99-Year-Old
Nuremberg Prosecutor Calls Trump's Detention of Children a 'Crime Against
Humanity'
commondreams.org
Wednesday,
August 08, 2018
"What
could cause more great suffering than what they did in the name of immigration
law?"
"Nobody
wins in war; the only winner is death," Ben Ferencz told United Nations
High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein. (Screengrab)
The
last surviving prosecutor at the Nazi Nuremberg trials just offered harsh
criticism for the Trump administration's family separation crisis resulting
from its cruel immigration policies, calling it "a crime against
humanity."
Ninety-nine
year old Ben Ferencz made the comments in a recent lengthy interview with
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, which
was posted online Tuesday.
When
he learned of the family separations, "it was very painful for me,"
Ferencz told Zeid. "I knew the Statue of Liberty. I came under the Statue
of Liberty as an immigrant." Ferencz was a baby when his family came to
the United States from Romania.
He
referenced lines from Emma Lazarus's poem inscribed at the base of the
monument, including its ending: "I lift my lamp beside the golden
door!"
But
"the lamp went out when [Trump] said no immigrants allowed unless they
meet the rules that we laid down," Ferencz said. "It was outrageous.
I was furious that anybody would think that it's permissible to take young
children—5, 4, 3 years of age—and take them away from their parents and say the
parents go to another country and the children go to another country, and we'll
get you together, maybe, at some later date."
Forcing
desperate young parents to surrender custody of their weeping children because
they were unable to comply with restrictive immigration rules is a disgrace to
our great country. Such cruelty should be condemned as a crime against
humanity.
"It's
a crime against humanity. We list crimes against humanity in the Statute of the
International Criminal Court. We have 'other
inhumane acts designed to cause great suffering.' What could cause more great
suffering than what they did in the name of immigration law? It's ridiculous.
We have to change the law if it's the law," he said.
Watch
the fuller interview below: https://news.un.org/en/audio/2018/08/1016532.
Ferencz
also denounced the ongoing "glorification of war-making." He said,
"The capacity to kill human beings has grown faster than our capacity to meet
their vital and justified needs," noting, "Nobody wins in war; the
only winner is death."
He's
still expresses optimism, however, about the state of the world. But he said
that hope lies not with diplomats or national leaders. Rather, "the
students are with us, and I think the future lies with them." Some young
people, he said, "are thoughtful enough to realize they're in great
danger."
Ferencz
was just 27 years old when he was chief prosecutor at the Einsatzgruppen trial,
at which 22 Nazi officials were convicted of murdering more than 1 million
people.
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