OUVRAGE : K. Sellars (ed.), Trials for International Crimes in Asia

Kadidiatou HAMA

The issue of international crimes is highly topical in Asia, with still-resonant claims against the Japanese for war crimes, and deep schisms resulting from crimes in Bangladesh, Cambodia, and East Timor. Over the years, the region has hosted a succession of tribunals, from those held in Manila, Singapore and Tokyo after the Asia-Pacific War to those currently running in Dhaka and Phnom Penh. This book draws on extensive new research and offers the first comprehensive legal appraisal of the Asian trials. As well as the famous tribunals, it also considers lesser-known examples, such as the Dutch and Soviet trials of the Japanese, the Cambodian trial of the Khmer Rouge, and the Indonesian trials of their own military personnel. It focuses on their approach to the elements of international crimes, and their contribution to general theories of liability. In the process, this book challenges some orthodoxies about the development of international criminal law.


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Simon Chesterman, Foreword

Kirsten Sellars, Introduction

1. Kirsten Sellars, Treasonable conspiracies at Paris, Moscow, and Delhi: the legal hinterland of the Tokyo tribunal

2. Robert Cryer, Then and now: command responsibility, the Tokyo tribunal, and modern international criminal law 

3. Lisette Schouten, Colonial justice at the Netherlands Indies war crimes trials

4. Cheah Wui Ling, The superior orders defence at the postwar trials in Singapore

5. Valentya Polunina, The Khabarovsk trial: the Soviet riposte to the Tokyo tribunal

6. Ōsawa Takeshi,  The People's Republic of China's 'lenient treatment' policy towards Japanese war criminals

7. Tara Gutman, Cambodia, 1979: trying Khmer Rouge leaders for genocide

8. Mark Cammack, Crimes against humanity in East Timor: the hearings at the Indonesian Ad Hoc Human Rights Court

9. Rehan Abeyratne, Asia as the laboratory of the superior responsibility doctrine 

10. Jia Bing Bing, The two approaches to the superior orders plea

11. Neha Jain, The joint criminal enterprise doctrine at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia

12. M. Rafiqul Islam, Trials for international crimes in Bangladesh: prosecutorial strategies, defence arguments, and judgments

13. Nina H. B. Jørgensen, Theories of joint criminal responsibility at the Asian tribunals: Hong Kong, East Timor, Cambodia

14. Abdur Razzaq, The tribunals in Bangladesh: falling short of international standards

Kirsten SELLARS (ed.), Trials for International Crimes in Asia,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015 (388 pp.)