Cyber Ethiopia

We saw last week that the British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin had turned down the Ethiopian Government request to use the machinery of the Four Great Powers in Rome to request the extradition of the two Italian marshals, Pietro Badoglio and Rodolfo Graziani, against whom the UN War Crimes Commission had found a prima facie war crimes case. Now read on: Ato Abebe Retta, the Ethiopian Minister in London. Faced with the well-nigh insuperable difficulty that there were no diplomatic relations with Italy, the Ethiopian Government made one last heroic effort to bring the two Italian marshals to trial. The Ethiopian Minister in London, Ato Abebe Retta, called on the Italian Ambassador in Britain, Duke Gallarti-Scotti, on 6 September 1949. Ato Abebe carried with him an aide-memoire in

which the Ethiopian Government demanded the surrender of Graziani and Badoglio, as war criminals. The Duke bluntly refused to receive it. This diplomatic incident was duly reported in The Times, of 8 September. Discussing the diplomatic machinery, which the Ethiopian Government had attempted to use, it wrote: "Where no diplomatic relations exist between two countries, it is sometimes usual for one Government to approach another through the representatives of the two countries in the capital of a third. The Government approached is, however, within its rights in refusing to accept any such demarche". The possible consequences for Britain of the incident were noted by Pemberton-Pigott at the Foreign Office, who wrote, on 13 September: "it is possible that the Ethiopian Government may now ask His Majesty's Government to refer their request for the surrender of Graziani and Badoglio to the four Ambassadors in Rome. He commented: "Should they [the Ethiopians] do so it is submitted that another attempt should be made to persuade them that it is very undesirable to press this demand [i.e. that of the marshal's extradition]. Apart from the effect on the debate on the future of Eritrea which is about to take place and on relations generally between Italy and Ethiopia, it is most unlikely that either Graziani or Badoglio are now medically fit to stand trial. The trial of Graziani was broken off last autumn on medical grounds, and Badoglio is 78 years old and feeble. "If, however, the Ethiopian Government should insist on making this approach we should have no alternative but to accept it, and, providing agreement were reached between the four ambassadors, to transmit it to the four ambassadors." Pemberton-Pigott also noted that the Italian press had accused the British Government of "being behind the earlier Ethiopian approach to the Italian Ambassador, but action was being taken in Rome to try to counteract such reports". Ethiopia Turned Down Four days later, on 17 September, Ato Abebe Retta called on the Foreign Office. He mentioned the Italian Ambassador's refusal to accept his demarche, and asked the British Government's advice as to his Government's next step. He was told, according to a Foreign Office minute, that "while we did not question the merits of the Ethiopian case we considered their original request to the Italian Government was most inopportune coming as it did immediately before the discussion on the future of Eritrea at the [United Nations] General Assembly, and that since he now asked our advice we could only say that we thought that the Ethiopian Government would do well not to press the question". This reply seems to have brought the Ethiopian Government's involvement in the Italian war crimes issue to a close. Documents Though apparently realising the impossibility of prosecuting the Italian war criminals, the Ethiopian Ministry of Justice published a valuable memorandum on the subject. Published, "by command" of the Emperor, it was entitled Documents on Italian War Crimes submitted to the United Nations War Crimes Commission, and appeared in two volumes, in 1949 and 1950. The first of these volumes reproduced telegrams between Mussolini and Lessona, the Minister of the Colonies, on the one hand, and Graziani and sundry subordinate officials on the other; also Italian circulars and orders relating to "pacification" of the "native" population. These documents were reproduced in the original Italian, with English translations. The second volume consisted of affidavits sworn by Ethiopians, who had witnessed atrocities, or suffered torture or confinement in Italian concentration camps. The Italian Trial of Graziani The Italian trial of Graziani, for his collaboration with the Germans, was resumed in 1950. The marshal was found guilty, and sentenced, on 2 May, to 19 years' imprisonment, but was released in the following year, when he headed a short-lived Neo-Fascist organisation, and died in 1955. Badoglio died in the following year. The Story of General Nasi The failure of the Italian Government to take the question of war crimes seriously was dramatically seen in February 1950 when it announced that General Guglielmo Nasi, whom the Ethiopian Government had listed as a war criminal, had been appointed Governor of the Italian Trust territory of Somalia. This appointment had, however, to be withdrawn as a result of public outrage. CONCLUSIONS The question of Fascist Italy's war crimes in Ethiopia, and the legal ramifications thereto, reveal how Ethiopia was involved in the evolution of international morality and law. Fascist Italy's war crimes in Ethiopia were unusual in the history of war crimes in that they were raised, by the Ethiopian Government, on two separate occasions, and in entirely different circumstances. The first occasion was in the League of Nations, between 1935 and 1937, while the atrocities were actually being committed. The second occasion came half a decade later, in the United Nations War Crimes Commission, which the Allies had established, as a result of the European war, and in particular Axis terror in the Europe. Despite the evolution of international morality, neither Ethiopian initiative, as we have seen, was successful. Unwilling to Condemn The League of Nations, whose principal members, Britain and France, wished to "appease" the Italian dictator Mussolini, were unwilling to condemn the atrocities which his forces committed, or the use of poison-gas, which he ordered. Such crimes, though contrary to international convention, were accepted by the international community, without any protest, as the League's records testify. The subsequent UN War Crimes Commission, established for the express purpose of trying "war crimes", reflected a significant evolution in international moral values. Its members were, however, scarcely more concerned in the question of Italian war crimes in Ethiopia than those of the League had been. Post-World War II reluctance to consider war crimes committed only a decade or so earlier, or more precisely the reluctance of the British Government to do so, is the more remarkable in that, that very government had established the machinery for trying such crimes. It had done so, however, only with crimes against Europeans, in Europe, in view A Combination of Factors The British Government's reluctance to prosecute the perpetrators of war crimes committed in Ethiopia in the 1930s would seem to have sprung from a combination of factors. One would seem to be the Government's lack of interest in crimes committed by Europeans against non-Europeans. Another reason was probably that the Government had recognised Mussolini's "conquest" of Ethiopia, in 1938, and was therefore reluctant to consider the war crimes by which it had been achieved. No less important was the fact that the Government was opposed to trying Badoglio, whom it knew the Ethiopians regarded as the principal Italian war criminal. Though responsible for the use of poison-gas in Ethiopia, he was favoured because, after fighting on the German side, he had later connived at Italy's surrender to the Allies, and was considered a leader who would keep Italy safely in the Western fold. Whether the Allies had in fact entered into a secret agreement with him, which ensured his safety, is still a matter of speculation. Opposition to the trial of Italians accused of war crimes in Ethiopia was based on the repeated Foreign Office argument that the Italo-Ethiopian war of 1935-6, though accompanied by many Fascist atrocities, had "no relation" to the European war, which had begun for Britain in September 1939, and for which the UN Commission had been established. This argument was accepted, under British pressure, by the Commission. The argument was used to exclude Ethiopia from membership, largely because it was feared, rightly, that an Ethiopian delegation would raise the issue of Badoglio's use of poison-gas in its deliberations. The exclusion of Ethiopia was, however, inconsistent, and palpably unfair, in that the British and other Allies accepted Chinese demands for the trial of Japanese accused of having committed crimes in China several years before Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia: Ethiopia, it was evident, lacked the "political clout" wielded by the Chinese. Despite its weakness, the Ethiopian Government eventually succeeded, with some skill, in persuading the four Great Powers, and then the United Nations, when drafting the Italian Peace Treaty of 1947, to accept the principle that the treaty should apply, as far as Ethiopia was concerned, to the period from the beginning of invasion, on 3 October 1935. (It was likewise agreed that the war for Albania started when it did, earlier in the year 1939. This of course made sense, in the same way that the war for the Soviet Union and the United States started when it did, in 1941, and not in September 1939, the date on which the British Foreign Office was so fixated). The UN Commission, though unwilling to expand its membership to include Ethiopia, was obliged to concur with the date of 3 October 1935, and agreed, though with some reluctance, to consider a short nominal list of war criminals for trial. The Commission was, however, unwilling to extend its proceedings to enable the Ethiopians time to complete its prosecution case. Though acutely short of jurists and other trained personnel, the Ethiopian authorities, by then having so to speak to fight against the clock, succeeded in drawing up a case, backed up with documentary evidence and certified affidavits, which the Commission accepted, against ten persons. It agreed that there was a prima facie case against eight, and that the remaining two could be listed as witnesses to the crimes. Logistical and other difficulties, however, obliged the Ethiopian Government to waive its charge against all but two of the accused, albeit the most important, Badoglio and Graziani. Their automatic extradition was, however, prevented by the fact that Ethiopia and Italy had not yet established diplomatic relations, and because the post-war Italian Government had not really cleaned itself of its Fascist past. Evidence of this is to be seen in the post-war Italian Government's long refusal to accept the fact, well known to the rest of the world, that Fascist Italy had made extensive use of poison-gas The Ethiopian Government, citing provision in the Italian Peace Treaty, attempted to overcome the impasse over the trial of the two marshals by seeking the good offices of the British ambassador in Rome, but the British Government, anxious to avoid alienating a more powerful state, refused to comply. The Ethiopian Government likewise had its ambassador in Britain submit a memorandum to the Italian ambassador, but the latter refused to accept it. Ethiopian efforts to bring to justice those guilty of war crimes were thus frustrated by intransigence of both Italy and Britain, and were finally abandoned, under pressure from the Foreign Office, whose support the Ethiopian Government considered essential for its claim to Eritrea. Ethiopia's diplomatic and legal initiative in respect of Italian war crimes had continued for well over half a decade, from the liberation in 1941 to the abandonment of prosecution efforts in 1949. Failure was not due to weakness in the case against the accused, or to Ethiopia's inability to marshal evidence and affidavits, but to the prejudices of Ethiopia’s allies, as much as of its enemies. The European leaders of the post-World War II international community seemed unprepared to see fellow Europeans punished for crimes against non-Europeans half a decade earlier, and preferred a mis-carriage of justice. Thus was it that, despite the many well-authenticated Fascist war crimes, not to mention photographs of Fascists playing with the severed heads of Ethiopian Patriots, not a single Italian was ever prosecuted for war crimes committed in Ethiopia. Not even one! Italians Denied Information The failure to hold a trial of Italian war criminals was particularly serious for the people of Italy, who, unlike their contemporaries in Germany and Japan, had their history deliberately distorted. The Italian public was in fact denied the elementary right to learn its history, not only by the aborting of the proposed war crimes trials, but also by the Italian Ministry of Defence's persistent refusal to admit what the rest of the world knew over half a century earlier: that the Italian Royal Air Force had used poison-gas in Ethiopia. It was not in fact until 1995, i.e. almost sixty year after the event, that the Italian Government officially admitted this crime: on this see Angelo Del Boca's important book I gas di Mussolini (Rome, 1996). The essential dishonesty of the information about the Ethiopian war provided to the people of Italy is further evident when we recall that virtually all the Italian historico-military sources available to Italians, in the shape of the memoirs of Emelio De Bono, Pietro Badoglio (with all its fine photographs and maps), Rodolfo Graziani and others, are historically flawed. This is because they deliberately exclude any reference to what was by all accounts one of the most important elements in the campaign, if not in fact the most important, i.e. the Fascist use of gas.