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Parent | Herald-Trib Scores Tojo's Legal Stand News Article |
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Date | |
Language | English |
Collection | C.W.J. Phelps Collection |
Box | Box 2 |
Folder | Second Phelps Scrap Book |
Repository | University of Virginia Law Library |
Herald-Trib Scores Tojo’s Legal Stand
New York Paper Calls Challenge to Court’s Jurisdiction ‘Ironic’
New York, May 10 (UP) – The New York Herald-Tribune said in an editorial it was “ironic” that former Premier Tojo and 27 other Japanese war criminal suspects were “challenging” the International War Crimes Tribunal’s jurisdiction.
The newspaper pointed out how “without semblance of legal right,” and murder to half of Asia. It said they slaughtered thousands of innocent Chinese, wiping out entire villages, arresting and imprisoning citizens without the “slightest regard for law.”
The editorial declared the effect of the trial, especially on Asia, “should dishes a precedent which may deter aggressors in the future, but brings the pattern of justice to an area of the world in which there have been few restraints on possessors of power.”
It asserted that the trial will be beneficial because “even in China where human rights are given more respect than in Japan, there are not many citizens who understand the advantages to be gained from rule by law in preference [preferencial] to rule by men.”
The Herald-Tribune noted the case of a high Chinese official who, urging the immediate execution of a criminal who had just been caught, said there was no need to bring the accused before a judge because “the man in guilty.”
The editorial concluded that “it may be a generation or two before all officials . . . . comprehend that guilty or not, a man charged with crime should have his day in court.”