L'Afrique et le système de justice pénale internationale

Africa has been ravaged by armed conflicts and/or oppressive regimes for decades. During those conflicts or oppressive regimes, heinous crimes such as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed and made millions of victims. Among these, only a handful number saw some justice. This was possible essentially because the international community took a vigorous stance against the impunity of war criminals and genocidaires by creating international judicial mechanisms, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), to deal with it. Also, some individual African States have prosecuted international crimes within their municipal courts as well as some western States based on the universal jurisdiction principle. This article analyses the African contribution to the building of the international criminal justice system. It also addresses the African objections against the ICC intervention in Africa and the use of the universal jurisdiction criticized as a form of imperialism and neo-colonialism disguised in a judicial form. It concludes by exploring the feasibility of an African Criminal Court.

INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE UNCERTAIN FATE OF MILITARY SUNKEN VESSELS

On 5 October 1804, the Spanish warship Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes had almost completed its voyage from Peru to Spain, when it was attacked by the British fleet. In the ensuing battle of Cape St. Mary almost 250 Spanish sailors died. Historians deem the sinking of the Mercedes to be a pivotal event in European history. Mentioning the “sad loss of the frigate Mercedes”, King Carlos IV of Spain declared war against Great Britain and entered the Napoleonic wars on the side of France.The fateful sinking of the Mercedes and its possible recovery by a commercial salvor, Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc., has been the focus of a pending legal dispute. After finding the wreck, the salvor claimed ownership of it, under the law of finds or a salvage award under salvage law, which would entitle it to sell the recovered artefacts and receive a part of the revenues as compensation for the efforts made in finding and recovering the shipwreck. However, Spain intervened in the proceedings claiming that the Black Swan – as the salvor had code-named the shipwreck – was the Mercedes, and that, the Mercedes being a warship of the Royal Navy of Spain, it was subject to immunity from Odyssey’s claims and not subject to salvage against the wishes of Spain. In parallel, Peru reclaimed the treasure, which it deemed part of its cultural patrimony, while the Bolivian Government expressed its interest in identifying the origin of the recovered treasure. Finally, twenty-five descendants of those aboard the Mercedes filed claims against the wreck. On 22 December 2009, the District Judge dismissed Odyssey and Peru’s complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and ordered Odyssey to return the artefacts to Spain. While the principles of international law upheld by the judge are not new, one may wonder whether customary norms of international law concerning the protection of sunken warships in the high seas are gradually crystallizing.This study shall proceed as follows. First, it will scrutinize the Black Swan case, by focussing on the identification of the vessel and issues of jurisdiction. Second, it shall explore the international legal framework which governs the recovery of sunken warships at the international law level. Third, issues of sovereign immunity and ownership will be addressed. Finally, some conclusions are put forward.

Book reviews

Des Alwi, Friends and exiles; A memoir of the nutmeg isles and the Indonesian nationalist movement. (Chris F. van Fraassen) James A. Anderson, The rebel den of Nùng Trí Cao; Loyalty and identity along the Sino-Vietnamese frontier. (Emmanuel Poisson) Reggie Baay, De njai; Het concubinaat in Nederlands-Indië. (Maya Sutedja-Liem) John Barker (ed.), The anthropology of morality in Melanesia and beyond. (Jaap Timmer) Kees Buijs, Powers of blessing from the wilderness and from heaven; Structure and transformations in the religion of the Toraja in the Mamasa area of South Sulawesi. (Robert Wessing) Jamie S. Davidson, From rebellion to riots; Collective violence on Indonesian Borneo. (Victor T. King) Kees van Dijk, The Netherlands Indies and the Great War, 1914-1918. (Jaap Anten) Linda España-Maram, Creating masculinity in Los Angeles’ Little Manila; Working-class Filipinos and popular culture, 1920s-1950s. (John D. Blanco) Renate Carstens, Durch Asien im Horizont des Goethekreises; Neue Facetten im Wirken Goethes. (Edwin Wieringa) James T. Collins, Bahasa Sanskerta dan Bahasa Melayu. (Arlo Griffiths) Victoria M. Clara van Groenendael, Jaranan; The horse dance and trance in East Java. (Dick van der Meij) Paul M. Handley, The king never smiles; A biography of Thailand’s Bhumibol Adulyadej. (Jeroen Rikkerink) Holger Jebens, Kago und kastom; Zum Verhältnis von kultureller Fremd- und Selbstwahrnehmung in West New Britain (Papua-Neuguinea). (Menno Hekker) Lee Hock Guan and Leo Suryadinata (eds), Language, nation and development in Southeast Asia. (Renata M. Lesner-Szwarc) Ross H. McLeod and Andrew MacIntyre (eds), Indonesia; Democracy and the promise of good governance. AND Patrick Ziegenhain, The Indonesian parliament and democratization. (Henk Schulte Nordholt) Laurent Sagart, Roger M. Blench, and Alicia Sanchez-Mazas (eds), The peopling of East Asia; Putting together archaeology, linguistics and genetics. (Alexander Adelaar) Saw Swee Hock, The population of Malaysia. (Gavin Jones) Henk Schulte Nordholt and Fridus Steijlen (producers), Don’t forget to remember me; A day in the life of Indonesia. (Jean Gelman Taylor) Karel Steenbrink, Catholics in Indonesia; A documented history. Volume I, A modest recovery 1808-1900; Volume 2 (with the cooperation of Paule Maas), The spectacular growth of a self-confident minority 1903-1942. (Chris de Jong) Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern (eds), Exchange and sacrifice. (Toon van Meijl) Hans Straver (samenst.), Wonder en geweld; De Molukken in de verbeelding van vertellers en schrijvers. (G.J. Schutte) Dendy Sugono et al. (eds), Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia Pusat Bahasa; Edisi keempat. (Hein Steinhauer) Jacqueline Vel, Uma politics; An ethnography of democratization in West Sumba, Indonesia, 1986-2006. (Chris Lundry) C.W. Watson, Of self and injustice; Autobiography and repression in modern Indonesia. (Roxana Waterson)

A temple, a mission, and a war: Jesuit missionaries and local culture in East Flores in the nineteenth century

After temporarily acquiring Portuguese ‘possessions’ in Flores and islands immediately to the east in 1851, the Netherlands East Indies took full possession in 1859. An important condition guaranteed religious freedom to Catholics in the transferred territories. Dutch authorities took this concession seriously and requested that Dutch Catholic missionaries be sent to Larantuka, Flores. Eventually the Jesuits assumed responsibility. The Dutch Catholic priests objected to many aspects of local ceremonial practice and in particular to the local temples. Their efforts to abolish these temples and practices involved them in local disputes and eventually in a war. This article examines the complexities of the resulting events and in particular the tensions among the priests, colonial authorities and local leadership.

Emotion, Medizin und Volksbelehrung: die Entstehung des «deutschen Kulturfilms»

This article describes the process of professionalisation of medical films in Germany between 1910 and 1920. At the beginning of this decade, government institutions showed a growing interest in hygiene campaigns and started to cooperate with medical experts as well as with professional advertisers. When the German film industry was nationalised at the end of World War I, these informal structures were strengthened. New theories described the film as a most powerful tool for propaganda purposes. This profoundly changed the expectations towards medical films. Now their content had to be bedded into the dramatised form of a photoplay. After 1918, in anticipation of the reprivatisation of the German film industry, government officials of the Weimar Republic developed complex measures to obtain and keep control over a new genre of documentary film which was now called “Deutscher Kulturfilm”. Some of the political expectations linked to the Kulturfilm can be exemplified in the first documentary of feature length released by the Berlinbased Universal Film Corporation in 1920. It contained elements of medical films that had been shot during the last decade of the German Empire, and it was newly composed in 1919 to meet the presumable needs of a broader public in an uncertain democratic future.

Discourse of Femininity in Advertisements in Thai Health and Beauty Magazines

This paper aims to analyze the discourse of femininity in advertisements for products and services for women published in Thai health and beauty magazines by adopting Critical Discourse Analysis approach. The research questions are: 1) what is the ideology of femininity represented in these advertisements? and 2) what are the linguistic strategies used for representing these ideological concepts? It is found that these advertisements convey an ideology of ‘desirable women’ which consists of three related concepts; 1) Desirable features for women include slim and slender figure; youthful appearance; white, clear, 1 This study is sponsored by the TRF-CHE Research Grant for New Scholar. I would like to express my gratitude to the Thailand Research Fund (TRF) and the Commission on Higher Education (CHE), Ministry of Education, for their benevolent support. I would like to thank Associate Professor Dr. Krisdawan Hongladarom, my research mentor, for her constructive research guidance and comments. Also, I would like to express my thankfulness to Assistant Professor Dr. Natthaporn Panpothong, Assistant Professor Dr. Carina Chotirawe, and the two anonymous readers for their insightful comments on this paper. The original version of this paper was presented at the International Conference on Asian Folklore 2009. July 2–3, 2009, Bangkok, Thailand. 2 Lecturer, Department of Thai, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok and radiant skin; large, firm, and shapely bust; and odorless privates. These features are construed signs of “healthy beauty.” 2) Some natural bodily conditions which are opposite to the desirable features are problems and enemies. Women with these “problems” are in trouble and lack confidence. 3) Bodily management can be done effortlessly and effectively through the magic of the advertised products and services. Thus, women should improve themselves to be better persons by selecting the right products and services. Various linguistic strategies are manipulated to represent these ideological concepts including the use of lexical selection, claiming common facts, metaphors, overstatements, rhetorical questions, presupposition manipulation, and intertextuality. As for lexical selection, positive words, as well as trendy terms such as “healthily beautiful” and “healthy”, are selected to ratify the attributes to be construed as “desirable.” Also, terms denoting problems and anxieties are used to describe some natural features, which are opposite to the “desirable” ones, as “undesirable features.” Lexical choices denoting ease, short periods of time, and potency are used to describe the effectiveness of bodily improvement processes. Factual claims are adopted to validate ideological concepts. WAR metaphors are used to construe the opposite features as enemies with whom women are fighting against. Overstatement is used to describe the delightful feeling of achieving “desirable” features and the miraculous power of the advertised products or services. Presupposition manipulation is used to imply that some features are problematical, shameful, and even diseased. This further implies that women with what is deemed to be “undesirable” features are in trouble. The use of intertextuality in the form of MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities Regular 12.2, 2009 64 inserted personal narratives and the citation of scientific facts quotation is used to suggest that the advertised products and services are the right ones for women.

On Thai Transnational Subjectivity

This paper examines the formation of transnational subjectivity through Thai political engagements in the United States (US). Thai people in the US participate in Thai homeland politics, while negotiating for a Thai immigrant identity in the US. Thai diasporas exist through political and social experiences, in which Thai communities and persons engage in homeland politics. Political acts and protests by Thais in the United States are not new, but emerged in the aftermath of the Cold War. This paper asks how political exiles, popular protests, film festivals, and satellite television challenge what Benedict Anderson has termed “long-distance” nationalism and Arjun Appadurai’s mediascapes.

"Do We Have a Winner? What the China-India Paradox May Reveal about Regime Type and Human Security"

As the concept of human security spreads in the pose-Cold War period it is often presumed that non-democracies have worse human security than democracies. But the national human security (NHS) siruation in weak or failed democracies can be even worse than in some non-democracies. So how exactly do the NHS records of stares with different regime types like non-democratic China and democratic India compare? To address this question the paper assesses and compares NHS in terms of "freedom from want" (anti-poverty security) and "freedom from fear" (anti-violence securiry). It develops a theory of how different regime types might impact NHS based on how regimes differ along the 1) democratic-authoritarian and 2) predarory-developmental dimensions. It then conducts empirical testing of the theory through a global analysis of 178 countries and case studies of contemporary China and India. The study finds that while democracies and developmental states generally have higher NHS than autocracies and predatory states, developmental authoritarian states like China on average have slightly higher human security than predatory democracies like India.

6. ‘Survival War’ In The Jungle (September 1944 - May 1945)

16. ‘Discovery’ No One Shall Remain Alive To Incur The Shame Of Becoming A Prisoner Of War, 14 January 1972