Redstate

Sec Gen Ban on Saddam's execution

By Mark Kilmer Posted in Foreign Affairs — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

From the Associated Press:

New U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ran into trouble on his first day of work Tuesday over Saddam Hussein's execution when he failed to state the United Nations' opposition to the death penalty and said capital punishment should be a decision of individual countries.

The U.N. has an official stance opposing capital punishment and Ban's predecessor Kofi Annan reiterated it frequently. The top U.N. envoy in Iraq, Ashraf Qazi, restated it again on Saturday after the former Iraqi dictator was hanged.

What happened? Someone baited Ban with a question about stringing up Saddam:

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"Saddam Hussein was responsible for committing heinous crimes and unspeakable atrocities against Iraqi people and we should never forget victims of his crime," Ban said in response to a reporter's question about Saddam's execution Saturday for crimes against humanity. "The issue of capital punishment is for each and every member state to decide."

Ban's mistake? He neglected to mention Article 3 of the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

If Saddam's right to life is derived from that document, which is what the document insists – "keeping this Declaration constantly in mind" – then what of his refusal to be bound by it? He violated every article in the Declaration, including, I assume, Article 24:

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Now, I've heard neither the erstwhile General Secretary Secretary General Kofi nor his successor, Ban, crusade for paid vacation.

These are someone's international goals; in no place does the document mention enforcement and Article XXVIII says that we're all "entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized."

Words. Semantics. That is what the United Nations does.

His [Ban's] ambiguous answer put a question mark over the U.N.'s stance on the death penalty. It also gave the new chief an early taste of how tricky global issues are, and how every word can make a difference.

Michele Montas, Ban's new spokeswoman, insisted there was no change in U.N. policy in what she described as "his own nuance" on the death penalty.

"The U.N. policy still remains that the organization is not for capital punishment," she said. "However, the way the law is applied in different countries, he left it open to those different countries."

It called the U.N.'s anti-capital punishment stance into question for whom? Never doubt it. But Ban's personal stance, as iterated by Ms. Montas, shows that cracks have formed in that idol. Just as those who favor abortion rights wish the have the federal government control the matter for all Americans, save the unborn, from its centralized perch, so the anti-death penalty crowd would like to see the United Nations make their preference universal. (That they cannot and are not is not the matter.) Ban is, in essence, "returning the decision to the states," just as those opposed to Roe v. Wade desire the matter of abortion to be returned to the (several United) States.

I don't see this as a sign that the United Nations has met the real world, but it could be, could be the start of something positive. Remember, with the U.N., it's all about words.