children. They target the community by targeting the children. My child, two weeks ago, was detained at the checkpoint to target me. My neighbour's children were also arrested to intimidate me as a human rights defender, thinking they were my children. When I went to the soldier, I told him they are not my children, they are my neighbour’s, but they were kept for two hours, detained and beaten by Israeli soldiers. CJLPA : This is all very valuable information to know, and it is important that the wider international community be aware. Before bringing the interview to an end, what do you think the international community can do in order to place pressure and to make Israeli authorities accountable for their violations? IA : I want the international community to see Palestinians as a nation who deserve full equal rights, not just to try and give us shelter. We do not want shelter, we want to be treated as a nation, as every nation on earth, which is very important. On the other hand, to do everything possible to make the Israeli occupation and apartheid costly— to use Parliaments, to not import Israeli settlement products, to use the media to further increase awareness, to support Palestinians economically and politically, to make Israel accountable before the International Criminal Court. and to use all the international mechanisms available to make Israel accountable. Without making the occupation costly, nothing will change. Without doing concrete actions, nothing will change. I want them to understand the Palestinians’ need freedom, justice, and equality. I plead with the world to support the Palestinians by supporting their economy, education, and voices, fostering friendships with Palestinians, being more engaged with pro-Palestinian organisations, pro-Palestinian groups, and to not fall for the trap of the fake anti-Semitism accusations because Israel is politicising the term anti-Semitism. We, Palestinians, are against all kinds of racism and support all kinds of free speech. Anti-Semitism is not part of our cause, neither is islamophobia, homophobia, or any other discrimination. We, Palestinians, believe that all human beings are equal and deserve full equal rights. This is what we want we will continue to fight for the name of our rights and for everybody's rights. CJLPA : Definitely, as you mentioned, it is very important for the wider community to bring awareness and hear the voices of the Palestinian people and use all the international mechanisms available and work with all types of organisations. Mr Amro, thank you very much for your time today, it has been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. We thank you once again, for allowing us to obtain valuable insights from the brave work that you and your organisation do. And we wish you all the best with your endeavours to create a better future for your people. And we hope to see that the occupation comes to an end at some point. IA : Yes, I agree that the occupation will end. I am very optimistic, and we are almost there, but we need to work harder. This interview was conducted by Shahad Alkamas, who graduated in 2021 from Middlesex University and obtained her LPC the following year at the University of Law. In addition to her Legal Researcher role at CJLPA, Shahad is currently working as an in-house litigation paralegal, with previous experience in various legal fields such as personal injury, immigration, and civil litigation.

Mohamedou Ould Slahi was detained at the inhumane Guantanamo Bay 'Detention Camp' for 14 years without charge. For 14 years, Mohamedou was tortured by the US military: he was severely beaten, sexually assaulted, water boarded, threatened, sleep deprived, and isolated. His lawyer, Nancy Hollander, helped him expose these crimes against humanity committed by the US and tell the world the truth about what was happening. Mohamedou was freed in 2016 and has since dedicated his life to human rights activism. Guantanamo Bay remains open to this day where detainees are still held without charge and tortured by the US. CJLPA : Welcome today, Mohamedou Ould Slahi. I’d like to begin by thanking you for taking the time to come and interview with The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art to expose the crimes you endured in Guantanamo Bay. As a brief introduction, it began when you were brought in for questioning by the Mauritanian authorities on 20 November 2001, after which you were detained and eventually transported to US military custody, in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, on 4 August 2002. After being arrested without charges brought against you, you then endured for the next fourteen years at Guantanamo Bay the cruellest crimes against humanity, as you were isolated and subjected to the most degrading, inhumane, and painful acts of torture. You were only finally released in October 2016. Whilst in prison you wrote a memoir in 2005 which the US government declassified in 2012, with numerous redactions. The memoir was published as Guantanamo Diary . The film made in your honour, The Mauritanian , depicts the experience at Guantanamo Bay based on your book Guantanamo Diary and provides an overview of Nancy Hollander as she took your case pro bono to defend you. You are now a survivor of Guantanamo Bay and continue to live life to the fullest despite the years taken away from you. So it’s an honour to have you here today, and we will discuss this experience to continue spreading awareness of human rights. To begin, could you share the experience you had when you first arrived at Guantanamo Bay? What did the authorities tell you during your initial arrival? Mohamedou Ould Slahi : Thank you so much, Nadia Jahnecke, for having me. I vividly remember, as if it were yesterday, when those two cops came to my home. It was Ramadan. To be precise, it was the fourth of Ramadan, and I was really tired. It was around 4pm and I had just come back from work. It was only me and my mother; no one else was at home. I was getting ready to take a shower and just get some sleep because we stayed up until very late in Ramadan. We use Ramadan as a season to eat more than we usually eat, to be honest, and to have more entertainment, which very much defeats the purpose of Ramadan [laughs]. So, two cops in plain civilian clothes, ‘Mukhabarat’, asked me to come with them. This is not a country ruled by law; it is a country ruled by the military. They did not show me cause, and they did not show me an arrest warrant. I could see the fear in my mother’s eyes, but I didn’t fully understand it. I was really afraid, but I didn’t think it was going to be really that bad because it was not my first time being arrested. So, I went with them, and then one of them drove with me, and the other one followed us or drove in front of us. I don’t remember, but I could see my mother in the rearview mirror as she disappeared. It was I think after about 200m when we turned right. I always forget whether we turned right or left, but we turned right and then we turned left. That’s why I forgot. And that was the last time I saw my mom, the very last time. I never thought that this would be the last time I saw her. She was really very sick; it took her years to go to the hospital. Many years, after many years in prison, they came to me and told me that she died and she passed away. They came back again and told me my brother, by the way, passed on too. I cannot describe to you the pain. The pain that I experienced, I remember it was so, so bad; I couldn’t hear anymore. The guys who came to me to tell me the news were in these military-like very special clothes and very well-maintained. They had a priest with them because we are not allowed to have Imams, and the priest was from Sudan, I think they took him because he spoke Arabic. He started to talk to me about it. I don’t know what he was talking about, honestly, because I just wanted them to go away and leave me alone. I remember I was in so much pain I needed to punish my body. Then I started to sing the Quran, I think for about 12 hours straight. I took one break until I completely collapsed. What was in between was a lot of pain. I was first taken to Jordan for eight months incommunicado, where I was not allowed to see anyone or talk to anyone. This is so shameful, as this is like humiliation upon humiliation, that you are being tortured and humiliated by your own people. This is more than anything; we say in Arabic [speaking Arabic], ‘When injustice comes from your next of kin, it’s worse than being cut into pieces by a sword’. Then I was taken to Afghanistan; they tried to take people to free Afghanistan from so-called terrorists, but I was taken to Afghanistan by force. From Afghanistan, I was taken to Guantanamo Bay, and I was the first candidate for capital murder, the first ever. I remember, after so many months of torture and forced confession, one staff, First Sergeant Shirley, came to me and told me that I was being chosen for the death penalty. You may ask me, ‘Was I afraid? How was my feeling?’—I tell you, I didn’t have any feelings. I was numb. I was just listening to him, looking at his lips moving, and I just wanted the session with him to end so I could go back and live in my head, in myself. All of this happened, in all those 15 years, completely outside the rule of law, completely free of any judicial oversight, meaningful judicial oversight. I was never charged with a crime, ever. When I finally got to see my case for the first time in front of an independent person, a judge, who could see all the evidence, even the classified evidence, he ordered my release. Those are the facts of the case. I was the only detainee who was ordered to be released. He was tough; he saw the case for what it was, a complete hoax. CJLPA : Wow, there is a lot to unpack from that, so thank you. Before we delve into your experience in Guantanamo Bay specifically, I found it quite interesting how you mentioned that your own people, your own kin, left you and abandoned you. Jordan assisted the US in detaining you and sending you to Afghanistan, which ultimately led to your transfer to Guantanamo Bay. Why do you think they helped with this or contributed to this? Do you believe it’s a result of the fear of other international countries, particularly the US as the world superpower, and their influence? MOS : One of the bitterest experiences I faced is that in my part of the world, we have real problems. The absence of democracy, the absence of the rule of law—we know this; it’s like an open secret. This problem is exacerbated by them being in bed with very powerful countries like the United States of America. For better or worse, the United States of America is the leader of the free world, and their association with the most distasteful—I don’t want to say dictators, just authoritarian regimes, to be on the safe side—is completely hurting the local people. Because this so-called war on terrorism is used, at least in my part of the world, to crush political dissent. People who peacefully want democratic change, who want to have their votes counted, and who want to limit the power of the military general, the king, or the president, are labelled as Islamic extremists or terrorists and are being crushed. When I was arrested, there was no Guantanamo Bay because the United States was discussing with other countries—they were discussing with the government executive branch the power of places to put the people they capture in a place that is not subject to the rule of law. That was the whole idea. While waiting at that place, they already had places where they worked, like in Arabic countries. We know Jordan is part of them, my country and Morocco are part of them, even Syria was part of them, Egypt, and Pakistan, of course, and so on. There are people who I met and who were delivered to those countries, and this is really shameful. The point is if they couldn’t take me to the US because the government, the FBI, and the CIA knew that there was no evidence—I didn’t do anything—but, you would ask, why then did they capture me? Because they want information; they want to ask me if my cousin is friends with Osama Bin Laden. I don’t need to have rights; I’m from Mauritania, and no one is defending me. My country certainly is not defending me. CJLPA : When you first arrived at Guantanamo Bay, a detention site where, as you mentioned, the rule of law doesn’t exist, what were the prison conditions like? Can you describe what it was like when you first entered there? MOS : So, when I was interrogated in Bagram, I didn’t speak English, so my English was very limited, and I didn’t understand. When they asked me if I needed to use the bathroom, I spoke German, and ‘bathroom’ in German is very close to ‘Badezimmer’, where we take a shower. I thought, ‘Wow, Americans are good people; they want to allow me to take a shower’. I said yes, and they took me to a barrel full of human faeces, an open barrel, and told me, ‘Yeah, you can use the bathroom’. I said, ‘Ah, okay, this is the bathroom in English. Okay, now I understand’. We didn’t have toilets; we only had very big barrels brought in as toilets for the detainees. They brought in an Arabic interpreter who asked me what languages I spoke, and I told them I spoke Arabic, French, and German. They said, ‘What? You speak German?’. I said, ‘Yes’. Then they brought a CIA agent who spoke German, and he was the one who interrogated me. He felt a kind of relationship with me because he was German, and we were the only two people who spoke German. He told me, ‘You are screwed either way. I’m just going to be honest with you because even if you are innocent, you are not getting out of this’. He told me, ‘I don’t know whether you’re innocent or not. Maybe you’re innocent, maybe you’re not. But either way, you are not getting out of this’. I think he told me, or it was already decided, that I would be sent to Guantanamo Bay. I was really happy after 8 months in Jordan and the pain I saw in Bagram. In Bagram, I was in shackles for 24 hours, I peed in my cell on the carpet because there was no toilet. Because they had to take me to another place, and because I was in isolation, there was no toilet, so I peed everywhere, and my room reeked of urine. But I was just happy because he explained to me that Guantanamo Bay is under the full control of the US. I told myself, ‘This is the US, so they cannot harm me because now I am under US custody. Not anymore; they won’t blame it anymore on Jordanians and the Afghanis’. But I was in for a very big surprise. The trip was torturous, full of beating and humiliation. When we arrived, the sun of Guantanamo hit me, and it felt really good. I couldn’t see anything, but I could feel the sun on me. Then they took me to interrogation, and in the beginning, it was really normal, almost 24-hour interrogation. After about five months, they turned the heat up and brought a special FBI team who interrogated me for four months. Then they told me, ‘Mohamedou, we are not getting anything out’. They told me if I didn’t cooperate with them, they would torture me. I said, ‘The sooner, the better’. I knew what ‘The sooner, the better’ meant because, by that time, I had picked up a lot of the English language. The decision to torture me was a foregone conclusion anyway. They took me to a place where they brought a special team, the torture team. They took me to India Block, emptied it from all detainees, so it was only me. 70 first days: no sleep, 24 hours. Sexual assault, stripping you naked, and beatings so bad, I thought I was going to die. After 70 days, they took me on a boat ride and brought another team, an Arabic-speaking team. One guy had an Egyptian accent, and another guy had a Jordanian accent. The guy with an Egyptian accent said he was Egyptian, and the other guy said he was Jordanian. They threatened to take me back to Egypt and Jordan, but they didn’t know I had already taken that path, and there were no miracles. Richard Zuley, a Police lieutenant from Chicago, came to me and told me he was going to kidnap my mother and take her to Guantanamo Bay. He also insinuated that he could not secure her safety in an only male prison. I completely unravelled and told him I would tell him anything he wanted. That’s when I gave them the false confession. First Sergeant Shirley helped me write it. This false confession was the biggest challenge for them because, in dissemination, they sent the information to different agencies like the FBI, CIA, and others. They were all saying ‘no, he didn’t do this, we know he didn’t do it’. Richard Zuley was so angry because they said, ‘You want to convict him, you want the death penalty, this secures the death penalty, why are you asking questions?’ They all asked for a lie detector test. I took the polygraph twice and told him I didn’t do anything. Zero. Zilch. Nothing. Nada. I passed the test twice, and after the test, there was a complete change in my situation. They started to drive down the torture and decided that I could not be released ever because of what I saw and experienced. In 2012, the Mauritanian government asked for my release, and they were told, ‘He is un-releasable’. CJLPA : Because, as you said, at that point, you had become a witness to all the crimes against humanity and what was happening in Guantanamo Bay. So once they released you, the whole world would know what was occurring there. MOS : Yes, that would be a challenge to the narrative, to their narrative, yes, propaganda. CJLPA : It’s beyond the international community, the crimes that they committed, and how they tortured you while you were there. What do you think they were told in order to commit these barbaric and inhumane torture crimes? To conduct them and still be able to sleep at night? Do you think it was brainwashing? Do you think they truly believed you were involved, or do you think it is just pure hatred towards a certain religious group and certain countries? How do you think they could do this? MOS : Let’s be cold and scientific about this. This is humanity, just human beings. This is not because they’re Americans or they’re French. When you start dehumanizing a group of people, there is nothing you can’t do to them. And this started with our faces being put out; they took very ugly pictures of us and put them out there. When I saw my picture, I said to myself, ‘This guy is a bad guy’ [laughs]. I don’t remember when they took this picture because I was held, and my face was swollen because of the beating. This picture is actually on the internet; they put it on the internet. And this is the person we are holding here, so those are evil people. Just the soldiers, the people who participate in the torture, and the people who ordered them are evil people. They would kill you in a heartbeat if they had a chance. So when you start with sleep deprivation, then sexual assault, then beating, they would always tell me, ‘We want to save lives’, but what they didn’t know is that I couldn’t save any lives. I didn’t do anything; I didn’t know people who are holding a bomb to kill anyone. And this goes on and on, and they are not doctors, and they don’t know. That’s why Abdul-Gul-Gul died from torture in the same room, in the cold room they put me in. It’s very cold; you could die. Because I was in this room, and they told me they would not stop pouring cold water on me until I talked. What they didn’t know was that I couldn’t talk because I was so cold; I couldn’t move my tongue. This is probably how they killed Gul Rahman, and in the same prison where I was in Bagram, they beat Dilawar to death; he was beaten to death. And other people we don’t know about, because according to classified documents, or at least some reporting, 20 people were never brought back; they were kidnapped and just disappeared. The people we know on record, about five people, we know died under the program of torture that I was subjected to. So, democracy is here for a reason. The rule of law is here for a reason. The reason is that we can never trust the government. We can never trust the government to do the right thing. The government always needs someone to control them: the judiciary. We know that this good, beautiful thing that we have now, that is democracy, protects me and protects you. We know that it has shortcomings; we know especially that it’s designed so that the judiciary has so much power over the judge, because when the judge said I could go home I was kept for six more years. The judge does not have the police and does not have the military. We can only hope that the government, the judiciary would respect the other branches of the government. In this case, the judiciary and the executive branch did not respect the rule of law, and in our country it’s the same situation. We know this game because we grew up in an undemocratic regime. CJLPA : While you were in prison, did you have contact with the other prisoners? Did you get to know anyone? Did you hear much about how they were detained and if they ever found out if they had charges brought against them? MOS : Very few contacts, because 90% of my time I was in total isolation. I met the general population for the first after ten months, but we were always in the cells all the time, so we didn’t get to meet or talk much. Of course, we shouted, we talked, and this was during all the interrogations. And of course, we talked about interrogations, and we were afraid. I didn’t know them, and they didn’t know me either. Then I was completely taken away from the general population. The only things I could read or had access to were the statements given to me by my lawyers, and the statements of other detainees that relate to my case. For example, there is a well-known detainee, Ramzi Shibh. Shibh was heavily tortured until he lost his mind. I know about his case because he made a statement, and my understanding, though I wasn’t allowed to see the statement due to blackout, is that he knows me, and we spoke about something like that. So I know about this kind of statement, and I know he was tortured because that’s what my lawyer told me. He was subjected to heavy torture. But I don’t know about other detainees who were tortured and talked about me. CJLPA : And it was only in 2005 that you got a lawyer, and this was Nancy Hollander, whom we also had the pleasure to interview, an international defence lawyer, and she took your case. Can you tell us a bit about what it was like when you first met her? MOS : Yeah. So, when they told me that I was allowed to see my lawyer, I was so happy because when I was young, I used to watch Married with Children and a little bit of Law and Order . I had this idea that Americans are humorous and respect the rule of law. So, I thought, ‘Ah, this was only a mistake, and then now they will release me, and then I will go home, and I will get a lot of money, like in the movies’. That didn’t happen, but I started to write to my lawyer, to write to her about my life. In just a few days, I wrote about 163 pages. When I finally met her, I remembered wanting to hug her, but I couldn’t reach her because there was a table between us. She stood there for what felt like an eternity. She didn’t know that I was shackled, bolted to the ground and unable to move because it was under the table, and she couldn’t see it. Then she brought another lawyer who spoke French, but I told her I didn’t need anyone to speak French. I can speak English. So, we started, and she asked me to continue writing. In two and a half months, about ten weeks, I wrote everything you see in my Guantanamo diary. When I sent it to her, she tried to publish it, but they told her, ‘You ain’t gonna publish this’. It took about eight years of fighting, and this is in a country that positions itself as the defender of freedom of speech. You can say anything, you can talk about violence, you can talk about killing the president—anything. But just my story, that I was kidnapped from home and taken to Guantanamo Bay and tortured, was not allowed to be told. I think that the American people deserve better than this, and I grew to know American people who are, by and large, fairly decent people and very good human beings. CJLPA : With your Guantanamo Bay diaries, what, in particular, did you find that they redacted? What were some key points that they chose to take out that you think should have been kept in, and that people should know about? Essentially, what were the main things that they were trying to hide from the world, do you think? MOS : So, there are things like the dates and the places they redacted. It made sense in a military context; they don’t want people to know when they kidnap you or where they take you, the timeline. However, some things didn’t make sense. For instance, that it was so bad that I cried, or that I brought some poems, and they took the poems out. They also removed personal pronouns, and if you referred to a man or woman, they took that out. There was a very long portion, I don’t even remember anymore, but a very long story that they removed. Many years later, when I tried to restore the damage, I didn’t know all of this; I forgot a lot. CJLPA : When you first had Nancy Hollander take your case, did you face any challenges in trusting her based on your previous experiences in prison with the US government? Or was there an instant connection when you saw her, and you knew she was on your side, ready to help you? MOS : After 4 years of torture, pain, and suffering, you have nothing to lose. I trusted Nancy from the first day, along with her colleagues—Nancy was with a team, so I will always give all of them credit. However, Nancy, by nature, is a mistrusting person. So, logically, she looked at me and said it was impossible that they kidnapped him, tortured him, and spent so much money hiding him in different countries if he didn’t do anything. Then I kept telling her I didn’t do anything, not even like, ‘Oh, it was a mistake’, or ‘It was the wrong place at the wrong time’, nothing. This was very hard to digest. But I told her you will know this when you know my case. When she saw the investigation, and I think there was an investigation, and when she saw the torture that I was exposed to and the resignation of the prosecutor who was supposed to put me to death, then she knew. He was a prosecutor, a marine, and there was no reason for him to side with me unless he believed in the truth. That was a significant factor, among many others, in understanding the facts of the case that kept trickling in, I would say. CJLPA : Concerning the film The Mauritanian , it would be interesting to get your perspective on how you think the portrayal of Tahar Rahim was of you. Was it an accurate representation? What was it like seeing him in this film, and enduring what you endured at Guantanamo Bay? MOS : It’s a very good way, to brag and tell people, ‘Look how I look’, and then, maybe even very tempting to take his photo and put it as my profile picture. And it’s another way to tell my story. We are completely vilified in this part of the world, and it’s not very common that you see anything positive about us in Hollywood. Seeing Tahar Rahim and Jodie Foster portraying someone who did not hurt anyone is something I want to convey—that my family and I did not grow up to hate anyone. We grew up to love people, love life, and live peacefully. Of course, I was a young man, and I wanted to help Palestine and Afghanistan, with everything. But doing that, I never killed anyone, never did anything to anyone. Of course, I wasn’t always very careful about what I said, but that’s okay. Why is it okay for young French people and young American people to be stupid and say stupid things, but it’s not okay for Saudi people or Moroccan or Mauritanian people? I don’t accept that. CJLPA : And specifically, going back to the film, naturally Hollywood films can’t depict everything. What do you think is something important that could have been included in the film, something from your diary that wasn’t shown? Something crucial that people need to know about is what happens in these camps. MOS : You can’t depict 70 days of sleeplessness in a movie; that would be too long. And I was in prison for 15 years. 15 years. I think Kevin, my good friend, did a very good job. They asked me a lot because I told them I don’t interfere with the work of movies since I’m not a movie maker, but they asked me, and I shared my opinion. They very much considered everything I told them after doing the research, of course, and they talked to the other side a lot. CJLPA : Were you surprised, or did you have hope throughout the case working with Nancy Hollander that you were going to win? Because, of course, you knew you were innocent and you knew they didn’t have evidence. But at that point, it was quite clear that it didn’t matter to the authorities whether there was evidence or not. You’d already seen too much. So throughout the case, were you still hopeful nonetheless that you would have justice? MOS : You know, I learned everything about the American justice system the hard way. In the Western world, there are two philosophies. There is a common law, as it is practised in the United Kingdom, and this is like common sense: what decency dictates. It doesn’t need to be written, but when people think this is bad, it should be bad, hence the jury, because the jury decides the law. Then there is what they call Napoleonic law. Napoleonic law is based on Sharia, but don’t say that in France, because they will hate you for it. Napoleonic law dictates that there cannot be a crime without being defined. America is neither common law nor Napoleonic law; it’s a mixture of both, and that’s why a lot of the crimes that they charge the detainees of Guantanamo Bay with were not defined, like material support of terrorism. That was not defined as a crime. So, when the judge asks you in the US if you are guilty, you have to understand the question, which is not ‘Did you do this or not?’. The question is, ‘Did you commit a sin, or didn’t you commit a sin?’. The commission of a sin could be you feel bad that you didn’t prevent this crime from happening, or it could be that you put the gun to the head of that guy and put 10 bullets in him, but you were defending yourself or your family and you were in the right. In both cases, you say ‘I’m not guilty’, or ‘I’m guilty’, so that’s the first difference, because in most European countries, the countries that practice the Napoleonic law, there is no pleading. They don’t ask you whether you are guilty; they only look at the facts, what happened. That’s it. That was my first shock. Then it came to me testifying. After I finished the summary, I thought ‘I am screwed, this is not going well’. Because he kept asking me, for example, ‘did you watch jihad movies when you were young?’—I said yes. ‘Did you read jihad magazines?’—yes. And then, I was—I wanted to cry because I didn’t want to say yes or no. If you ask someone a line of questioning and you limit them to yes and no, you can make them come to any conclusion, no matter what the conclusion is. And I was not allowed to explain anything; he only asked yes or no. And I think the first thing I would do if I were responsible for the justice system, would be to forbid ‘yes and no’ questions in cross-examination. Later, when the judge interfered, he said, ‘Why did you ask him this question about whether he saw a movie or something, why?’. And then the prosecutor told him, ‘to go for the jugular’. And the judge said, ‘But you ain’t got no jugular, do you?’ And then the prosecutor said, ‘No, I don’t’. That’s when I knew that I was right all along because the Prosecutor admitted in front of the judge that he didn’t have anything on me. CJLPA : This will be the last question before you have to leave. First of all, there are various other detention camps around the world where illegal acts by government authorities are continuing. What comes next? How can the world put an end to this? What actions can people take, and what role can lawyers play? How do individuals become involved, exert pressure on politicians, and bring attention to these crimes to help save lives and support those who have undergone such experiences? MOS : I believe this is a very insightful question, and it encapsulates everything. How can we prevent this? I think the government, as it is currently acting, is not working for us. I am from Mauritania, a very small country. Mauritania lacks values that align with the broader perspectives of the American and UK political systems. As a Mauritanian, it occurred to me that I need to reach out directly to people like you and say: ‘You guys are really hurting me’. What can we do to prevent this hurt that is coming to me and the people here? My philosophy is that we need to undercut the government and build a very broad grassroots movement that is cross-cultural and spans across countries. We should talk to each other, completely ignoring the government, focusing on securing our safety and promoting human rights worldwide. Nowadays, if someone is imprisoned in Mauritania, Morocco, the US, or anywhere else, we need to address it immediately. I wish for a world where we unite as one, even elect someone we trust, without borders. We don’t care about borders, and we discuss how to move forward, combat human rights violations, and address wars. All these things are not good for us. CJLPA : Thank you very much, Mohamedou Slahi. It was an honour to have you here today. Your strength and bravery are truly extraordinary, and survivors like you, sharing your fight and story, will help make a difference in the world. This interview was conducted by Nadia Jahnecke, Legal Editor and Founder of Human Rights Volume of CJLPA 3. In addition to her role at CJLPA, Nadia is currently working as a Trainee Lawyer and will qualify as a lawyer in England and Wales in March 2024.

A case for the enhanced pre-sentence report in England and Wales, exploring how the Canadian approach to racially disproportionate sentencing outcomes could be fashioned in the UK In 2021, I was one of the lead contributors to a guide[1] for lawyers committed to ensuring Black lives matter in the Criminal Justice System. In the guide, I highlighted the case of R. v. Morris [2] as a way in which lawyers could use the law creatively to deal with racially discriminatory outcomes in the Criminal Justice System. I still believe, however, that there are many under-theorised approaches from R v Morris [3] and international human rights laws and principles that can be of real benefit to ensuring that sentencing hearings produce racially equitable outcomes. This piece will explore the ways lawyers can practically use this case and international human rights law and principles to do just that. The case of R. v. Morris [4] sets precedent as to how sentencing judges should account for systemic anti-Black racism when sentencing Black people, including (but not limited to) the use of ‘enhanced pre-sentence reports’ that document the impacts of anti-Black racism . Canada, unlike the UK, has a history of recognising the unique conditions of Black and Indigenous persons in their sentencing processes and decision-making. The criminal law code in Canada has recognised that there are cases where, in order to determine a fit and proportionate sentence, consideration must be given to an individual’s systemic and social circumstances. In particular, in June 1995, Parliament passed Bill C-41, a bill amending the Criminal Code with respect to sentencing. The new law came into force in 1996 and contained Criminal Code Section 718.2(e), which was intended to ameliorate the high rates of incarceration of Indigenous people. Section 718.2 reads: ‘A court that imposes a sentence shall also take into consideration the following principles: (e) all available sanctions other than imprisonment that are reasonable in the circumstances should be considered for all offenders, with particular attention to the circumstances of aboriginal offenders’. These circumstances often extend beyond the person who is being sentenced to include factors such as systemic discrimination and historical injustice. This has been recognised by the criminal courts[5], particularly in the case of Indigenous offenders who have a distinct history of colonial violence endured by Indigenous peoples and has extended to people of African descent. This reparative approach taken to address the ongoing harms of racism, slavery, and colonisation allows judges to consider social contexts in sentencing decisions. This approach has also allowed for new racial justice mechanisms to be further embedded into the Canadian legal system through the recent advent and use of Impact of Race and Culture Assessments (IRCAs)[6] in sentencing people of African descent. These IRCAs were first introduced in R v ‘X’ .[7] These reports provide the court with a detailed understanding of the effects of systemic anti-Black racism on people of African descent and how the experience of anti-Black racism has informed the circumstances of the offence, the offender, and how it informs the offender’s experience of the criminal justice system. These reports also address, inter alia, anti-Black racism and aim to promote tailored and proportionate sentences for Black people. They strive to construct a sentencing methodology that balances the significance of the twin principles of individual responsibility and proportionality, while incorporating the cultural legacies and historical oppressions and their role in the sentencing of Black people. In the case of R v Morris ,[8] Justice Nakatsuru considered the impact of anti-Black racism on Mr. Morris’s life and his social history. The defence presented an IRCA to the court and requested that the authors of this report outline and analyse the research relating to the existence and impact of anti-Black racism in Canadian society in general and the Toronto region in particular. The facts of the case In 2014, Kevin Morris, a 22-year-old Black man, was detained, chased, and injured by police officers PC Keefer and DC Moorcroft in a parking lot. The police officers did so as part of investigating a nearby home invasion, but neither Mr. Morris nor the three other young Black men Mr. Morris was with were involved in the invasion. In the aftermath, a jury found Mr. Morris guilty of charges relating to the possession of an unauthorised gun. The Outcome At the sentencing hearing, the Crown requested Mr. Morris a sentence of four to four and a half years. Mr. Morris’s defence lawyers requested a sentence of one year. Many of the previous sentences handed down for gun offences relating to criminal activity had usually been at least three years, while other cases for gun offences had been from one to two years. Upon considering the anti-Black racism that applied on a systemic and interpersonal level to Mr. Morris, Justice Nakatsuru sentenced Mr. Morris to 15 months. The sentence was then reduced to one year after taking into account the police officers’ unlawful infringement on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms .[9] In passing down the sentence, the judge noted the following: In the final analysis, what makes this sentencing different from other cases where leniency was not given is that I have been given a wealth of information to sentence you, information that can be used to take further steps to deal with the over-incarceration of Black people in this country. This judgement was recently appealed in February 2021 (judgement handed down in October 2021) by the Crown due to the length of the sentence given by the judge. The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal in order to increase the sentence but stated that the approach from the Judge in factoring anti-blackness was the correct one to take. The decision to increase the sentence has been rightfully condemned by the interveners in the case—The Black Legal Action Centre (BLAC)—[10]who state they are disappointed by the decision in the appeal of R. v. Morris , explaining that the Court failed to take a strong stance to ensure that every sentencing judge across the province meaningfully considers anti-Black racism in a consistent way when sentencing a Black people. Robyn Maynard, in Policing Black Lives , notes that ‘Black existence in public space is itself seen as criminal and thus subject to scrutiny, surveillance, frequent interruption and police intervention’.[11] This is of particular importance as Black communities in the UK remain over-policed through racially disproportionate stop and search,[12] which allows for Black communities to be funnelled through the criminal justice system. Black communities in the UK only make up 3% of the population but represent 13% of the adult prison population.[13] Currently, 59% of children on remand are Black.[14] The Lammy Review as far back 2017 highlighted the anti-Blackness within the judiciary when it comes to the disproportionate sentencing of Black males.[15] International Human Rights Law Overview The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD),[16] ratified by the UK on 7 March 1969, establishes the obligations of State parties to respect and ensure racial equality and the right to be free from racial discrimination. Several other human rights treaties also contain prohibitions on racial discrimination and other forms of discrimination, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),[17] to which the UK acceded in 1976. Under international human rights law, anti-Blackness is an infringement of the rights of people of African descent. Due to this, there must be scope to make arguments based on international human rights law when dealing with anti-Blackness in the courtroom. The ICERD[18] was created to deal specifically with racial discrimination within a specific human rights mechanism. The treaty in and of itself can be relied upon by countries where the ICERD treaty was ratified to make submissions in respect to failures to comply with international human rights obligations. The UK may not invoke ‘the provisions of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform a treaty’. The UK’s wide ranging international human rights law commitments include an obligation to ensure racial equality and eliminate racial discrimination. This obligation not only arises from its commitments under the ICERD, but also from its other human rights treaty commitments; nearly every human rights treaty contains a provision on non-discrimination. Article 2.1 of the ICCPR makes it clear that the rights recognized in the Covenant are to be recognised without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, or other status.[19] Article 2.2 of the ICESR outlines similar obligations with regard to economic, social, and cultural rights.[20] The Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) also produces General Recommendations that offer analysis of relevant provisions and practices of the U.N. treaty bodies. Since 1972, the CERD has issued general recommendations in order to provide guidance to States parties in understanding the provisions of the Convention and thereby assisting them in implementing the Convention fully based on their reporting to the Committee. International Human Rights Law: CERD Recommendation No. 36 General recommendation No. 36 (2020) on preventing and combating racial profiling by law enforcement officials[21] is an extensive document the UK must use to further understand how it can comply with its international human rights obligations. Paragraph 24 of General Recommendation No. 36[22] states that: Under article 6 of the Convention, States parties have an obligation to assure to everyone within their jurisdiction effective protection against any acts of racial discrimination. Accordingly, States parties must take preventive measures in order to ensure that public authorities and public institutions do not engage in practices of racial profiling. Article 6 also requires States parties to ensure to everyone within their jurisdiction effective remedies against any act of racial discrimination. States parties are obliged to ensure that their domestic legal order contains adequate and effective mechanisms through which to assert that racial profiling has taken place and to bring such a practice to an end. States parties must furthermore guarantee the right to seek just and adequate reparation or satisfaction for damage suffered as a result of racial discrimination in the form of racial profiling . The General Recommendation makes plain that racial profiling is in violation of the prohibition of racial discrimination. It also outlines how racial profiling is committed through certain official patterns and activities, such as arbitrary stops, searches, identity checks, investigations, and arrests. General Recommendation No. 36[23] establishes that racial profiling runs contrary to non-discrimination and equality before the law as foundational principles of international human rights law, as well as to the ‘very idea of the Convention’. The UN Special Rapporteur on Racism also notes that several international human rights mechanisms have concluded that racial profiling is both a manifestation of systemic racism and a contributor to the perpetuation of societal racial stereotypes, prejudice, and bias. The CERD’s General Recommendation No. 36[24] conceptualises racial profiling as both an individual and a structural violation. The CERD found that racial profiling and broader societal racism, including hate speech, are closely interrelated, in that stereotyping and hate speech can lead to law enforcement officers engaging in racial profiling and profiling can in turn increase stigmatization and promulgation of ethnic stereotypes. International Human Rights Law: CERD Recommendation No. 34 General recommendation No. 34[25] adopted by the Committee concerns Racial discrimination against people of African descent. It requires that ‘people of African descent shall enjoy all human rights and fundamental freedoms in accordance with international standards, in conditions of equality and without any discrimination’.[26] Paragraph 15 notes that States should ‘strengthen existing institutions or create specialised institutions to promote respect for the equal human rights of people of African descent’.[27] What could racial justice lawyering look like under current sentencing guidelines in the UK, and how can lawyers use R v Morris to inform mitigation arguments and approaches to Pre-Sentence reports? Within the sentencing principles that currently exist, I believe that there is scope for lawyers to use the law and sentencing guidelines creatively to build a framework of analysis that can begin to address the issue of disproportionate imprisonment within Black communities in the UK. For us to do this, lawyers must understand that the law is not neutral. Critical legal theorists have expanded on this by explaining that the law is the mechanism for legitimising the existing hierarchy of social relations and thus, crystallising existing patterns of domination. Racial justice in the courts, therefore, requires the law to be decentralised, moving away from the perception that all charged persons before the court are white and male. Instead, the courts allow for an equitable approach that ensures fairer outcomes for racialised persons. In the case of R v Jackson 2018 ,[28] the sentencing judge Nakatsuru took such an approach. See paragraph 86: Taking judicial notice of the historical and systemic injustices committed against African Canadians and African Canadian offenders is preferable to a strict adherence to the traditional rules of evidence which will only serve to advantage the status quo. The offender should not be burdened with the requirement to bring such evidence, usually in the form of expert evidence, to their sentencing when these social and historical facts are beyond reasonable dispute. Current sentencing guidelines The sentencing guidelines have sections within them that can be used to expand upon the history and legacies of Anti-Blackness on defendants at sentencing. The Sentencing Council’s Overarching Guideline on Sentencing Children and Young People notes at paragraph 1.18 that Black and minority ethnic children are over-represented in the youth justice system and states that decisions about the welfare of a child must consider the particular factors that arise in the case of Black and minority ethnic children.[29] The Sentencing Council has also taken recent measures in the guidelines for possession of firearms and possession with intent to supply drugs, which can aid in drawing sentencers’ attention to evidence of racialised sentencing disparities. [30] The approaches of the Sentencing Council in actively reminding sentencers during the sentencing exercise to be aware of the racial disparity can be seen as a measure that is aligning with international human rights law. Particularly, in respect to ICERD Article 2, Para 1 that requires States Parties to condemn racial discrimination and to undertake to pursue by all appropriate means and without delay a policy of eliminating racial discrimination in all its forms and promoting understanding among all races, and, to this end: 1(a) Each State Party undertakes to engage in no act or practice of racial discrimination against persons, groups of persons or institutions and to ensure that all public authorities and public institutions, national and local, shall act in conformity with this obligation; 1(c) Each State Party shall take effective measures to review governmental, national and local policies, and to amend, rescind or nullify any laws and regulations which have the effect of creating or perpetuating racial discrimination wherever it exists. Lawyers can also remind judges of their role in fighting racial discrimination and disparity with the criminal justice system and their obligations under the Equal Treatment Bench Book, asking the court to take into consideration their client’s personal and cultural experiences as mitigating factors. In the case of R v Jackson , at paragraph 107, the sentencing judge Nakatsuru noted that ‘[o]ne way in which this information (history of anti-Blackness within society) can be used is to ensure that the contextual circumstances regarding the lived experiences of African Canadians are properly taken into account when applying the principles of sentencing’.[31] As judge Louis LeBel said in R v Ipeelee at paragraph 67: [J]udges can ensure that systemic factors do not led inadvertently to discrimination in sentencing. Professor Quigley aptly describes how this occurs: ‘Socioeconomic factors such as employment status, level of education, family situation, etc., appear on the surface as neutral criteria. They are considered as such by the legal system. Yet they can conceal an extremely strong bias in the sentencing process. Convicted persons with steady employment and stability in their lives, or at least prospects of the same, are much less likely to be sent to jail for offences that are borderline imprisonment offences. The unemployed, transients, the poorly educated are all better candidates for imprisonment. When the social, political, and economic aspects of our society place Aboriginal people disproportionately within the ranks of the latter, our society literally sentences more of them to jail. This is systemic discrimination’.[Citation omitted in original.] Sentencing judges, as front-line workers in the criminal justice system, are in the best position to re-evaluate these criteria to ensure that they are not contributing to ongoing systemic racial discrimination.[32] Another way that lawyers can ensure that the history of racial discrimination is highlighted to the court is through preparing a sentencing note that sets out the issues and data on the systemic discrimination experienced by Black people and actively, as the judge in the above case has shown, warning the court of the risks of its decision in contributing to structural and institutional racism. The Lammy Review found a clear and direct association between being Black and the higher likelihood of receiving a custodial sentence, with Black people 53% more likely to be sent to prison for an indictable offence at the Crown Court, even when factoring in higher not-guilty plea rates. I did this in a recent youth court case in which the mandatory minimum sentencing for knife possession applied and my client was spared custody. I also did this for a hearing I had for a young Black defendant who was being sentenced at the Crown Court. I mentioned in both written and oral submissions R v Morris [33] as best international practice and invited the court to use this approach to factor in my client’s experiences of anti-Black racism, which meant he presided more often before the courts. I further included points from the ICERD and its general recommendations mentioned above, The Lammy Review and Baroness Casey Review in this sentencing note. The judge agreed with my approach and took it into account as mitigation to reduce the sentence. Ensuring the Pre-Sentence report covers the personal and cultural history of the Defendant In England and Wales, when a pre-sentence report is provided to the court, only the discussions provided to the probation officer about the defendant are included in the report. an inspection of Race Equality in Probation [34] found that the quality of PSRs prepared in cases of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic service users was ‘insufficient in too many cases’ and that not enough attention was paid to diversity. Inspectors concluded that ‘[p]oorer quality reports that fail to consider all relevant factors run the risk of service users receiving more punitive sentences’.[35] Lawyers must make an effort to ensure their client feels comfortable to discuss any issues of anti-Black racism they have faced with the probation officer so they can include this in the report. Lawyers should have discussions with their clients before sentencing about any experiences of racial injustice, whilst remaining aware that the experiences may be both direct and indirect. In the case of it being indirect, lawyers will need to be well versed in anti-racism research in order to highlight this. Lawyers, after confirming with their client, can also discuss with probation the need to ensure they have taken into account the issues noted in the Lammy Review and the recent Justice report on the overall lived experiences of racialised clients.[37] They should simultaneously highlight the concerns raised in an inspection of Race Equality in Probation HMIP 2021 report on the quality of PSRs prepared in cases of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic service users. This is of particular importance, as the UK’s sentencing Council’s overarching principles notes that it is for the sentencing court to determine how much weight should be assigned to the aggravating and mitigating factors, taking into account all of the circumstances of the offence and the offender . In order for the court to have all information about the offender and offence, the Court should be provided with international human rights documents like General Recommendation 34 of CERD, that will show the legacy of anti-Blackness globally.[37] Advocates should, then, through oral or written submissions, explain how anti-Blackness has shaped the offender’s life experiences and has led to them being in contact with the criminal justice system. Using R v Morris as best international practice when discussing mitigation Lawyers should consider R v Morris [38] alongside international human rights law as a best practice guide when gathering evidence and drafting submissions that can be used to showcase how anti-Blackness and anti-Black racism directly affects their Black clients. R v Morris [39] can be used as a blueprint for ways they can approach bringing this evidence forward to the court during mitigation. They can also present the case directly to the courts as best international practice, noting to judges that that whilst this does not yet have direct precedent in domestic courts, it nonetheless provides the courts with the best practice from an international human rights law approach when dealing with the impact of anti-Black racism on their clients offending, their contact with the criminal justice system and their wider life experiences. Ife Thompson Ife Thompson is a distinguished Movement Lawyer and UN Fellow, specialising in criminal defence, family law, and actions against police misconduct. Her work often intersects with cases involving racial and linguistic injustice, and she employs innovative legal strategies, drawing from UN International Human Rights Law and community-based issues to actively challenge these matters within her criminal defence practice. She has also founded two civil society organisations to further these pursuits. The first is BLAM UK: an award-winning Non-profit that provides educational, advocacy and well-being support for Black people living in Britain. The second is Black Protest Legal Support UK, a hub of UK-based Lawyers willing to provide Pro-bono support and legal observing at BLM and racialised protests. [1] Howard League for Penal Reform, ‘Making Black lives matter in the criminal justice system: A guide for antiracist lawyers’ (2021) < https://howardleague.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/A-guide-for-antiracist-lawyers-1.pdf > accessed 9 October 2023. [2] R v Morris [2018] ONSC 5186. [3] ibid. [4] ibid. [5] R. v. ‘X’ [2014] NSPC 95. [6] ibid. [7] ibid. [8] ibid. [9] Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Constitution Act 1882. [10] Ammar, ‘BLAC responds to Ontario Court of Appeal decision in R. v. Morris ’ (Black Legal Action Centre, 8 October 2021) < https://www.blacklegalactioncentre.ca/blac-responds-to-court-of-appeal-for-ontarios-decision-in-r-v-morris/ > accessed 9 October 2023. [11] Robyn Maynard, Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada (Fenwood Publishing Co Ltd 2017). [12] Vikram Dodd, ‘Black people nine times more likely to face stop and search than white people’ Guardian (London, 27 October 2020) < https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/oct/27/black-people-nine-times-more-likely-to-face-stop-and-search-than-white-people > accessed 9 October 2023. [13] Georgina Sturge, ‘UK prison population statistics’ ( Commons Library Publications, 8 September 2023). < https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN04334/SN04334.pdf > accessed 9 October 2023. [14] Penelope Gibbs, ‘Children imprisoned on remand – the stark reality of racial bias’ ( Transform Justice, 5 November 2021). < https://www.transformjustice.org.uk/news-insight/children-imprisoned-on-remand-the-stark-reality-of-racial-bias/ > accessed 9 October 2023. [15] Lammy Review, ‘The Lammy Review: final report’ ( gov.uk, 8 September 2017) < https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/lammy-review-final-report > accessed 9 October 2023. [16] International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, UN General Assembly resolution 2106 (XX) 21 December 1965. [17] International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, UN General Assembly Resolution 2200A (XXI) 16 December 1966. [18] ibid. [19] ibid Article 2.1. [20] ibid Article 2.2. [21] General Recommendation No. 36 on preventing and combating racial profiling by law enforcement officials (2020). [22] ibid [24]. [23] ibid. [24] ibid. [25] General Recommendation No. 34 adopted by the Committee: Racial discrimination against people of African descent (2011). [26] ibid. [27] ibid [15]. [28] R v Jackson [2018] ONSC 2527 (CanLII) [86]. [29] Sentencing Council, ‘New Sentencing Guidelines’ ( Sentencing Council, 9 December 2020) [1.18]. < https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/news/item/new-sentencing-guidelines-for-firearms-offences-published/ > accessed 9 October 2023. [30] Sentencing Council, ‘New sentencing guidelines for firearms offences published’ ( Sentencing Council, 9 December 2020) < https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/news/item/new-sentencing-guidelines-for-firearms-offences-published/ > accessed 9 October 2023. [31] R v Jackson (n 28) [107]. [32] R v Ipeelee [2012] SCC 13 (CanLII) 1SCR 433 [67]. [33] ibid. [34] HMIP, ‘Race equality in probation: the experiences of black, Asian and minority ethnic probation service users and staff’ ( HMIP, 16 March 2021) < https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprobation/inspections/race-equality-in-probation >accessed 9 October 2023. [35] ibid [29]. [36] JUSTICE, ‘Tackling racial injustice: Children and the youth justice system’ ( JUSTICE, 25 February 2021) < https://justice.org.uk/our-work/criminal-justice-system/current-work-criminal-justice/tackling-racial-injustice/ > accessed 31 October 2023. [37] ibid. [38] ibid. [39] ibid.

Andrew Clapham is Professor of International Law at the Geneva Graduate Institute, which he joined in 1997. He was the first Director of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights (2006 - 2014). Andrew Clapham teaches international law, human rights law, and the laws of war. He recently served as a member of the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan (2017-2023). In 2003 he was an Adviser on International Humanitarian Law to Sergio Vieira de Mello, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Iraq. His publications include: Brierly’s Law of Nations: An Introduction to the Role of International Law in International Relations (7th edition) (Oxford University Press, 2012), Oxford Handbook of International Law in Armed Conflict, co-edited with Paola Gaeta (Oxford University Press, 2014), and he is co-editor with Paola Gaeta and Marco Sassòli of The 1949 Geneva Conventions: A Commentary (Oxford University Press, 2015). His latest book is entitled War (Oxford University Press, 2021). CJLPA : Good morning Professor Clapham. I would like to thank you on behalf of The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art , for joining us this morning to discuss the valuable insights of your work in international law, human rights, and humanitarian law. Your career spans decades with experience as Amnesty International representative at the UN, advisor to the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General in Iraq, member of the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, and more. You were also the first director of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights (from 2006-2014), and a well published Professor of international law at the Geneva Graduate Institute, with your most recent book titled War , released in 2021. We would like to start by asking how your diverse experiences as practitioner, academic scholar and author have been informing your thoughts and your work, and maybe briefly, what your focus has been recently as well? Professor Andrew Clapham : Well, thank you very much for having me. I suppose it's difficult to be working in this area without thinking about the war in Ukraine. Obviously, there are multiple legal developments related to that conflict. I don't pretend to be on top of all of them, but if you ask me what I'm thinking about, it's a lot of the issues connected to that conflict, but partly because they haven't come up before in recent times—for example, issues of neutrality, funding, and supplying arms to either side of the conflict, the questions of naval warfare, interference with ships, search of ships, that hasn't come up before, at least not in recent times. And so those are some of the issues, and I know we're going to talk about war crimes later. And then the second thing that I'm thinking about at the moment, if you're asking, is the prosecution in Stockholm, Sweden, for complicity in war crimes of the former chief executive and former chairman of the board of the oil company Lundin, for their activity in Sudan (as it then was) in the sector where Lundin was doing oil exploration. That also is a groundbreaking prosecution and I'm trying to follow it as best I can. It only started a few days ago but it's going to run for two years, so I'm trying to get my head around that as well. CJLPA : There are so many avenues to consider with regards to these very complex conflicts. Beyond international mechanisms, do you think Ukraine is currently equipped to prosecute such war crimes? And what are the main challenges Ukraine would face in prosecuting these war crimes? AC : Ukraine has a criminal code that arguably covers most of the relevant war crimes. The main difficulty, I think, is not necessarily in the legislation or even the existence of courts, but in actually capturing people who could be prosecuted. Obviously, they have captured prisoners of war, but some of those have had to be exchanged for Ukrainian prisoners on the Russian side. So even historically, looking at some of the prosecutions that there have been, even after conviction—if I've understood correctly—those prisoners have been swapped for people held by the Russians on the other side. So, in trying to prosecute war crimes in the middle of an armed conflict, you come up against these competing interests, which is to bring your own people home. The actual definition of the crimes is a complicated area. But what I would say to you at this point is that this is unusual in some ways as an armed conflict because you have the application not only of all four Geneva Conventions, but also Additional Protocol I, because both Ukraine and Russia are parties to Additional Protocol I. Additional Protocol I includes a list of war crimes relevant to this conflict, related to attacks on civilians or disproportionate attacks involving civilian casualties. And so it wouldn't be that difficult to prosecute such war crimes because they are defined in a treaty ratified by both sides. A lot of the media talk about the fact that neither Russia nor Ukraine have ratified the Rome Statute, but actually the Rome Statute is for prosecuting people in the International Criminal Court (ICC), and it's based on these crimes which have existed in treaty law for some time now. So I think it's certainly possible. And the fact that these crimes are grave breaches under the Geneva Conventions means not only that they could be prosecuted in Ukraine or Russia, but they could also be prosecuted in any state in the world because every state has ratified the Geneva Conventions, and many of those states will have national law that allows them to prosecute a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, even states that are not parties to the ICC. So for example, since January this year, the United States has adjusted its law and could prosecute anybody accused of grave breaches. The United Kingdom has something called the Geneva Conventions Act, which gives jurisdiction to the British courts to prosecute those who are accused of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. So that would be the aspect that I would stress that the ‘universal jurisdiction’ if you like—because every state in the world is a party to these treaties—stems from the Geneva Conventions and not from something called international criminal law or even the ICC. CJLPA : In your opinion, would Ukraine need to amend any of their laws to align more with ICL standards in order to prosecute these crimes and establish accountability? And what would need to be amended? Or is it, as you said, not Ukrainian national law that would pose an issue? AC : No, I think there is room for amendments in Ukrainian law. I think one of the issues relates to command responsibility or superior responsibility—Article 28 in the ICC statute.[1] If you wanted to prosecute command or superior responsibility in Ukraine, my impression was that it would be quite tricky. But there may be other ways under Ukrainian law that I don't understand, as to how you could indeed prosecute somebody for command responsibility. In terms of other crimes, I think there are efforts to try to bring national legislation more into line with some of the long list of crimes in the ICC Statute. But I think, for the very basic crimes of murder and sexual violence, you would be able to use the war crimes concepts from the Geneva Conventions, which are sort of indirectly incorporated into Ukrainian law because it talks about criminal responsibility for violating humanitarian law treaties which Ukraine is a party to, and that would obviously cover the Geneva Conventions. CJLPA : In your recent book titled War , you explore the evolution of the term and how the different notions of war, or War, and armed conflict may produce different implications and consequences. Indeed, Russia prefers the term ‘special operation’, and individuals may be tried for treason by referring to it as a war. In your opinion, which category would Russia-Ukraine fall under, and what laws may apply in that case? AC : It's true that the Russian authorities have avoided using the word war to describe the operation. Although, ironically, my impression from some of the reports I've read is that they do talk about a war with NATO. So there's a sort of distinction between how they see the others, and maybe it's partly related to the idea that they claim they are sort of reincorporating Ukraine back and so they don't see it as a war with another state. But to be frank, I don't think that's the only reason why Russian authorities have avoided the word war . I think the word war suggests an all or nothing combat. And I think to suggest to the people that ‘we are at war’, or ‘we are going to war’ suggests that young people will be conscripted, and the whole economy will be mobilised. I think that might be a frightening concept, and so a special military operation implies something smaller. Now, whether or not one could use the word War with a capital W as I've used it in the book is a separate question; I've used it to mean a formal Declaration of War under the old law of war, where some conflicts were not considered War because there had been no Declaration of War. As far as I know, there's no Declaration of War by Russia or Ukraine, or any sense that they are at War . So, to answer your question, I would consider this a war or simply an armed conflict. It might make a difference, for example under some human rights treaties, which allow for the death penalty in time of War. There, I think you need a formal War, and not just an armed conflict. So it could be significant. The other area is in naval warfare, where some people might consider that the law of prize—the law that entitles you to seize enemy ships outside neutral waters—really requires a Declaration of War to trigger prize court jurisdiction. So there could be reasons why the states might choose not to make a Declaration of War or why, in the future, they might make one. But for me, at the moment, it's not a Declared War . CJLPA : You have also written about just war theory in the case of Ukraine, and that it may be time to consider holding lower rank and file soldiers responsible for fighting those conflicts in the same way we hold higher ranking military leaders responsible. Can you explain this concept for our readers and elaborate on the shortcomings of our current concepts of just war and responsibility? AC : Yes, thank you. In traditional just war theory, philosophers feel that there should be something called ‘the symmetry of soldiers’ or ‘the symmetry of combatants’, the idea is that whether you're fighting on the just side or the unjust side, you should be treated the same, unless, of course, you commit a war crime. But the mere fact of fighting, even for the aggressor’s side, should not lead to punishment under this theory. And this principle is defended strongly by traditional just war theorists. I'm not sure exactly what their overarching key argument is, but one of the arguments which recurs is that if soldiers are going to be punished for simply fighting, there would be no incentive to abide by the laws of war. So, if when you're captured, you're going to prison for simply fighting on the other side, then what's to stop you from killing civilians or committing rape because you're going to be punished anyway? I personally don't think that's a good argument. You would obviously be punished more if you've committed war crimes, and I don't think people commit war crimes thinking about whether or not they're going to be punished. I think you need a much more complex analysis to try to dissuade people from doing that. But then one finds a set of secondary arguments which revolve around feasibility, if you punish everyone from the aggressor's side you're going to have an impossible task. If there is an army of 100,000 people, and they're all aggressors, then you can't prosecute everybody. And so you make a mockery of the rule of law, and you undermine the whole concept of law in wartime, because people are violating the law every day, and you're not punishing them. Again, I don't think that really holds up in the sense that, clearly, we're not going to punish everybody, you've got to capture people, and you're not going to waste time punishing people who had no real role in the aggression. Yes, there may be foot soldiers who are liable to prosecution, but you're going to punish those who have engaged in knowingly in furthering the aggression, not people who were peeling potatoes not really understanding what was going on, sitting at the back of the lines. So, my suggestion was that we need to start to think about punishing those on the aggressor’s side and not consider that they have some special immunity derived from a philosophical just war theory. In law, it gets more complicated in that the Additional Protocol I does say that members of the armed forces of a state have the right to directly participate in hostilities in an interstate armed conflict. But in Nuremberg people were prosecuted on the military side for assisting the aggression. And I think it would be possible, without violating the rule that says you have the right to directly participate in hostilities, to start to think about the crime of aiding and assisting the crime of aggression. And this brings me back to my answer to your very first question that if we start to think about prosecuting those who assist the aggression, then that starts to open up the possibility of prosecuting businesses and business leaders for supplying the equipment, which allows a state to engage in an aggression. If we start from the idea that you can only prosecute the head of state for aggression and the top general, but you can't prosecute all the people who have helped in that aggression, I think you let a lot of people off the hook—all those who are making money out of the war and fuelling the war on the aggressor’s side. And I think they should start to think that maybe they too can be considered as liable under international law. So those are my sort of reasons why I think it makes sense to start to think about those who are helping the aggressor and not say that, traditionally, you can't look at either one side as worse than the other because ‘that's how it's always been’, because ‘that's how it's always been’ goes back to the time when disputes were settled in a duel-like mentality: we have a dispute, so we'll go to war, and then God will reward the winner and that's how disputes are resolved. But today, if you have a dispute, you’re supposed to go to the UN or the International Court of Justice, not fight it out on the battlefield, and if you've chosen to start a war, I don't see why not just the leader, but all of those who knowingly go along with it can't be punished too. Now my students and other people tell me: ‘Oh, but a lot of people will be coerced into going to war, and they won't really understand it, or it'll be a life and death, they'll be shot if they don't go to war’. To which my response would be, ‘Well, we could deal with those cases one by one when it comes to the prosecution. If somebody genuinely feared for their life and had to go to war and ended up being on the aggressor’s side, but didn't commit war crimes, maybe they don't get punished in the same way as somebody who organised all of the troops or somebody who built all the bombs and knowingly sold them to the aggressor’s side’. So, it's a bit of a taboo subject in just war theory. Even those who take a more revisionist approach don't really want to touch the idea that soldiers can't be prosecuted merely for participating in a war on the aggressor’s side, but I'm saying maybe the time has come to change that approach. CJLPA : I think a lot of how we deal with war, as you said, goes back to very archaic ideas, and it's time to modernise that and address disputes the way we address all kinds of other disputes. I agree that it also depends, because some soldiers would be way more aggressive than other soldiers. And I think that really gives an idea of the kinds of individuals involved in the conflict. Following from that, what practical limitations may arise from broadening the scope of accountability? As you said, if we don't stop at soldiers, then we might bring in corporates as well, which is also very important. So, what practical limitations may arise from this, and what avenues may be available to address these? AC : I mean, I'm not sure there are practical limitations. I'm told, ‘Oh but that means prosecuting 100,000 people’, but that's not really how war crimes law works. Not all the war criminals are prosecuted in any conflict. A few people are—a tiny minority of those who have committed the crimes. And I think it could be the same for prosecuting the crime of aggression. It's not that you're going to take everybody in the prisoner of war camp and then prosecute them for the crime of aggression, but I think what we need to challenge is the idea that nobody can be prosecuted except a few leaders. Is it practical to prosecute corporations and their directors? I think absolutely, yes. In some ways, it's easier because, first of all, the corporation can't move around in the same way that people can. People can sort of disappear, they can change their names, but if you are a major corporation, and you're supplying parts knowing that they're going to be used in a war of aggression, you can't just disappear—you're listed on the stock exchange, you have assets, you have a reputation. So I think it's a question of changing one's focus rather than that it is impracticable. It's practically perhaps more difficult because corporations are well funded, almost by definition, and they will be able to pay for very good lawyers to delay prosecutions, to challenge jurisdiction, and so on. But we'll see what happens now with this Swedish case. It's going to run for two years and it will be watched, I think, very carefully, by corporate directors around the world, and whether or not either the corporation has to pay a fine—because they have already had some money frozen by the Swedish prosecutors—or the directors are punished, I think it will give pause for thought to other directors, and I think maybe it's worth reminding that such a prosecution can happen for war crimes, but in the future, it might also be for aiding and abetting the crime of aggression. The rule that says that you can only prosecute the leaders is a rule for prosecuting aggression at the ICC, it's not necessarily a rule, in my view, for prosecuting aggression in national courts. So I think a lot of states have rules that say the crime of aggression can be prosecuted and here's the punishment, and those same states have rules on aiding and assisting an international crime. So what I'm suggesting is that it could give some companies, and their directors more importantly, pause for thought. CJLPA : I think it's about time that corporations are held responsible and used as an example that, just because one is dealing with a corporate body does not mean that there are no individuals behind it who are making these decisions, who are playing that part in these armed conflicts. It's not just these military leaders that are directly involved. In 2018, the ICC gained jurisdiction over cases under the crime of aggression charge, with the important exception that it cannot exercise its jurisdiction over an actor from a non-signatory state. As a result, the international community has turned to the idea of a special tribunal for aggression to hold Russia accountable for its invasion. How optimistic are you regarding this path, and does this focus on a tribunal weaken the role of the ICC as an institution? AC : I don't think it weakens the ICC as an institution. The ICC has plenty to do already, and if one were to give it the extra task of creating a dossier and prosecuting the crime of aggression at this point, it clearly has to diminish how much attention it can give to war crimes. On the other hand, having said that, politically speaking, it does look strange that the ICC can't prosecute a Russian leader for the crime of aggression, even if Ukraine were to be a party to the statute. That seems odd. And it seems, to the media, that the ICC is really selective in that it doesn't go after powerful leaders, it only goes after other people. It's one of the peculiarities of the 2018 entry into force of the aggression amendments, as you say, is that you can't prosecute somebody from a non-state party. And there are a lot of other complications to do with jurisdiction over aggression. And I think it's very unlikely that we will see prosecutions for aggression. It's not just that Russia, China, and the United States got a free pass. It’s that most states are not going to ratify the amendment, which would allow for prosecution. So also British leaders and French leaders are not going to be prosecuted. So, I think one will just have to accept that states are not prepared to give an international tribunal jurisdiction over their leaders for aggression. Yes, you can say it's the fault of the ICC, but it's not really, it's the fault of those states who have steadfastly refused to allow the ICC to do this. So if you want to blame people, you can blame the British government, the American government, the French government, but you can't really blame the ICC as such. Now, is it a good idea to have something in parallel? I would say yes, it will allow the story of the aggression to be told, it will allow for the identification for those who have been most involved in planning and executing it. And my hope, would be that, again, that might give people who are thinking about planning an illegal use of force, pause for thought, because even if it comes 10 years after the invasion, or 20 years, the charge of aggression is going to stick to them for the rest of their lives, whether or not they actually capture somebody and put them in prison. But the process of preparing the prosecution highlights that there is no right to go to war. It's a crime. And that, I think, focuses people's attention. And again, I think, the knock-on effects for those who are a bit more junior, or who are involved in influencing and shaping the policy, and in the commercial world assisting such an aggression, is perhaps where we should be focusing, because those are the people who are going to be, in a way, more vulnerable, because they want to travel and they have assets. It's more likely that those assets could be frozen and taken away from them, and given a choice, ‘Do I assist in this war of aggression or not?’ I'm hoping that some people will decide not to, when having seen that a special tribunal on aggression comes after a range of people and not just the president or prime minister. CJLPA : In recent developments, and in the war, we have been made more aware of the Russian funded Special Forces by the name of the Wagner group. What is their legal status? Are they mercenaries? Or are they, in effect, Russian Armed Forces? What legal framework governs their status? And could Russia have certain responsibilities in relation to these crimes and how we can hold them accountable? AC : Well, it's a fast-moving area. If we go back a while to when Wagner was disconnected from the Russian state more formally, they're often described as mercenaries. The problem with that is, of course, politically, and in the media terms, that they do look like mercenaries, but technically, as a matter of international law, the definition of mercenaries found in Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions says that you can't be a mercenary if you are a national of a party to the conflict, or a resident of territory controlled by a party to the conflict. So members of Wagner who are Russian nationals, or even people of another nationality resident in the Donbass, say, which is controlled by Russia now, can't be a mercenary by definition. If captured, they would have to be given full prisoner of war status, and they couldn't be prosecuted as mercenaries because they wouldn't fit that definition, and anyway, they would have prisoner of war status. So that’s a bit complicated. On the other hand, you might have somebody from Syria working for Wagner, which happens. They would be a mercenary and would not get prisoner of war status. Now, the sort of more complicated part is that another way in which you lose your mercenary status, if I can put it like that, is if you're integrated into the armed forces of the state. So to the extent that Wagner are now integrated into the Armed Forces of Russia, and it seems, according to the media reports, that they will come under the Ministry of Defense, and so on, and be under command and control, then even if they are paid, and they don't look like the armed forces, they would be the armed forces, and they wouldn't be mercenaries, whatever their nationality. So it's super complicated and you almost have to go case by case and day by day, because on one day, they might be integrated and, in the past, they weren't. Now that's the situation in Ukraine. It gets much more complicated when you go to Mali, or one of the countries in Africa where Wagner are operating because there, there's no question of it being an international armed conflict and individual Wagner fighters having prisoner of war status or losing that if they're mercenaries, and there's an African convention on the elimination of mercenarism and a UN Convention on the use of mercenaries , which might create criminal responsibility for some of them. But again, you'd have to go situation by situation, and almost individual by individual as well because there are questions of motivation of the individual that are part of the mercenary definition, whether they're doing it just for money or for some other reason. So it gets very complicated. To answer your second question, the extent to which Russia is responsible, if they become members of the Armed Forces of Russia, then Russia is automatically responsible for them. If they are not members of the Russian Armed Forces, and they are being directed by the Russian government, then under the law of state responsibility, Russia will be responsible for what these individuals do during the operation that is directed by Russia. The law on that is found in the Nicaragua vs. United States judgement of the International Court of Justice and in the law on state responsibility. Again, it can get quite complicated, you have to know which operation we're talking about. But in short, the Russian government would be responsible as a matter of international law for those operations which they have directed, both for the violations of human rights law and for the violations of international humanitarian law. When it comes to the accountability of the individuals working for Wagner, there we forget, sometimes I think, that they can all be held accountable for any war crimes or crimes against humanity, or act of genocide even, if that was the appropriate crime, at the International Criminal Court. The International Criminal Court has jurisdiction over any of these crimes that happen in Ukraine, and obviously, in a lot of the countries in Africa where Wagner are operating. We could yet see individuals from Wagner prosecuted at the ICC, it's only the Russian aggression in Ukraine that can't be prosecuted at the ICC, but the other crimes can be. And to the extent that their crimes are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, going back to my earlier theme, they could be prosecuted anywhere in the world. So the individuals in Wagner are a bit different from the leadership of Russia, say, in that they do want to and need to travel around the world. I would say they're vulnerable to being arrested—those who are wanted for war crimes—to being arrested and prosecuted anywhere, because if they're grave breaches, they'll be crimes of universal jurisdiction, and in addition many states will prosecute crimes committed in internal armed conflict, maybe committed in African countries where Wagner is operating. We have recently had quite a few prosecutions in Switzerland, related to Liberia, where people are being prosecuted for crimes committed in non-international armed conflict under Swiss law and international law. CJLPA : From your point of view, how can justice be served for victims when we can only try these international crimes in the aftermath of the war, when they have already been committed, lives were lost, and most victims have yet to obtain some form of financial redress? Especially when considering the extensive financial resources and the many years it would take to see accountability. In other words, there certainly has to be balance when prosecuting crimes of this gravity, which takes time, it takes a lot of money, but essentially, what does international criminal law and justice mean in international criminal law? AC : I think we have a sort of traditional understanding of international criminal law as coming in the transitional justice phase, or post- Bellum phase. The image that always comes to mind is those pictures of people being prosecuted in the Nuremberg court or the post-Rwanda prosecutions. But in fact, the Ukraine conflict is reminding us that people can be prosecuted in the middle of an armed conflict, and there have been some prosecutions in Ukraine. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a prosecution at the ICC before this conflict is over. I don't think we should assume that prosecutions only come at the end of a conflict when you have a winner and the winner gets to prosecute. I think this conflict is a bit special in that we have a developed system of international criminal law up and running, and we have expectations that there will be prosecutions, so there were prosecutions recently in Ukraine regarding Bucha, war crimes allegations. If I've read it correctly, these were crimes held in absentia, so they didn't actually have the defendants, but this may be a new way of dealing with the truth, of allowing witnesses to have their say, as you point out, before things are forgotten and things have moved on. I think we might be seeing a new type of international criminal law where it's as much about retribution and punishment, as about victims airing their grievances, and a story for the historical record, and identifying perpetrators who, even if they are not immediately captured, are going to find it increasingly difficult to move around the world. It's difficult now to go through borders with facial recognition, and with electronic passport controls, even when you get on the plane, you're being electronically scanned. I think it's going to be a different approach, rather than a show trial where you have people standing up in photos, it might be more about casting the net wider, and not knowing exactly when somebody is going to get caught. I might stress that these war crimes and crimes against humanity that we're talking about are crimes which have no statute of limitations according to international law. You are not supposed to say, well, after 10 years or 20 years, it's impossible to prosecute that. So you might think you've gotten away with it, but you'd also be aware that in 20, 30, 40 years’ time, somebody might recognise you as a person, even if you've changed your name, and that your freedom then might be curtailed. CJLPA : You've written about the limits of human rights protections in times of armed conflict. Has the advent of social media and real time documentation of these abuses increased accountability? And can those tools be used to further increase the reach of human rights protections in terms of conflict, and even in relation to witnesses and the use of such evidence in court? AC : Yes, in my experience, it is increasing accountability, certainly in the sense of people being held to account, even if it's not leading to so many prosecutions, but social media has enabled investigators to know who was where, and when. If they've posted a picture of themselves at a particular site, giving a speech, encouraging people to do certain actions, then that's part of the story. They can't say, ‘I never gave that speech’, or ‘I wasn't at that place on that day’, because it can all be pieced back together. The other real time element in this is not just the photos, the postings, and the videos, but also the satellite imaging, which is a new aspect to human rights investigations. So if you are trying to prove that a village was destroyed on a particular day, and you know that troops from one particular party to the conflict were there at that time, and you can see them moving, then you can show a before and after satellite image that builds up a picture in a way that interviews with witnesses can't quite do so, in terms of the persuasiveness of it. So a lot of the technology, it's not just related to people posting—I think people will become more wary as they realise that they're implicating themselves—but it's also the technology of having an eye in the sky, to use that expression, which will be able to show who moved where and what the results were, and I think that is quite important for accountability. CJLPA : On a final note, what do you think the future of Ukraine would look like, in an ideal world, or how do you think the conflict would progress? Do you think we could see an end to it anytime in the near future? AC : Well, I would hope for an end to it as soon as possible. It's not really for me to design the future of Ukraine, but I suppose I would want it to be under the rule of law, I would want it to be unoccupied, and I would want it to be peaceful. CJLPA : Thank you very much once again for giving us your time this morning and for providing highly valuable insights on the Russia-Ukraine situation. AC : Thank you for such a probing set of questions. This interview was conducted by Shahad Alkamas, who graduated in 2021 from Middlesex University and obtained her LPC the following year at the University of Law. In addition to her Legal Researcher role at CJLPA, Shahad is currently working as an in-house litigation paralegal, with previous experience in various legal fields such as personal injury, immigration, and civil litigation. [1] Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court 2002, Article 28 reads in part: ‘Responsibility of commanders and other superiors: A military commander or person effectively acting as a military commander shall be criminally responsible for crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court committed by forces under his or her effective command and control, or effective authority and control as the case may be, as a result of his or her failure to exercise control properly over such forces where: (i) That military commander or person either knew or, owing to the circumstances at the time, should have known that the forces were committing or about to commit such crimes; and (ii) That military commander or person failed to take all necessary and reasonable measures within his or her power to prevent or repress their commission or to submit the matter to the competent authorities for investigation and prosecution’.

Soomaya Javadi is a Hazara human rights activist who fled Afghanistan with the help of the 30 Birds Foundation. Actively advocating against ethnic or gender-based discrimination, she is part of the '#StopHazaraGenocide' movement. Currently, Soomaya is working as an early childhood educator and studying at the University of Saskatchewan. CJLPA :   Welcome, Soomaya Javadi. I’d like to begin by thanking you for taking the time to come and interview with The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art . You are truly a remarkable and inspiring figure to all women across the world, as despite the pain and suffering you endured with the return of the Taliban, you continue to fight for human rights both for women and the Hazara ethnicity.   I would like to begin by asking you to tell us about your childhood briefly. What was life like before the US pulled out of Afghanistan and the Taliban came to power? And what were your main worries at that point in your life?   Soomaya Javadi : Thank you for inviting me, it’s really an honor to speak to you. So, I was a dentistry student before Afghanistan   fell to   the Taliban. I attended high school in Kabul and then studied dentistry at university. I have spent most of my childhood in the Islamic Republic of Iran and we were Afghan refugees.   The condition of Afghan refugees in Iran or in Pakistan is not good. For example, an Afghan refugee does not have the right to study, nor to own a property, a car, or house in Iran.   I am a Hazara woman. I belong to the Hazara ethnicity, which is one of the most persecuted ethnic groups in the history of Afghanistan. And I am Shia—Shia Muslims are a minority against the Sunni majority of Afghanistan population. Things are more difficult for Hazara women who are considered twice as inferior because of their gender, race, and ethnicity.   When I started university, one of my professors said in the first week: ‘You guys are taking the seats of men. Your ultimate goal in life is just to stay at home and bear children, so why bother?’. He thought that he was giving us advice or something.   I think it’s not easy to be a woman anywhere in the world—with all the discrimination—but it was much harder in Afghanistan. And I think that every day that my peers and I went to school or to work, we were fighting against the patriarchy that existed in Afghanistan and exists now.   CJLPA : Thank you. I can’t even imagine what that must have been like growing up. Following up from this upbringing, after the US withdrew their troops, the Taliban soon regained the power to establish their authoritarian regime. Can you please tell us about the atmosphere in your community when Kabul first fell to the Taliban?   SJ : So, as you know, our President Ashraf Ghani escaped before the Taliban even got to Kabul. He escaped, and that made everyone panic. What is going to happen to us?   I remember that, around two weeks before the fall, one of the Taliban leaders said: ‘If we want, we can get all of Afghanistan in two weeks’. I thought that he was bluffing. But maybe that was the only true thing he said, because two weeks later, they got Kabul. I remember that the day Kabul fell to the Taliban, I went to the university to ask for a kind of certificate or a paper showing that I had studied five and half years here because I was a few months away from graduation. I asked the people in charge to give me some paper so that, if anything ever happens, I can show that in a few months, I would be a dentist. They said that I should go to the Ministry of Education. I went to the Ministry of Education. They said I should go back to my university and ask them. I was told to go here and there but nobody was willing to give me that proof of education.   Around 3pm, I went to the university for the last time and stopped this professor to ask for his signature on a paper saying that I had studied here. He replied: ‘That’s not my business. I don’t care if you have studied here’.   I knew why—because I was Hazara, and I was a woman. He would rather have ignored me than helped me. When I called him earlier, he said: ‘Yes, please come’, because from my voice on the phone, he couldn’t know that I was Hazara. But as soon as he saw my face, he was not willing to help me anymore.   Once at home, at 6pm, I saw the Taliban’s flag on the President’s house—which we call ‘Arg’. I couldn’t sleep that night. And two weeks after that, I was sleeping maybe two hours every 24 hours. I just couldn’t believe what was happening to us.   That night, my fifteen-year-old brother and I packed our books in big bags because we didn’t know what was going to happen—we had around 500 books in our home. We were told that they were searching house by house. The only thing we had were books so we took them out into the backyard, burnt some of them and buried most of them. At 4am, we were done.   I was lying in bed in the dark, thinking I wasn’t dead yet. Beside my empty bookcase, I choked back my tears and thought: ‘Have I ever existed? Has my life ever existed?’.   All the things that I have done, all the books that I have read—I was a dentistry student, a free and independent woman. I had my life, and in a second, in one night, everything was done. I was nothing from now on. Since that day, the Taliban have announced eighty-six commands to limit women’s lives.   CJLPA : It seems like you were very proactive when the Taliban took back power and Kabul fell. You went immediately to get your papers from Dentistry to prove that you are a student. You and your family were quick to bury the books in any sort of evidence to suggest that you were an educated strong woman. Was that a preparation for the worst case scenario? Or did you have a feeling that the situation would get as bad as it did?   SJ : I knew the history, so, yes, I think I knew what was going to happen. The Taliban killed 2,000 to 8,000 Hazaras in Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998. During three days, they entered the city and shot anything that moved. This is the Taliban. I knew how they treated women last time, how they treated other ethnicities other than Pashtuns.   In the first week, I saw photos of Hazara male journalists who were tortured. They published photos of their bodies full of bruises and blood everywhere. My father was a journalist and I feared for his life and for every member of my family. You know, when humans decide to do bad, to be evil, there’s no limit for that. And the Taliban now are breaking a new misogyny record. CJLPA : Thank you very much for sharing this horrific and terrifying situation happening. I would also like to ask you what was the reaction of the men in your community when they first learned that the Taliban had come to power?   SJ : I’ve been asked this question a lot. The Taliban may be the most misogynist government in the world today, but they don’t just act against women. They are a group of people who represent only one gender, one ethnicity, and one religion.   I will give you an example of what happens to men in my community: Raja is a Hazara Shia man who has been married for the last 15 years to a Sunni Pashtun woman.   They were arrested and tortured when the Taliban came. Their children could hear their parents’ voices as they were being tortured in the other room. Raja explained that they put a pipe in his mouth, hit him, kicked him, and used electric shocks on him. When he asked what his crime was, the Taliban told him it was because he was Hazara and married to a Pashtun woman, so he should suffer the worst. They then tortured him, killed his brother, and forced him to leave his religion as Shia and to become a Sunni. Only then they released him.   This is the way they treat all people, not just women—it’s much more complicated than that. So men and women were scared when the Taliban came because they all knew they were going to treat people would be terribly.   CJLPA : Was there defiance in Afghanistan when the Taliban first came to power? Did people try to do anything or were they just hiding?   SJ : So the first thing that happened was then the President escaped, so people panicked and went to the airport. You may have seen photos and videos on social networks of people clinging to planes. But since then, women have been protesting in the streets asking for their rights back. The Taliban hit and arrest them, but they don’t stop. Alia Azizi—a Hazara woman—was the head of the prison in the city of Herat before the Taliban arrived. One of the Taliban commanders told her to come and see him or she would be arrested. She goes there but she never came back.   She has a husband and children. A year later, photos of her appeared on social media and certain news platforms, showing that she had been forced to marry a Taliban commander. It’s a very familiar story, like Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale—being forced to marry when you have your own children, your own husband. This is how women are treated. But, even beside those kinds of treatments, women were protesting on the streets with their bare hands and no guns, just demanding the Taliban to give them their rights back.   When they were arrested, I remember in the spring of 2022, I saw this video of women being forced to confess and say they were being hired by the foreign countries to go on the street and protest. It was obvious they were forced to confess. There were these news reports and photos published on various news platforms showing that women that went to protest, their dead bodies were found in the trash. The Taliban don’t even bury when they kill—they put the bodies in the trash so that people can see them and be afraid. They just want that fear to grow among people. But despite those kinds of treatments, women are still going on the street and are still demanding their rights from the Taliban. But nobody hears them. They have no other support.   CJLPA : Those stories are completely awful and it’s hard to believe that it’s all happening in the 21st century. Could you please tell us what are the worst crimes occurring in Afghanistan to date that go unaddressed and unaccounted for by the international community?   SJ : The women’s situation in Afghanistan is something that people talk about, and people address, but they don’t take action about it. It’s as if the Taliban had taken women hostage and were threatening to the world to accept the Taliban’s power, otherwise they will harm women. It should be the other way around. It shouldn’t be the Taliban using women’s situation as a leverage on the international community. That’s one of the problems that have been raised but people don’t react or take action against it.   Another problem is that, after the Taliban came, the Kuchis—the Pashtun nomads—another ethnicity in Afghanistan—they force people to leave their ancestral lands and they are backed by the Taliban and they go to to different cities in different provinces in Afghanistan especially, they force Hazara people to leave their lands, or they would be killed.   When Hazara people go to the authorities—which are the Taliban—to say that this is their land, the Taliban will not listen to them and they’ll back the Pashtun nomads becuase the Talibans are also mostly Pashtun.   The Hazara people are forced to leave their lands while they have nowhere to go and no money because they can’t even take anything with them—their animals, or their possessions. Besides that, they would come and ask people for money. They would say: ‘Someone’s brother was killed in that village 30 years ago so you and the whole village have to pay for it’. And there is no investigation on that. The Taliban just back those people. That’s the way other ethnicities are being treated in Afghanistan.   But where were they in the last 20 years? Why now? Because the Taliban now have the power, the Pashtuns also have the power. That’s something that is not addressed properly. The genocide against Hazara people that is going on in Afghanistan is not addressed properly. In 2020, there was a terrorist attack on a maternity hospital in Dasht-e-Barchi, Western Kabul —a Hazara resided area. The terrorists attacked pregnant women who were hours or minutes away from labor. They killed two newborns. In 2021, there was a terrorist attack on the Sayed ul-Shuhada school—a girls’ school. Around 80 little girls were killed, and many were injured and disabled forever. In 2022, the same thing happened at a boys’ school—Abdul Rahim Shaheed.   In my neighbourhood in Kabul, in Dasht-e-Barchi, there are numerous terrorist attacks and killings every month, and the Taliban and the terrorists can do anything they want with impunity. They kill mothers, children, and newborns. This is genocide and no one is holding them accountable. CJLPA : You mentioned that many people had to leave their houses. The 30 Birds Foundation helped you and your family escape Afghanistan. Before you had to leave Afghanistan, did you bring anything with you?   SJ : When leaving our home, we were so afraid so we didn’t take too many things. We just had one suitcase for all of us—we were a family of five at that time. I think we just got a pair of clothes for every one of us, toothbrushes, some things that are necessary. And the only thing that I took that was very dear to me was my diary, and some documents to prove that I was educated. I didn’t take any of my books or anything. We couldn’t get many things or it would have been too heavy for us. We wanted to be lighter to move faster.   We went to Mazar-i-Sharif, which is a seven to ten hour journey, where we were told that an airplane would take off. We stayed in Mazar-i-Sharif for around two weeks but that airplane never took off because there was some change in the Taliban’s leadership at that time. The 30 Birds Foundation told us to go back to Kabul as there was no way we could fly from Mazar-i-Sharif. We were so hopeless. We were trying to find a way to get out, but it was impossible. We headed back to Kabul, but on the way, our bus broke down because of bad luck. We were in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by mountains. There was no other car or bus that could take us. We had to walk through those mountains for several hours. We could see the Taliban’s vehicles with their guns. I was fearing for my life and my family’s lives.   I still have the videos and photos of those hours. My brother was carrying the big suitcase. It was summer, it was hot. I had this black hijab and this was humiliating because I didn’t believe in that hijab, I was just scared and I had to have that. It was forced on me by the Taliban. I remember that my dad told me: ‘Walk like if they’re not here, don’t look at them, just walk’. We managed to find another car and went to the next city. What was supposed to be a seven-to-ten-hour journey to Kabul took us a day. The next morning, we had to be at the border. We went there at night to make sure we weren’t late. We had nothing. Some of us slept on the dirty ground, others slept in the car.   I was so hopeless, so dreamless, and I wasn’t even sure we could get somewhere. I thought that my mind was very empty. I was just losing everything, leaving everything—my home, the places that I loved, the people that I loved, my friends, the objects that I liked, books, diaries, everything.   And it’s funny because after a month—when we finally came to Canada—the first thing the officer told us when we landed and came out of the airplane wasn’t ‘Hello’. He said: ‘Happy birthday’, like if we were born again. I felt dead the night I was sleeping on the ground at the border. And when the officer said ‘Happy birthday’, it was another life.   CJLPA: Thank you Soomaya for sharing that experience. That’s just absurd trauma for you and it’s just outrageous that you and so many individuals in Afghanistan had to suffer such gruesome atrocities in so many different forms. So I appreciate you going into detail to spread the awareness because these are things that people do not know about that’s happening. So it’s really important that we address this.   I want to shift a little bit to discuss some of the points you mentioned earlier about talking about accountability and the international community needing to know what’s happening and needing to respond to the Taliban. And, not negotiating with terrorists, because as you said, they are using women as leverage, but it should be the other way around. The first question I want to ask you specifically is in respect to the United States. With all the political discussions around it, what were your thoughts when the US first pulled out?   SJ : I felt like a character in a video game who thought they had a life and a goal, but then, I was just played by others. When Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, there was nothing I could do to change anything. I felt betrayed. I thought that I had a life, but no, I was not born to live. On 23 August, I wrote in my diary: ‘I wish I had never heard that all humans are equal. I am not equal. And there is no way I can be equal. I wish that I had never been taught that I am a human, because I’m not when I don’t have the rights. I wish that I wasn’t lied to when I started to study, when I learned how to read, when I learned how to write, when I learned how to dream’.   In Geneva, you were in Geneva, I mentioned this little girl I know who is in Afghanistan and who is one of the most remarkable young ladies I have ever seen in my life. The way she sings, the way she talks, I remember her and I think she has no choice about what she wants to do with her life. It’s the Taliban who determine who or what she will be. Do you trust the Taliban enough to leave your own daughter to them? Do you trust the Taliban enough to leave countless lives to them? That was how I was feeling.   CJLPA : Thank you for sharing that. It is such a heartbreaking situation and as we speak, that is just ongoing and continuous. This is why it’s so important that we continue the dialogue because at the end of the day, politicians need to know what’s happening, individuals need to know what’s happening to pressure their governments to respond. On that note, I know this is a question for politicians to address, but from your perspective, what kind of things would you like to see actioned from the international community that you think could scare the Taliban or pressure them to slowly move away from these human rights abuses that they’re committing out of fear?   SJ : The first thing that I want to say is that we are not a project. We are people, and this is our lives. It’s not some kind of project that you work on for some time and then you stop. We are not projects, we are people. I’ve been seeing some efforts to engage with the Taliban.   I am asking the international community: Do not engage with the Taliban! Do not engage with the Taliban! Do not engage with the Taliban! I ask you and I urge you: please, do not engage with the Taliban! What Taliban? The Taliban who kill women? the Taliban who kill children? the Taliban who confiscate people’s land and who represent only one gender, one religion and one ethnicity, while ignoring the others and everything else? The Taliban who say that women are not allowed to go out of their homes without a male chaperone? What do you have in common with the Taliban to engage with them? I ask every influential woman, influential politician who is a woman: the Taliban are breaking a new record of misogyny every day, and you should stop them. It’s not only about Afghan women, it’s about women.   Yes, there is a gender apartheid in Afghanistan. But if you look closely, it’s more than that—a woman in Afghanistan is equal to nothing. When you don’t even have the right to go out of your home, you’re treated like you are nothing. And that’s about women, not just about Afghanistan.   I come from a family who has been suffering from genocide, deprivation, and exile for generations. My great grandfather’s family was killed by Abdullah’s army when he was around 12 years old. He was forced to leave his land and he went to northern Afghanistan to start his own family. And then my grandfather and my uncle were killed by the Soviets, and when I say Soviets I mean the Afghan people who became communists.   My father was forced to leave his homeland when he was 15 years old. He lost his father when he was two, his mother when he was eight, his brother when he was six. Despite this, we stayed in Afghanistan for a long time because my parents wanted to see their children raised in this country and have freedom and equality. I, as a woman, was fighting for equality. Every day I went to school, every day I went to work, I was saying: ‘No matter how hard it is, I am here. I am a Hazara Shia woman who is equal to you’.   The international community must hold the Taliban accountable for all the crimes, atrocities, and killings they have committed. They must be held accountable. I was asked why the Taliban are so scared of women and I answered it then. But now, I think the Taliban are not afraid of anyone . They do what they want because they have total impunity for the way they treat people.   So my plea to the international community is to hold the Taliban accountable for what they are doing, especially for the way they treat women, and for the Hazara genocide. We want the Taliban to be accountable for what they are doing to Hazara people.   CJLPA : That’s a brilliant response and I think that needs to be spread in that discussion because at the end of the day if the dialogue keeps continuing, you’re just speaking to terrorists. They’re not going to respond. They’re not afraid of us. They’re just going to take advantage of the fact that we’re trying to make peaceful discussions and they’re going to continue with their human rights abuses. So I think the way you just framed that so perfectly really hones in on that.   Following up on that, do you think that cutting off the dialogue with the Taliban and not engaging with them could become dangerous for all the Afghan people, now that there’s no oversight of what’s going on? Or do you think that if we cut off the dialogue with the Taliban, they will feel pressured to minimise the abuses that are occurring and succumb more to international standards?   SJ :   I know that the Taliban are using international humanitarian aids to support themselves, their soldiers, and allies. The international humanitarian aid going to Afghanistan is not helping people who are in need. It is supporting the Taliban and their allies.   If you engage with the Taliban, if you approve of them, they will not change, they will not remove all the rules they have put in place to limit women’s lives.   I think that the international community must stop helping the Taliban with this aid and assistance, and that it must put bans on the Taliban. That’s the way you engage with a bully. You shouldn’t invite them and talk to them. You shouldn’t take them on private jets to talk to them. They are terrorists. The only way that they will understand what you’re saying is to put pressure on them, to have diplomacy with them, to put bans on them, and to use leverage on them. They want the international community to approve of them, so they have to try for it. It’s just the international community talking about engaging with the Taliban, but the Taliban are not doing anything. They are just continuing with all the atrocities. That’s what makes me angry.   CJLPA : Thank you. After everything you’ve endured, you still stand here today as a strong Hazara and Shia woman. How do you overcome this loss and empower yourself as a woman to continue fighting for this battle?   SJ : The other day, I was biking—I live in Saskatoon, Canada—and I remembered that when I was 16 years old, or 15 years old, I thought I didn’t want a job. I didn’t believe in it anymore. But I also remembered that one of my dreams was to bike, but without a scarf on my head.   In September 2022, there was a terrorist attack at the Kaaj educational centre in Dasht-e-Barchi, Western Kabul—the neighbourhood where I used to reside. In that attack, many Hazara teenagers were killed. One of them was Marzia, a teenage girl whose diary and things she was writing were vastly shared on social media. On one page, she mentioned her dreams, which included riding a bicycle and listening to music, visiting the Eiffel Tower, eating pizza in an Italian restaurant, meeting the Turkish writer Elif Shafak. So I told myself: Don’t ever dare to take this moment for granted. You are biking without a scarf, and you have freedom. So it’s on you to fight for people’s freedom’. I know what is happening to them, I was in their situation. I didn’t want that for myself, and I don’t want that for any other woman, for anyone. I think that I need to tell their stories, because if I don’t, who would?   CJLPA :   I think that’s exactly the point: if you don’t, who will? It’s unjust that that burden is put on you, but you have been voicing the voices of so many Afghan women and the Hazara and spreading awareness about what’s ongoing. Further to all the work you’ve been doing, how do you think we, as a society, can help empower women, specifically in Afghanistan, but also all around the world where misogyny is taking place?   SJ :   I think the world needs more compassion. As I said before, we should start seeing people as people, not as projects. When Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, I thought that I was not born to live as a human being. I was born to be on the casualty list on some kind of news. When you see in the news that a terrorist attack has caused around a hundred victims, that hundred could be 101, so that one person was even ignored in the news.   So I think the world needs more compassion. We should listen to the stories and, whatever our position, we should try to stop it.   I ask everyone, regardless of their position, to do whatever they can to prevent the world from engaging with the Taliban. Maybe I’m not expert enough to know what the right way is, but I know that engaging with the Taliban doesn’t help. It will just make them more powerful. And when they have enough power, they will do what they did 20 years ago on 11 September.   CJLPA : On a final note, what is the lasting message you want readers and viewers to think about for the current situation in Afghanistan?   SJ : I want you to know that people in Afghanistan, women, and men, are people. There are many people who are fighting against the Taliban. They could be women who protest on the streets every day, they could be girls who are still studying at home, who are being tutored by their family members. There are even underground schools in Afghanistan, and after what happened to the Sayed ul-Shuhada school, people were still sending their daughters to school because people in Afghanistan—especially Hazara people—believe in education and want it for their daughters and sons.   So I appeal to you to stand with the people who want freedom instead of standing with the Taliban or standing impartial.   CJLPA : Thank you Soomaya for your time today and for answering these very personal, difficult, and painful questions. We are truly inspired by your heroic work and for standing by your people as you continue to fight for human rights and democracy in Afghanistan. And by exposing these outrageous and shocking international crimes, we will continue to spread your story and this message in our upcoming publication. Thank you.   SJ : Thank you so much. This interview was conducted by Nadia Jahnecke and Angelina Spilnyk. Nadia is Legal Editor and Founder of Human Rights Volume of CJLPA 3. In addition to her role at CJLPA, Nadia is currently working as a Trainee Lawyer and will qualify as a lawyer in England and Wales in March 2024. Angelina is a graduate of the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine, in 2022 with a major in International Public Law. Alongside her position as a Legal Researcher at CJLPA, she is pursuing a Master's in Maritime Law at the University of Southampton.

Riad al-Turk was a political opposition leader, lawyer, and human rights activist from Homs, Syria. By many Syrians he is seen as a polarizing figure; often regarded as ‘The Old Man of the Syrian Opposition’. His 50-year long battle against the Syrian regime led to his imprisonment for 18 years; much of it spent in solitary confinement. He was placed in a cell the size of a small elevator, where he was subjected to various forms of physiological abuse. This interview was conducted on 12 August 2023; prior to the recent demonstrations in Sweida, Syria . On 1 January 2024, Riad sadly passed away. It is a true privilege for CJLPA to have conducted one of the final interviews with a man who remains for many Syrians a symbol of resistance, hope, and courage.   CJLPA : Good afternoon, Mr. Riad al-Turk. It is an honor to have the opportunity to interview you for The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art.  You are an inspiring figure in your work defending the human rights of all Syrians around the world for the last few decades. Much of your life has been spent fighting the Syrian regime; having never backed down after all the obstacles you have faced. You have previously stated that your career as a lawyer was a secondary practice relative to your political career. Before delving into the political aspects of the Syrian conflict we would like to have some insight on the Syrian legal and justice system. Can you tell us a bit more about the Syrian justice system at the time you were a practicing lawyer?   Riad al-Turk : It is difficult to talk about a justice system in Syria. We can say that the concept of justice is absent in Syria, but that’s not what’s important. What is important is that Syrian society constantly aspires towards freedom; freedom from tyranny and from external pressures and interference, and most importantly hope is always there.   In my opinion, talking about laws in Syria is not the correct approach. In Syria there are no laws that prevail, are respected, or achieve equality and justice among citizens. This is a fantasy. You are faced with a tyrannical ruling family that does not need or adhere to any laws and does not wait to derive its legitimacy from its own people, but rather from foreign institutions. A good example comes following the death of the then dictator, Hafez Al Assad. People were looking forward to getting rid of a dictator, and later found themselves facing the process of passing power to his son, Bashar Al Assad, a person who was neither legally nor politically qualified. This was done under the auspices of US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who came to Damascus to congratulate Assad Jr. on the smooth transfer of power, granting him international legitimacy.   CJLPA :   What was the trial process like ? Are there any codified laws victims can point to for protection but which are simply not enforced in court, or do such laws not exist in the first place?   RT : Answering this question requires reconsidering the prevailing laws at the time, which did not provide guarantees for the protection of the accused, especially when the cases raised were cases against the regime. In other words, cases that were of a political nature, or involved in a political position that included direct criticism of the regime. Their old and well-known style is that there were those who sponsored the issue of talking about justice and law, where a certain character holds the position of a public prosecutor who charges the accused, and he is tried as guilty. Justice—in reality—is not available even to the judge. This is an important issue to address. If the independent judiciary were in charge of the trial process, it would be possible to talk about justice. We do not hope for or demand justice from such a regime. It’s an opponent. This is how I look at it.   CJLPA : You began your political career in 1944 by affiliating yourself with the Syrian Communist Party (Political Bureau)—which, interestingly, was opposed to the Soviet Union. Moreover, you were the Prime Secretary of the party from 1974. You have therefore experienced the political system in Syria prior and after the coup in 1963 and the Assad coup in November 1970. Since the Assad family has taken over Syria, the country has been running under conditions of a ‘state of emergency’. Can you please touch on how the coup changed the political environment for opposing parties to the Baath Party? RT : Previously, parties had an activity in the political arena. It is possible to talk about the existence of even partial exercise of some freedoms. The real question is: to what extent was this practice influential, and were there forces behind it that ensured its continuity?   In 1949, Hosni al-Zaim carried out a military coup and seized power. Then came many successive military coups. This paved the way for the arrival of Hafez al-Assad as a military figure holding power through the army, which al-Assad turned into an army of minorities. Then Hafez Al Assad began to suppress freedoms, silence people, arrest his opponents, and throw them into prisons, often without trials. In any case, this is a long period of time. There have been many developments. I prefer to leave this task to historians. This would be safer, if we wanted to take a critical look at the development of political life in Syria.   CJLPA : In 1980, you were arrested by the regime and held in political prisons for more than 20 years. You were put in solitary confinement for almost 18 years. Despite the various efforts used by the regime to silence you, they remained unsuccessful. We would like to begin by asking you about the environment of the cell you were placed in. To the best of your ability, how would you describe the prisons in Syria? RT : Talking about the conditions of my imprisonment is something that has been mentioned previously on more than one occasion. I was imprisoned for almost eighteen years without trial. I was placed in a solitary underground cell with no windows. We can say that it was about my height, it was the size of a small elevator.   I was completely isolated from the outside world. Books and newspapers were prohibited. I was only allowed to go to the toilet three times a day, during which I used the opportunity to search in the waste for the other prisoners’ scraps of paper and newspapers, perhaps finding the remains of a thrown away newspaper, carrying with it some news, or a valuable opportunity to read.   I was also isolated from other prisoners; not being allowed to mix with them. Visits were prohibited, so I had no news about my wife and two daughters. The first visit I was allowed was eleven years into my sentence. The total number of visits I received during my long imprisonment was three visits. I will not talk about physical torture as I did not go through all its types. As for psychological torture, it was about making me absent, abandoned, and forgotten, without any sense of responsibility on their part. After I fell seriously ill, my prison conditions were improved by placing a mattress on the cell floor and allowing some books to be read.   CJLPA : There are various crimes and torture mechanisms that are used in Syrian prisons, most famously, Sednaya Prison; nicknamed ‘The Human Slaughterhouse’. Having experienced almost two decades in prison, what are some of the torture and interrogation methods that are used by officers within in Syrian regime? RT : The most important description that a Syrian citizen can use to describe the Syrian prisons that passed through during the era of Assad family is as human slaughterhouses that subjected citizens to the ugliest types of systematic torture and humiliation. In these prisons, hundreds of thousands of victims were hidden and tortured. Time may make it difficult to reach the truth about their fate, but our duty is to continue making calls and exerting pressure on the regime to reveal the fate of those forcibly disappeared in its prisons, and to work to prosecute those responsible for these crimes against humanity.   CJLPA : When we speak about these human rights violations such as torture, do the current legal frameworks in place in Syria permit the government to conduct these horrific international crimes or is it a matter of these international crimes occurring behind closed doors? RT : Laws are usually enacted in order to protect the citizen and guarantee his rights and dignity in his country. As previously mentioned, talking about laws that are respected and implemented in Syria is a fantasy. There is no law that legislates the ruler and his agents to carry out these brutal crimes against his citizens. This is a criminal regime that must be tried, its crimes exposed, and held accountable, no matter how long it takes.   CJLPA : Most people that are subjected to the punishment you faced gave up and conformed to the regime’s wishes. How did you manage to maintain your mental health throughout those years and what advice would you give to anyone who has been through what you have been through?   RT : The answer to this question is thorny. In the face of the difficulties that confront us, we need a vision for life. That vision makes us people of principles. These principles determine our behavior and choices in life. They formulate our vision of the changes happening around us. From my side, and from my personal experience, the important aspect is to have an opinion. This opinion means that you are the owner of a cause and have the principled and moral position that gives a person strength.   This regime is rejected and I cannot reconcile or respond to it. I cannot give in to what it asks for under any circumstances. Withstanding in the face of such pressures is possible and impossible. This may be related to the severity of these pressures. Talking about what is possible and what is not is left to time. Time decides. I resisted time by keeping my mind occupied by drawing with some pebbles, and by reading newspaper clippings over and over again. As for the body, it was exhausted. Perhaps some of the exercises I was doing helped it withstand the harsh conditions of my time in prison.   CJLPA : One of the well-known atrocities that happened under Hafez Al Assad’s watch was the 1982 Hama massacre. The military force commanded by Rifaat Al Assad entered the city of Hama and conducted a series of bombings on buildings with civilian inhabitants. The government’s claimed justification for their ‘military operations’ was the need to eliminate the Muslim Brotherhood, disregarding any of the civilian casualties it took to get to that goal. This massacre could be seen as the beginning of a playbook that the Syrian government uses: blaming the bombing of opposition forces on the basis of them attacking terrorist strongholds. This strategy was also used by Bashar Al Assad in the 2011 uprisings. Can you please touch on the power of state propaganda in Syria and how they have taken advantage of religious extremism to paint themselves as the ‘good guys’ or the ‘best option in Syria’? RT : This is an illusion. They are unable to succeed in justifying their crimes against humanity. They bear responsibility for thousands of victims. Therefore, talking about the fate of these victims, seeking justice to prevail, and demanding that the fate of the disappeared be revealed is a humanitarian and legal issue that has no statute of limitations.   Searching for justifications for this regime is unacceptable, and it is not permissible to give legitimacy to the killers. The regime established itself as an authority. However, it is a condemned authority and their responsibility to these crimes remains. The prosecution of their crimes will continue until justice is achieved for them and their families.   CJLPA : Rifaat Al Assad, leader of the military force that committed the 1982 Hama massacre, was charged and convicted in France for ill-gotten gains. Additionally, there was a criminal investigation in Switzerland into his war crimes. Nonetheless, he still managed to escape back to Syria. Despite his dispute with Rifaat Al Assad, Bashar Al Assad opened the doors for his return to Syria without punishment. How do you feel about Bashar’s behavior in regard to his uncle?   RT : Rifaat Al Assad is convicted for his crimes, and is being prosecuted humanely and legally. As for Bashar, like the proverb says they are birds of a feather. I don’t think there is a big difference between the two. They are part of this family, and they are legally responsible for the massacres committed against the Syrian people.   CJLPA : Despite the death of Hafez Al Assad and his companions, why do you think it is important to share and remind young Syrians of the various crimes he committed?   RT : We must not stop raising the issue of the regime’s crimes against humanity, demanding its trial, justice, and condemnation of all those who support it and assist it in its survival, whether states or individuals.   CJLPA : The Syrian regime continuously used chemical weapons despite the various threats and sanctions from the international community. Now we see many Arab nations turning a blind eye to these atrocities by normalizing relations with the Syrian government. It seems that the current regime is not going to be leaving power any time soon. How do you feel about Syria’s return to the Arab League? RT: This trend to whitewash Bashar and re-legitimize this criminal regime is rejected and condemned by all standards. We must resist it by all means. International relations are governed by interests and variables. Our duty is always to continue reminding that major crimes have occurred and are occurring in Syria, for which the responsibility lies with the Assad family.   CJLPA : Why do you think the 2011 revolution failed to unify? RT : The moral impact of the Syrian revolution should not be underestimated. It may not have achieved all of its goals, but its impact remains and continues. What we see these days in parts of Syria is evidence of that. This is heartwarming. As for the opposition, it was one of the parties to the revolution. Perhaps circumstances and changes made it fail to achieve its goals in confronting tyranny.   CJLPA : The fight for freedom is not a new concept in the history of Syria. Figures like yourself have been fighting to get rid of the Assad family for around 60 years. Currently, there are millions of Syrians displaced worldwide. Do you believe that the next generation is capable of change, despite the presence of a large portion of the Syrian people outside Syria? RT :  I believe that our people, despite the massive displacement and migration, and despite the harsh living conditions of hunger, poverty, and disease, will not remain silent over injustice. It will rise from its ashes to rebuild itself again and fulfill the hopes and aspirations of Syrians towards freedom and decent living. We are required to change the old ways, to have a serious confrontation with ourselves, and to have a vision and a voice that unites Syrians. Reviewing, hearing the opinion of others, and researching the horizon of the past that we have experienced is necessary, and thus perhaps we can draw lessons so that the next youth who will have a great task will benefit from this experience. Syria will remain ours, and we need to have a voice that unites Syrians from north to south, and from east to west. This interview was conducted by Nour Kachi, Legal Researcher of Human Rights Volume of CJLPA 3. In addition to his role at CJLPA, Nour is currently working on qualifying as a lawyer in the US and UK.

How and why the international community failed Syria One of the most unforgiving aspects of the Syrian Conflict is the fact that its tragic episodes have unfolded in full light of day . No self-respecting journalist  or policymaker  can claim ignorance  of their true nature. We knew of various development s that included arrests and bombings, instances of ethnic cleansing and cold-blooded massacres almost as they happened. Everything was reported in real time  and documented in sound and picture. Even the horrible industrial-scale killings that took place in security centres and  prisons , turned into veritable liquidation camps, did not escape this documentary trend due  to myriad leaks and the brave whistle-blowers behind them.   D espite all this, there were still those who chose not to see .   T hose who refused to believe what they were seeing, those whose interests made them disregard the truth and invest in misinformation, and those whose worldview and political calculations made them reluctant  to act decisively to put an end to the unfolding tragedy. The result was another failure in living up to the ‘Never Again’ promis es,  regarding instances of genocide , and that failure has had implications for global security everywhere. It has upended political processes in countries far beyond the Middle East and has served to undermine the ‘Liberal Global Order’ on various levels. Without understanding the ‘How ’   and ‘Why’ of these assertions, we risk repeating our mistakes in relation to other conflicts. No less importantly, we risk failing in Syria again , where the struggle is far from over  and  far from being as contained as it appears .   In this short essay, I will briefly relate my impressions on the myth of containment of certain conflicts in an age of hyper-connectivity , on how such conflicts play out on the global stage, and on domestic scenes in various countries in an age of increasing political polarisation . I will also deal with the ‘usefulness’ of these conflicts to certain actors on the one hand, and the danger they pose to the interest of others on the other hand. Finally, I will deal with the global implications of neglecting the issue of accountability in regard to war criminals now turned drug kingpins as well.   Let’s start with the basics   The conflict in Syria did not start out as an armed insurgency, but as a largely peaceful protest movement against official corruption and authoritarian methods. It only turned into a violent insurrection following months of violent crackdown by the ruling regime of Bashar a l - Assad. This is how the BBC describes  this development:   In March 2011, pro-democracy demonstrations erupted in the southern city of Deraa, inspired by uprisings in neighbouring countries against repressive rulers. When the Syrian government used deadly force to crush the dissent, protests demanding the president’s resignation erupted nationwide. The unrest spread and the crackdown intensified. Opposition supporters took up arms, first to defend themselves and later to rid their areas of security forces. Mr Assad vowed to crush what he called ‘foreign-backed terrorism.[1]   The decision to take up arms was slow in the making on part of the protesters. Their preference in the face of the Assad regime’s violence and its deployment of tanks and artillery against unarmed civilians was to call on the international community to impose a no-fly zone over the country and to target the regime’s military infrastructure thus crippling its capacity to wage war against them. Such a step, they hoped, would force the regime into negotiating with opposition groups paving the way for political transition. As usual, in these critical moments, the international community waited for the occupants of the White House to lead the way, but the Obama Administration at the time had other concerns and priorities.   Despite his promise to the American people to end America’s involvement in conflicts abroad, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Barack Obama had already found himself authorising  the US military to lead NATO’s operations against the Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi. The intensive operations lasted throughout most of 2011, that is, at the same time Syrians were demanding international intervention. As such, despite President Obama’s call  on Assad to ‘get out of the way ’,  the prospect of any direct US military move at that stage was categorically shut down.[2]   As violence escalated, protesters, now joined by thousands of defectors from Assad’s armies, were forced to take up arms. Meanwhile, regional powers, led by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, began pouring money to support various rebel militias while pressing their American ally to get more involved. In mid-2012, President Obama sent  military advisors and equipment to Turkey and Jordan to increase the fighting efficiency of moderate rebels operating in the southern parts of the country in the hope of forcing Assad to the negotiation table.[3]  For all the conspiracy theories that proliferated before and since, that was the extent  of America’s military involvement in supporting Syria’s rebels. The end goal for the Obama Administration has always been a negotiated transition rather than the kind of regime change that took place in Libya, not to mention Iraq. ‘There is no military solution ’ to the Syrian Conflict became  the of ten- repeated mantra in official briefings at the time.[4]  T hese tactics only served to push Assad into further reliance on Iran, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and various Shiite militias funded and trained by Iran and made up mostly of Iraqi mercenaries and Afghan refugees.   In September 2012, President Obama drew his (in)famous red line on the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime, asserting  that:   We cannot have a situation where chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people. We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilised. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.[5]     Despite this assertion, a major chemical weapons attack against a rebel stronghold near Damascus in August 2013 failed to change President Obama’s equation. As his remarks made clear, Obama seems to have been more concerned about the potential of having these weapons fall into the ‘wrong ’ hands, meaning the Jihadi elements which have begun leaving their mark on the scene by that time, rather than having them deployed against rebel forces by the Assad regime. More importantly, Obama’s real calculus remained centred  on avoiding entanglement in a conflict that by 2013 had clearly devolved into a proxy war pitting many regional players as well as different segments of the population against each other.   W hat seemed like a brave and wise decision at the time, at least to some observers, created a vacuum on the ground that was soon filled by the Islamic State, a terrorist group launched in Iraq, that President Obama had once dismissed  by comparing it to a junior varsity basketball team.[6]  By 2016, American jets were finally flying over the Syrian skies, but rather than bombing locations manned by Assad loyalists and militias, the real cause of Syria’s suffering, they were targeting communities that have been invaded by the Islamic State. Their liberation would take years and would exert a tremendous toll on the civilian population. At the same time, Russian jets were busy pounding rebel positions in Aleppo in an intervention facilitated by Iran. Consequently, the survival of the Assad regime over the long haul would soon be assured. The rebels, who at one point controlled most of the country, will soon be forced to occupy small pockets in the Idlib province along the borders with Turkey.   For its part, the US will find new allies among the Kurdish population in the northeast and its operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria will drag on until early 2019. A small number of US troops are still operating in the region to fight against remaining pockets of IS terrorists , T he US often finds itself having to mediate continually between Kurdish militias and Arab tribal fighters, while trying to alleviate Turkish fears regarding Kurdish separatist tendencies.   J ust when everybody thought that the recent drive by Arab states to normalise  relations with Assad has put an exclamation point on his ‘victory ’,  major protests erupted in the southern parts of the country; in areas deemed to be under regime control; with the protesters demanding nothing less than the ouster of their ‘Dear Leader’, and adopting the same slogan that reverberated through the country back in 2011: ‘the people want to topple the regime ’.     A lot has changed  and n othing has changed. The leaders of the United States and other democratic powers that have called for the departure of Assad and for a democratic transition in Syria are now facing the same dilemma: where do their values and interests intersect in Syria? Which is costlier in terms of human lives, credibility, and strategic interests: intervention or non-intervention? Or, as things almost always play out eventually: a carefully considered and planned intervention, or a reactive haphazard one?   The Myth of Containment   Nothing shatters the myth of the containability  of civil conflicts in our hyper-connected world like the Syrian Conflict does, at least if people are willing to see. With Germany now housing close to a million Syrian refugees, and far right political parties making major headway in provinces and countries all over Europe , n ot to mention increasing racial tensions in all countries bordering Syria between natives and refugees .   W ith regional powers using the conflict as an opportunity to advance their parochial interests and settle scores with Jihadi elements . With t errorist cells filling the void left by ill-equipped and abandoned moderate rebels, even after the collapse of the Islamic State Caliphate .   W ith the Assad regime transforming the country into the world’s newest narco-state and flooding Syria’s neighbours  with the drugs Captagon and Ecstasy . W ith the possibility that the Russian President Vladmir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine in 2014 was heavily influenced  by the decision of his American counterpart to back down  from enforcing his red line on the use of chemical weapons in 2013.[7]  While  his decision to invade Ukraine again in 2022 seems linked to his perceived successes in Syria since the Russian intervention there began  in 2015 . W ith all these developments taking place around us as consequences of the Syrian Civil War, the concept of ‘containable conflicts’ should finally be put to rest. Our modern world has become too connected, hyper-connected in fact, to allow for intractable civil conflicts to be contained and not have far reaching ramifications far beyond their borders.   Though the Assad regime seems to have adopted a wait-and-see attitude vis - à - vis the protests in the Suwaida Governorate in the southern parts of the country . W hile it keeps focusing its attention on the more violent front in the Idlib Governorate in the northwest, this policy could change at any given moment. For this reason, the United States and its regional allies, especially Jordan and Saudi Arabia, need to consider the importance of early decisive intervention to help secure these strategic areas. A conflict in the Syrian south, which will likely involve Russian airstrikes on critical infrastructure there, ie schools and hospitals, and which will surely rely on pro-Iranian militias in the field , would prove extremely violent, and could lead to a new wave of refugees that will surely destabilise  the already fragile situation in Lebanon and Jordan. Terrorist cells, some affiliated with Islamic State, could easily take advantage of any chaos as well. The renewed conflict might indeed physically spread to Jordan and Lebanon. Captagon production will boom, and trafficking will reach far beyond the region’s borders. Nothing will be contained.   The Polarisation  Effect   The Syrian conflict has unfolded at a time when the United States and other Western democracies are going through a deeply polarising  internal ideological struggle over many vital aspects of their contemporary existence, including: the nature of their collective identity and its legitimate historical sources; how diverse their societies could or should be; their place in the world, past, present, and future; and what political current is genuine, patriotic, or progressive enough to lead the way forward. All aspects of foreign policy were being assessed in view of their potential impact on this existential ‘debate’ and its possible outcomes, especially which party will emerge as a winner and which a loser.   In regard to the policy on the Syrian conflict, an unlikely ‘alliance’ of Realists, Progressives, the far  r ight, and the far left carried the day. The alliance was not official of course, and there was no direct coordination between these camps necessarily, but their views on the Syrian conflict converged and heavily influenced both the public opinion and official policies in their countries. For their  own particular ideological reasons, each of these camps is unhappy with the existing global liberal order, and they all want to see a much smaller global footprint for the United States and the West , including i n such vital international institutions as NATO and the World Trade Organization. How the rest of the world fares as a result  of this shrinkage or downsizing is not a major concern of theirs. All of them seem to think that the U S and its Western allies are quite capable of shielding themselves from any negative consequences. By advocating a policy of non-intervention in Syria since the beginning of the conflict, then modifying their position to accept a narrow intervention focused exclusively on the Islamic State, their collective hope was for such an approach to weaken the much-reviled Global Order which America and its Western and democratic allies constantly needed to serve and protect.   This is why today, the same camps are busy advocating a similar approach for dealing with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that is, a policy of non-intervention. Luckily for the Ukrainians, they have to deal with a much wiser and far more pragmatic president in the White House. For while President Joe Biden may not have disagreed with President Obama’s approach on Syria, the double blow to America’s international credibility as a result of failing to enforce its red line there, followed by the dangerously erratic foreign policy of President Donald Trump, and President Putin’s increasingly aggressive tactics, seem to have alerted him to the need for taking a strong stand on Ukraine and against Putin, to save and strengthen NATO—an institution that retains its credibility and necessity in President Biden’s calculus.   Additionally, the liberal interventionists who had been the biggest policy losers in the fight for Syria seem to have learned from their loss and have managed to articulate their position much more clearly, forcefully, and earlier in the conflict. In this, they were helped by Ukraine’s close geographic and cultural ties to Europe and the West. But in Syria, the United States and its Western and democratic allies did not simply betray their values, they  also undermined their own interests. Their failure in Syria was not simply a reflection or a byproduct of their own internal crises, it exacerbated them, something that is yet to be acknowledged widely in their decision-making circles. The political elite in the West, it seems, ha ve become too disconnected from the realities elsewhere in the world to fully understand them or appreciate how deeply connected our world has become. Even the liberal interventionists suffer from this handicap. Their willingness to acknowledge the need for intervention does not necessarily lead to proposing the right policies for it or knowing how to manage it. At least they are willing to listen. They are aware of the problem.   Interventionism is not always an expression of some lingering imperialist instinct or a reflection of imperial overreach. In our hyper-connected world, a measure of interventionism by democratic powers is needed as a way of ensuring adherence to certain standards of justice and accountability without which the current transition to multipolarity will be a much more bloody and violent affair than it should be. At a time when there are so many aspiring regional powers rising and flexing their muscles, if a real red line cannot be drawn on mass atrocities, even when they are being perpetrated by relatively weak regimes, such as Assad’s, then this will serve as a green light for more and more. The west will not be shielded from the impact .   Here Come the Worms   The Realists and Co. were not the only ones to have their little moment under the sun at the expense of the Syrian people. There was also Vladimir Putin and his merry band of cutthroats, liars, and thieves: the Wagner Group. There was Iran, and its own Shia militias spread out across the region fighting a 1400-year-old battle against illusory windmills. There were t he Islamic terrorist groups who have performed over the years an intricate dance of merger and betrayal reflecting personal disagreements between the leaders and continually changing priorities of their regional donors. Both Russia and Iran benefited immensely from the struggle in Syria, or to be more specific, from the U S- led approach to it. Every half measure President Obama adopted was exploited to the fullest by the loitering duo, not simply to strengthen their position in Syria, which has turned into a dual mandate of sorts, but also to improve their regional and global standing vis - à - vis the United States.   This is especially true in the case of Russia where Vladimir Putin, using the various media institutions under his control, flooded the information scene with disinformation and lies about everything related to the Syrian conflict, from the chemical weapons attacks carried out by his aspiring mini-me, Assad, to the humanitarian organisation , the White Helmets, that has been doing an amazing job saving Syrian lives. Amplified by willing ideologues from the progressive, far left, and far right camps . H is propaganda proved effective at creating fertile grounds for all sorts of conspiracy theories to take hold.   The anti-war activists in the UK were particularly duped, reacting mostly to what had taken place in Iraq in 2003—the U S- led invasion justified  in part on the basis of faulty intelligence—rather than what was taking place in Syria since early 2011 . They  refused to believe any reports on the situation there, even those coming from myriad independent journalists and human rights organisations . Their minds were already made up and they only listened to sources that confirmed their beliefs. In 2013, the anti-war movement was so effective that it put enough pressure on the British Parliament to vote against UK’s participation in any military operations meant to punish Assad following the chemical weapons attack in Damascus . This development, in turn, helped influence President Obama’s decision to back down from enforcing his red line, and to eventually accept a Russian-sponsored deal that saved Assad’s skin. For spite, Yet Assad will use chemical weapons on a number of occasions in the future, as per UN reports. [8]   As for Iran, despite Russia’s presence on the ground and regular airstrikes against its positions by Israel, it has now become so enmeshed within the military and security apparatuses of the Assad regime, to the point of raising alarm bells even within the ranks of Assad loyalists, being cited as one of the major motivations for the anti-regime protests taking place today in Suwaida. Shaikh Hikmat a l - Hajiri, one of the top religious leaders of that majority-Druze region, has even called for Jihad  against the Iranian invasion of the country , as well as for establishing secular democratic rule. Yet it seems that without a major shakedown of the entire system, ie toppling the regime, Iran’s influence in Syria is here to stay.   Jihadists and terrorists now control a swath of land in the Idlib province along the borders with Turkey. The most powerful group among them is al-Qaeda offshoot that goes by the name of Tahrir al-Sham, and whose leader was released from prison by the Assad regime in early 2011 among hundreds of Jihadis and terrorists in a macabre move designed to give credence to Assad’s claim that he is fighting terrorists. Meanwhile, the Islamic State itself still retains pockets and cells scattered in the Badiyah area, in the Syrian desert stretching from northeastern parts of the country all the way to the borders with Jordan in the south.   The presence of so many war criminals on the scene is bound to complicate issues of stabilisation , transition, and accountability. It also makes them all the more necessary, otherwise, the lesson that will be learned by dictators throughout the world is that impunity will triumph. Indeed, this, it seems is the governing ethos of current global dynamics, and that’s a deadly reality that does not augur well be it for peace, accountability, or democracy, anywhere.   Accountability   To paraphrase President Obama’s favourite  quote by Reverend  Martin Luther King Jr:   ‘ the arc of the moral universe is indeed long, but it doesn’t bend towards justice by itself ’. Those who believe in justice need to push hard to bring criminals to account. Today, and as we witness the rekindling of revolutionary fires in Syria, bringing to account the war criminals that have devastated  the country is more vital than ever.   The list of the war criminals of Syria is long indeed, but its constituents are rather obvious. They include Assad himself of course, as well as his generals in the military and security apparatuses, especially those who orchestrated the liquidation of tens of thousands political detainees in ‘industrial-scale’  massacres not seen since World War II. They also include Russian generals and Wagner mercenaries, Iranian ‘advisors’ and other sectarian operatives funded by Iran, and certain Jihadi elements and operatives affiliated with the Islamic State and other terrorist movements.   Syrians are not waiting for the international community to make its move and are already trying to get a measure of justice on their own working with well-established legal experts. Several trials against lowkey operatives who were apprehended after they fled to various European cities have already taken  place or are underway . A trial in France is also targeting  two of Assad’s top security chiefs, Ali Mamlouk and Jamil Hassan, for ‘complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes in killing two French nationals of Syrian-descent’. [9] The two are being tried—in absentia, of course, but the symbolism is nonetheless significant.   Meanwhile, the governments of the Netherlands and Canada have brought  a case against Syria before the International Court of Justice ‘for torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment of its own population ’. The basis for the case is evidence ‘gathered by various bodies, including the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism, the UN’s investigative body for Syria ’.[10]    Despite the significance of these steps, it could be far more effective to establish a special tribunal under the auspices of the United Nations General Assembly, to try Assad himself and all other criminals, and to issue indictments. If the International Criminal Court could issue an arrest warrant against Putin, the head of a nuclear state, there is no reason why an international tribunal cannot issue similar warrants against Assad and other war criminals in Syria. Admittedly, executing these warrants may not be easy, but it’s not impossible either.   Decision-making in democratic states is never an easy process, especially in times of crises, especially in regard to foreign policy, and especially when so many of these countries have a long history of imperialist (mis)adventures . W here the debate about it is never-ending and remains very bitter and highly charged.   Syrians and other peoples from the Global South who look to democracies for help on any issue have to understand that . A n American president, for instance, operates under many constraints, and has at any given moment, a number of crises that require his attention, where he has to consider issues of national interests, of global power balance, and of national and international law (because yes, they do really matter). Then, there is always the question of the President’s own worldview, priorities, and predilections. The same applies for many Western leaders as well. So, while Assad can go to Putin, hat in hand, and beg for his support, and while Putin can make that decision without having to consult anyone, no American President or any other democratically elected leaders can behave in a similar fashion when asked for help, no matter how sympathetic to the cause he happens to be. This ‘calculus’ needs to be understood  and even appreciated by  Syrians. Democracy is messy and we need to learn how to deal with the mess, especially now as a second revolution seems to be looming.   For their part, people in democratic societies have to come to terms with their increasing responsibilities in a hyper-connected and hyper-interdependent world. The lines between foreign and domestic policies are continually blurring, and that requires us to develop a deeper understanding of ‘foreign’ policy. With so many of our citizens being first-and second-generation immigrants, and with so many refugees living in our midst with the promise of more to come, be it legally or illegally, how do we define ‘f oreign’ these days anyway? Whether we live within a unipolar or a multipolar world order, order needs to be maintained, that is, policed. There needs to be standards and accountability. A world rife with impunity is poisonous to all, even the most rich and powerful states. If we ever needed to draw a real red line, it should be done now and in regard to mass slaughter. The promise of ‘Never Again’ should not continue to seem so hollow and hypocritical. Peace and stability should never be seen as higher virtues than liberty and justice. Our survival as a civilization existing in a moral universe requires them all. *** Since the submission of this article in early October 2023, much has taken place: Jordan has carried out several airstrikes inside southern Syria targeting infrastructure and persons affiliated with drug-trafficking, with these strikes occasionally leading to civilian casualties.[11]  A court in France issued arrest warrants against Bashar al-Assad and his brother Maher for complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes. [12]  And a new deadly conflict has erupted in Gaza which could pave the way for a larger regional confrontation, according to many analysts. The varied and polarizing global response to this conflict once again shatters the myth of the containability of certain ‘local’ developments. But it also highlights a major moral dilemma that democracies are facing today, as many of the same political actors currently rallying in support of Palestinians have previously opposed intervention against the Assad regime and oppose Western support for Ukraine. While the West may not be responsible for the crises in Syria, Gaza, and Ukraine, its interests and its security are clearly impacted, hence the imperative to reach internal consensus on how to effectively deal with these situations. Ammar Abdulhamid Ammar Abdulhamid is a well-known Syrian human rights activist, author, poet, and political analyst living in Washington, DC . He is the president of the Tharwa Foundation; a nonprofit organisation that encourages diversity, development, and democracy in the MENA region. Furthermore, he is a Parliamentarian and Director of Policy Research at The World Liberty Congress; an organisation that looks to support and speak out for pro-democracy movements. His work over the last two decades has looked to endorse the political and social modernisation of his native country of Syria. [1] ‘Why Has the Syrian War Lasted 12 Years?’ ( BBC News , 2 May 2023) < https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35806229 > accessed 18 December 2023. [2] ‘Remarks by the President on the Middle East and North Africa’ ( National Archives and Records Administration , 19 May 2011) < https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2011/05/19/remarks-president-middle-east-and-north-africa > accessed 18 December 2023. [3] Michael R Gordon and Elisabeth Bumiller, ‘U.S. Military Is Sent to Jordan to Help with Crisis in Syria’ The New York Times  (New York, 10 October 2012) < https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/world/middleeast/us-military-sent-to-jordan-on-syria-crisis.html > accessed 18 December 2023. [4] Barbara Plett Usher, ‘Obama’s Syria Legacy: Measured Diplomacy, Strategic Explosion’ ( BBC News , 13 January 2017) < https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38297343 > accessed 18 December 2023. [5] ‘Remarks by the President to the White House Press Corps’ ( National Archives and Records Administration , 20 August 2012) < https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2012/08/20/remarks-president-white-house-press-corps > accessed 18 December 2023. [6] Shreeya Sinha, ‘Obama’s Evolution on ISIS’ The New York Times (New York, 9 June 2015) < https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/09/world/middleeast/obama-isis-strategy.html > accessed 18 December 2023. [7] William Christou, ‘For Syrians, Russia’s Road to Ukraine Started in Damascus’ ( The New Arab ) < https://www.newarab.com/analysis/syrians-russias-road-ukraine-started-damascus > accessed 18 December 2023. [8] ‘ Security Council Deems Syria’s Chemical Weapon’s Declaration Incomplete, Urges Nation to Close Issues, Resolve Gaps, Inconsistencies, Discrepancies’ ( UN Press , 6 March 2023) < https://press.un.org/en/2023/sc15220.doc.htm > accessed 18 December 2023 . [9] ‘France issues arrest warrant for Syria’s President Assad – source’ ( Reuters , 15 November 2023) < https://www.reuters.com/world/france-issues-arrest-warrants-against-syrias-president-assad-source-2023-11-15/ > accessed 18 December 2023. [10] ‘The Netherlands and Canada to Bring Case against Syria before International Court of Justice’ ( Government.nl , 12 June 2023) < https://www.government.nl/latest/news/2023/06/12/the-netherlands-and-canada-to-bring-case-against-syria-before-international-court-of-justice > accessed 18 December 2023. [11] ‘Suspected Jordanian air strikes in southern Syria kill 10’ ( BBC News , 18 January 2024) < https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68017376 > accessed 4 February 2024. [12] Chris Liakos, Claudia Colliva, and Dalal Mawad, ‘France issues arrest warrant for Syrian President Assad’ ( CNN , 16 November 2023) < https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/15/middleeast/france-arrest-warrant-syria-assad-intl/index.html > accessed 4 February 2024.

Behrouz Boochani is an award-winning Kurdish writer, journalist, scholar, cultural advocate, and filmmaker. His memoir No Friend But the Mountains  (Pan Macmillan 2018, translated by Omid Tofighian) was written during his seven years of incarceration by the Australian government in Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island prison. His new book, Freedom, Only Freedom , was published by Bloomsbury in November 2022. This interview was conducted on 4 November 2023. CJLPA : My first question begins with the fact that I am now interviewing you from your trip to France, after you have called New Zealand your home for the past four years. What does a typical day look like for you now?   Behrouz Boochani : Actually, in New Zealand I have a simple life, which I am happy about. I do some local activities in the city with the underground art and literature communities. I do events, I show films to people, this kind of work. In terms of my profession, I work on film, writing film script, and writing short stories. That is what I am working on. In terms of [work with] refugees I am still active, most of my work is just doing events, but mostly outside of New Zealand. I do work in New Zealand as well, but most of my work is in Europe and Australia. In May of this year, actually, I visited Europe, and was just travelling around for a book tour. I did more than 20 events across Europe—Italy, Germany, Hungary, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium. Now I have come to Europe again, this time invited by Coimbra University, and I have events with PhD students. I also visited Australia last year—I travelled across the country, all the cities. I think we did more than 20 events. Now I am going back again, I will fly tomorrow to go back to New Zealand. Then, after a week, I have been invited by Pen International to do some events in Australia. So that is most of my work [now], public speaking and regarding refugees.   CJLPA : It sounds incredible. You answered this a bit in your previous question by saying that most of your work with refugee rights is international. What sort of relationship do you have with the New Zealand asylum system?   BB : The problem with New Zealand is that they do not accept very many refugees. They only accept 1500 refugees per year. They accept these people through UNHCR—UNHCR processes them [in other countries such as Indonesia] and they accept them, like 1500 people. But New Zealand is quite interesting because they have a law regarding refugees who come by boat—though we know that refugees do not come by boat to New Zealand—but they have a law for that. Now they have a proposal or an amendment to that law, that if refugees come to New Zealand, it is possible that they can be detained for more than 30 days. Not in the camp, they jail them. They have that system. But my biggest criticism with New Zealand is just about the number of people seeking asylum, I think they should take more.   CJLPA : Are you ever asked for your opinion? Are you ever consulted by the government of New Zealand, given that you are probably New Zealand’s most high-profile refugee?   BB : Not really, but I have met with many politicians and organisations about refugees who are in Port Moseby. 60 refugees are in Port Moseby in Papua New Guinea. So some of them came to New Zealand. So New Zealand is going to accept some of them through the agreement that New Zealand has with Australia to take 150 refugees from Australia. So some of those refugees came to New Zealand and some organisations contacted me, you know, just for what you mentioned—consulting—but from the government, not really.   CJLPA : That is a huge missed chance on their part. On the subject of New Zealand, I know that you had written on the experience of going through COVID and the effect that COVID had on refugees and asylum seekers. If my timeline is correct, the pandemic started right after you had reached New Zealand [and gained asylum for the first time]. What was this experience like for you?   BB : I actually arrived right before COVID—it was a very short time. That was quite a surreal experience for me because I was in prison for such a long time. And I ended up in New Zealand and I was free for a while then, you know, we went through lockdown. The lockdown in New Zealand was not as heavy compared to other countries. In Christchurch, it lasted for more than a month. But that was a difficult experience, actually, because it was surreal. But in Australia, it was interesting that the lockdown happened in Australia and the government treated people in the hotels or you know, those places. When people came from overseas back home, they detained them in hotels. And I think they treated them in a way they treat refugees in detention, because that is the mindset. So I think that is quite interesting if researchers compare the lockdown system in Australia with the refugee [system] and also some of Australians who came from overseas, they put them in Christmas Island in the detention that was for refugees.   CJLPA : When you were publicising No Friend but the Mountains , you spoke quite a bit about the fact that the conditions that refugees and asylum seekers are held in [in detention] is the real Australia. This is something that is first experienced by asylum seekers—[almost as if] the government is trying it out, and then the rest of the population later feels the effect. [The treatment given to refugees and asylum seekers] does not stay inside closed borders.   BB : Yes, exactly. That is why I think that, when we look at Australia during the lockdown, it is really important that we see that the same system that was existing in Manus and in Nauru and also within the detention in Australia, that system targeted Australian citizens this time. So that is why I say that when you establish a detention industry like that, it definitely impacts the political culture in Australia. You cannot do that on those islands and say that, the violence that we created, this tragedy that we created, is just going to stay there, and that does not have an impact on us. I have a friend, a Kurdish philosopher, and he introduced the concept of a camp state. Oh, these days, we have governments around the world running a camp.   CJLPA : My final question relating to your life today is that, when No Friend but the Mountains was first published, you were still writing from prison. You continue to be a prolific advocate and freedom fighter today. How has the process of writing changed for you now that you are in such a different setting?   BB : Yeah, actually, I wrote an article last week about exactly this for a paper in Australia. How writing changed for me—so in Manus Island it was different, because it is quite a different context. Writing for me was not a place that I escaped to, it was like a tool, like a weapon to create change, to challenge that system. And I think that is really important because in the context of refugees we know that most of the time we have a process of victimisation in media, by humanitarian organisations, by human rights activists, but in Manus it was different because it was not about victimisation of refugees or victimisation of myself, it is writing as the weapon to create change, to challenge that system, to fight. I think it is really important that we recognise that. Manus was like that for me, just writing as an act of resistance. But when I came to New Zealand, that was a big shift in my life, because for six years, I was in prison, I was fighting against that system, a daily fight. I had to survive. So it was like, we were living in a prison camp, struggling with systematic torture, stress, trauma, all of this. And when I arrived in New Zealand, that was finished—that means, you know, I was living in a peaceful city, no tension. That was a big shift, and of course New Zealand was a very new place for me, the freedom itself was new. And that happened in just 24 hours, you know? So it took time for me to understand freedom, to understand my new place, a new environment, to establish a new life. So writing in that time was of course difficult, you know, because I had to change my perspective, my mindset, because I could not write like I was writing in Manus. It was a big shift. It took time for me, it took years really, until I got back to a normal life to write. I am not talking about trauma, I am talking about the environment—it changed, it was a big shift. So that is why it took time for me to get back to my own writing. I had to find my new way.   CJLPA : You now have written an entirely new book, a compilation of the writings that you have created over the past couple of years organised into different chapters. I find this quite interesting, because you are well known for being a knowledge producer—for example, your spin on Elizabeth Schuler Firenze’s concept of kyriarchy. Part One of Freedom, Only Freedom is titled ‘Creating a New Language in Collaboration’, and you have done just this in your work—created new genres, new language. With this book being a compilation of so many of your previous writings, how does it define the contours of the language you have created, or organise the knowledge you have produced?   BB : The second book is very different compared to the first one in terms of the language, because this second one is a collection of my journalistic works, but the journalism is quite different to the current journalism that we know, it is journalism and also a testimony. So someone who was working inside that system, but I think my journalistic work in this book is just trying to link different people, marginalised people, who are affected by that system in Manus Island, like LGBTQ people. Some of the articles are about them. Some of the articles and essays are about Manusian people, so the indigenous people in Manus Island, and I write in the context of colonialism because the whole policy is established on colonialism and politics. Some of the articles are in about individuals, some refugees who died or were killed, or whose characters or stories are interesting. Some of the articles are about just politics, so that we can understand each side of this policy in the context of politics in Australia, for example in relation to the federal elections in Australia. Some of them are just about art. The role of art, music, and cinema in this context, so I try to have, a combination of different aspects. It is quite an interesting work in many ways. The concept of the kyriarchal system that you mentioned was introduced by Omid Tofighian [Boochani’s translator], because the word that I used in Farsi, in my writing is system-e hākem . So I introduced a concept to analyse that system, but when Omid wanted to translate it, he did not find a word in English to represent my word. So he suggested that he use that concept, the kyriarchal system. But in the end, that book actually came out last year. And so it’s translated and edited by Moones Mansoubi and Omid Tofighian because they in the translated my works for many years. So they worked on and they put all of these essays together, and we even invited some other people who worked with me. Like Ben Dougherty from The Guardian , for example—I used to work with him for a long time. So that became a book, which is, I think, is important book. You know, it is hard to say that because it is my book. But it definitely is an important book. I believe in that. You know, Australians should at least read this book.   CJLPA : I am so curious, since the book included both published and not previously published work. How did you to choose what to include? You have written so much!   BB : Yes, actually while I was in Manus I published around 100 opinion pieces. So, of course, if I put all of those articles together, it would become a book with like 600 pages, so that would not work. And I think all of the articles that I wrote, they are not reporting, they are opinion pieces. All of them could be included in this book. But of course we did not have a space for that. So what we did, was that we created some categories. For example, some of the articles that are about Manusian people are in the same category, some of them are about politics so we created categories for that. We could have included all of them, but there just was not space. So we did it in that way.   CJLPA : Wow. I knew that you had travelled to Melbourne to promote the book. Can you tell me a bit about the emotions of that experience? How did you find it, were you recognised as such a famous author?   BB : Yes, my travel to Australia was quite interesting, because of course, I was really busy when I arrived. So just travelling. I was in each city just for a night or two and then I had to travel. We did around 20 events in just few weeks. But one of the most interesting events for me was one that happened in the Parliament. I made a speech in the Parliament to some members of the media and politicians. Of course, it is interesting for someone who was on that island, and now has reached Parliament. But for me, emotionally, the experience was quite interesting because I knew that this place where I am talking, where I am visiting—all of this policy [regarding asylum seekers] was made here. This place is the place that they make decisions. This tragedy came out of this building. I had that feeling, I was aware of it. And I made a speech.   CJLPA : What an absurd situation to find yourself in. You have now walked in here and giving this speech, but you already know this place, you know, you know it so well.   BB : Yes, I think for me it was the performance that was important, not what I was saying. Because you know, we have said a lot for many years, and they did not listen. I was quite sure that even if I did this speech, that did not mean that something would change or that this politician would really listen. But the performance was important in that I represent people who have been dehumanised by that system for many years. Just the appearance was important in itself.   CJLPA : In addition to giving speeches, you write in prose and in poetry, in journalistic form, you create films like Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time , you comment live through social media, and you take photographs. Which avenue of communication do you feel like best conveys your thoughts and experiences?   BB : You know, for me, it is just writing—of course, we can use different medium platforms and languages. But for me, at the end of the day, I am just a writer. That is my main language. Of course, even now I work on scripts with friends and colleagues. But for me, at the end of the day it is just writing.   CJLPA : You had always been a writer; you were a journalist in Iran as well.   BB :   I have known myself as a writer for such a long time. But it is interesting, when I visited Europe I met with Arash Kamali Sarvestani for the first time, [even though we had already] made the film Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time  together. So when I visited Europe we met each other for the first time. Then we went and did a speech in the university. We showed the film Chauka  a few times. That was quite a surreal experience to meet people like Arash for the first time, when we had [already] known each other for such a long time.   CJLPA : Wow, you had done so much work remotely, that must also be a big part of the relationships you have now—just meeting people you already knew. My last two questions have to do with your relationships with Nauru and Papua New Guinea today. How often do you make contact with those that are still on these islands held in detention? Or are there still individuals being held there?   BB:  Nauru is closed now, so no one is there, and Manus is closed as well, so no one is there. But 60 people remain in Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, in the capital city. So I am in touch with some of them and I just talk with them. But you know, the problem with those people remaining is actually not only Australia, it is Canada, America, and New Zealand as well. Because those people have been waiting for such a long time to be transferred. They are already recognised as refugees, they already processed them. Some of them are waiting just to be transferred. They are recognised as a refugee by United States. They accepted them. And they should just get a ticket for them and just fly them there. And they have been there for such a long time. People have been in different processes for many years, and it is enough. So they are waiting, some of them have been transferred to New Zealand. But each month or each two months, they only transfer one person. Sometimes two people—it is like that. But Nauru is closed. The problem with this system is that the policies still exist. So if anyone come to Australia by boat, they banish them. It’s not a fundamental change.   CJLPA : You often spoke about the horrors that Australia inflicted specifically on Manusians and Nauruans, and the poverty that is imposed upon the people who are living on these islands where Australia then detains others. This power dynamic is really interesting because it seems to reflect a lot, for example, what England is doing with Rwanda currently [in proposing to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, a former European colony]. How do you see Australia’s legacy influencing other colonial systems today?   BB : Australia is using those countries as a cage, as a place of torture, as a banishment land, as a land to torture people. So in my perspective, it is a very classic version of colonialism, because they are obviously abusing those countries. But in terms of Papua New Guinea, I think we have a kind of internal colonialism as well. Because this money that Australia paid to those corrupt politicians, they pay to politicians who are in Port Moresby, but actually they banish refugees to Manus Island. So the people of Manus Island do not get the benefit from that, they are just they taking the money and putting it in their pocket in Port Moresby. But of course they damage those islands, at least they build prisons and they cut the trees, and they build a huge facility. That is what they did in Manus Island. The economy in those islands lost its balance because they spent so much money there for a short time, like five or six years. And many of the local people who are working beside that system, or in that system as an officer, and then suddenly they left. That damaged them. But the most interesting thing is that people, the politicians, do not include them in the conversation. You know, the conversation, the discourse is just about refugees. And Australia, often they don’t include local people in that conversation, but they are a part of it. Because this tragedy happened on their land.   CJLPA : My final question for you today: what role do you believe that refugee law has played in what you endured?   BB : Yeah, I think the problem right now, what causes refugees, these wars that we witness in Ukraine, in Palestine, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and Kurdistan, you know, in my land, that Turkey always attacks. That is a huge problem, these wars and what causes refugees—also climate change and mismanagement of resources. So we should think about that. But in terms of the Convention, you know, we have seen that a country like Australia that is committed to that convention, right now in Australia, if you go by boat and seek asylum they say it is illegal—but actually, it is not illegal. It is not illegal to seek asylum. That is a huge problem right now with all of the war and conflict that we have seen. This interview was conducted by Alexandra Marcy Hall, Legal Researcher of Human Rights Volume of CJLPA 3. Alexandra Marcy is a human rights professional who has practiced and researched extensively in North Africa and Europe. She currently works in advocacy for asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants living in London through an international humanitarian organisation.