-
Introduction: Crimes of State and Other Forms of Collective Group Violence by Nonstate Actors
- Rutgers University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
regimes. Here issues of motivation and opportunity include not just the ideological , economic, or military interests, but also issues of ethnocism, political power and representation, scarce resources, disparities, religion, postcolonial histories , and governments that are weakened, illegitimate, or overtly authoritarian. Beyond these themes, issues of impunity, lack of accountability, and social justice emerged in many of these contributions,which should come as no surprise since the history of head-of-state impunity illustrates the level of accountability for those most responsible for crimes by the state. Given this, the second section pays particular attention to issues of accountability, impunity, and social justice that are available and/or have been initiated in an effort to address these horrific forms of state criminality, taking into account not only the progress made in the field of state crime control but also in the world over the past two decades. Chapters offer casespecific examples of social justice mechanisms and accountability, including domestic law, localized responses, moral and ethical dilemmas, restorative justice , and the international institution of control. Here the issue of “ought” versus “does” becomes visible as the extant body of international criminal law and the cry for the end of impunity do little to address the dissonance between what is and what should be. As noted in the introduction, much of this dissonance is the result of realpolitik. As scholars of state crime, our hope is that someday we will see justice for those victimized by crimes of the state; an equal application of the rule of law, even for heads of state; social justice that moves beyond accountability to incorporate measures of inclusion and victims’ needs; and, ideally, no more cases to analyze as crimes by states cease to occur. Preface x xi Acknowledgments We are thankful to the contributors for their willingness to be a part of this volume and for laying the foundation for our own scholarship on crimes of the state.Thank you to our colleagues for the support, guidance, and knowledge you so willingly share. We also want to thank William Chambliss and M. Cherif Bassiouni for their willingness to provide the foreword and introduction to this volume.We are truly honored by your contributions.We also would like to acknowledge Barb Perry for reviewing the manuscript and providing insightful comments and suggestions.Thank you, Barb.Thank you also goes out to our editors at Rutgers for their support and guidance during this process, and to Hope for all of her hard work.We also would like to acknowledge the International State Crime Research Consortium, housed at Old Dominion University, College of Arts and Letters. Of course, no acknowledgment would be complete without mentioning how grateful we both are to our families for their love and support. [34.229.151.93] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 15:06 GMT) State Crime: Current Perspectives Introduction Crimes of State and Other Forms of Collective Group Violence by Nonstate Actors M. Cherif Bassiouni Throughout history, abuses of power by tyrannical rulers and ruling-regime elites, which are carried out under their direction by state actors, have occasioned significant human, social, and economic harm to their respective national societies and those of others. Under the guise of war, large-scale human depredations have taken place, as well as in the colonization context and in other contexts manifesting oppression or repression by states that victimize groups in other states or territories. Since the end of World War II forms of collective violent social interactions have increased significantly, but no reliable data have been gathered to document this phenomenon.1 Political, social, and behavioral sciences have developed different techniques and methodologies for determining the causes of these violent manifestations, as well as some measurements to assess their outcomes. But they were not sufficiently developed to influence policy making in connection with preventing or limiting violent interaction, whether at the interstate or domestic levels. Whether or not this is the reason for international law’s failure to take into account the findings and insights of other disciplines is speculative. More likely, international law, which is the product of state decision making, has simply ignored social and behavioral sciences in order to be less encumbered by scientific findings in reflecting state interests. Notwithstanding its solid growth in the last few decades, International Criminal Law (ICL)2 continues to lag behind the needs of the international community to enhance its goals of peace, justice, and the protection of human rights (Bassiouni 1999b, 1999c, 2000a, 2000b). This is...