Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission

“Why is it that the murder of one man is considered a criminal act whereas the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent people committed in wars is not considered so? ”, this is the question that popped up by the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. Due to this question, he formed the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalize War (herein referred to as KLFCW) in 2007. KLFCW subsequently formed the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission to look into the issues of war crimes.

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Dr. Mahathir is the chairman of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission. According to Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, the reason for the establishment of this KLWCC is to pay attention to victims of abuses in countries like Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories. Dr. Mahathir also contended that the formation of the Kuala Lumpur War Crime Commission can actually serve as another option other than the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Dr. Mahathir argued that the decision taken by the said International Criminal Court was unfair, unjust and favored certain parties only especially the strong Western powers.

The role of The Commission is to pick up complaints from the victim(s) of any conflict on crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of genocide whereby The Commission will subsequently carry out the investigation and make a report of its findings where The Commission might hold prosecution or extend the investigation for more evidence. One of the significant prosecutions brought up by The Commission is the charges against George W Bush and Anthony L.

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Blair, former Heads of Government of the United States of America and the United Kingdom respectively.

The charge on them is for the commission of a crime against peace in which they have planning, preparation and thus invaded the sovereign state of Iraq on 19 March 2003 in violation of the United Nations Charter and international law. The particulars of the Charge state, among others, that on 19 March 2003, the two accused launched a war against Iraq without the sanction of the United Nations. The said war crimes charges complied with the due legal process as The Commission had done collecting war victims’ complaints and also detailed investigation and hence institute the formal charges.

Following the events, the final judgment formulated by the tribunal to try former United States President George W. Bush and his associates (former US Vice President Richard Cheney; former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; Counsel to President Bush, Alberto Gonzales; General Counsel to Vice-President, David Addington; General Counsel to Secretary of Defense William Haynes II; Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, and former Deputy Assistant Attorney-General John Choon Yoo, all of whom served in the Bush administration at the time) was released in 2012 whereby the 8 accused were charged with the crime of torture and war crimes.

In a nutshell, The Commission serves to give justice to the thousands of victims in the war. The Commission also promotes a world without war, a world with peace. The Commission is neutral in the sense that it is not affected by a major Western power in investigation and also deriving its judgment. “War must be outlawed. That will have to be our struggle for now. We must struggle for justice and freedom from oppression, from economic hegemony. But we must remove the threat of war first.