Just how little importance America ascribes to International Law and how shallow her cries to other members of the international community are with to respect to obeying international law is often ignored by those who like to champion America as the leader of the free, just and developed world. Here are some related but not identical recent high profile events involving American claims and counter claims of how and where diplomatic immunity is or is not applied:
1. In 2012, An American Civil judge rejected former IMF-head Dominique Strauss-Kahn's s claim of diplomatic immunity in his effort to dismiss a civil suit filed by a hotel housekeeper who claimed that the French leader had sexually assaulted her. The charges against him were eventually dropped by the prosecution it self.
2. Summer of 2013, BBC quoted then British Foreign Secretary William Hague as saying that U.S. Embassy had yet to pay 63,000 congestion fines; American officials claimed diplomatic immunity shielded them from the charges.
2. Hillary Clinton her self received a parking ticket in London in the same year for $125 after her security detail parked her limo near an event but failed to pay the required fee for the spot.
3. This is the same Hillary Clinton who as as a junior senator from New York wrote of her outrage at $21.3 million in unpaid traffic (mostly parking) violations by diplomats who were stationed at the United Nations in New York. She argued that their diplomatic immunity should be revoked but later on as the Secretary of State, she insisted on invoking diplomatic immunity for Mr. Raymond Davis, who murderer two young innocent men in Lahore in broad daylight. Davis was at best a contract employe of American diplomatic staff in Pakistan and had a very weak if any legal basis for claim to diplomatic immunity.
4. After Davis incident, an American diplomatic vehicle which came to escort Davis from the scene of the crime killed another innocent person because of driving at high speed in the wrong direction.
5. Now the American administration is claiming that a much more senior diplomat, in Indian Deputy Counsel General Devyani Khobragade, who they recently arrested on charges of visa fraud (she was not paying her nanny the minimum wage as required by US Law) is not protected by diplomatic immunity, but simply by consular immunity which only gives her protection from crimes she may have committed in the course of her work as a diplomat, but not at any crimes she may have committed outside of her work. This time they may actually have a legal basis.
My point here is not just in highlighting the American double standards in invoking and revoking diplomatic privileges irrespective of the nature of the crimes involved, but I'll make that point first in any case. In more than one example from recent history American officials have insisted on revoking immunity or denying it where it applies for crimes committed on American soil by diplomatic staff of other countries, whether they are as minor as parking violations or more serious as rape or labor abuse . On the other they have insisted that their diplomatic staff and even those who aren't really staff members (but anyone who is involved with American diplomatic staff in anyway) should be protected and forgiven for even the worst kind of crimes such as manslaughter.
My second point here is to assess the whole point of immunity. As International Law students we were told that diplomatic immunity as originally conceived was meant to facilitate the work of a diplomat without undue interference from the host country, and especially to protect them from any kind of persecution if the relations between the states involved turns bitter. It was never meant as license to flagrantly violate universal principles of justice and morality (forget local and international law). But that's exactly how diplomats seemed to have behaved in these examples of abuse of these privileges.
And its not just the Americans really, the abuse of immunity privileges is so rampant every where in the world that you could rack up tons of examples (for a quick glimpse just wikipedia diplomatic immunity for a lengthy list of abuse cases). Although parking violations and car accidents are the most well documented form of immunity abuse, other diplomats have used immunity to get away without paying rents, for smoking in aircraft, domestic abuse against children, physical assault, rape and a host of other fairly serious crimes.
In theory such abuses are against both the letter and spirit of the Vienna Convention which quite explicitly states that "without prejudice to their privileges and immunities, it is the duty of all persons enjoying such privileges and immunities to respect the laws and regulations of the receiving State.". But in practicality it seems diplomat treat their immunity as more akin to impunity.
It is high time for some of these absurd and excessive privileges to be either be completely revoked or seriously re-assessed in the light of these abuses, especially as they seem to be applied only selectively by countries and nearly always result in situations where diplomatic back pressure is used to either completely bypass legal protocols and technicalities or overlook or even change the facts of any case. The victims of such crimes (where they exist) are left with very little hope.
No country, America or otherwise, should be in a position where it has to tolerate a criminal amongst its ranks and wait for the whim of the host country before it can persecute it (especially more so if it involved a crime they committed against a citizen of the host state). The idea in theory is that states do this on a reciprocity basis; i.e. you give diplomats of a country these privileges so that your diplomats can enjoy the same privileges in other countries (but the selective way countries, an in particular the Unites States, apply this law) is making a mockery of the whole notion of diplomatic immunity.
1. In 2012, An American Civil judge rejected former IMF-head Dominique Strauss-Kahn's s claim of diplomatic immunity in his effort to dismiss a civil suit filed by a hotel housekeeper who claimed that the French leader had sexually assaulted her. The charges against him were eventually dropped by the prosecution it self.
2. Summer of 2013, BBC quoted then British Foreign Secretary William Hague as saying that U.S. Embassy had yet to pay 63,000 congestion fines; American officials claimed diplomatic immunity shielded them from the charges.
2. Hillary Clinton her self received a parking ticket in London in the same year for $125 after her security detail parked her limo near an event but failed to pay the required fee for the spot.
3. This is the same Hillary Clinton who as as a junior senator from New York wrote of her outrage at $21.3 million in unpaid traffic (mostly parking) violations by diplomats who were stationed at the United Nations in New York. She argued that their diplomatic immunity should be revoked but later on as the Secretary of State, she insisted on invoking diplomatic immunity for Mr. Raymond Davis, who murderer two young innocent men in Lahore in broad daylight. Davis was at best a contract employe of American diplomatic staff in Pakistan and had a very weak if any legal basis for claim to diplomatic immunity.
4. After Davis incident, an American diplomatic vehicle which came to escort Davis from the scene of the crime killed another innocent person because of driving at high speed in the wrong direction.
5. Now the American administration is claiming that a much more senior diplomat, in Indian Deputy Counsel General Devyani Khobragade, who they recently arrested on charges of visa fraud (she was not paying her nanny the minimum wage as required by US Law) is not protected by diplomatic immunity, but simply by consular immunity which only gives her protection from crimes she may have committed in the course of her work as a diplomat, but not at any crimes she may have committed outside of her work. This time they may actually have a legal basis.
My point here is not just in highlighting the American double standards in invoking and revoking diplomatic privileges irrespective of the nature of the crimes involved, but I'll make that point first in any case. In more than one example from recent history American officials have insisted on revoking immunity or denying it where it applies for crimes committed on American soil by diplomatic staff of other countries, whether they are as minor as parking violations or more serious as rape or labor abuse . On the other they have insisted that their diplomatic staff and even those who aren't really staff members (but anyone who is involved with American diplomatic staff in anyway) should be protected and forgiven for even the worst kind of crimes such as manslaughter.
My second point here is to assess the whole point of immunity. As International Law students we were told that diplomatic immunity as originally conceived was meant to facilitate the work of a diplomat without undue interference from the host country, and especially to protect them from any kind of persecution if the relations between the states involved turns bitter. It was never meant as license to flagrantly violate universal principles of justice and morality (forget local and international law). But that's exactly how diplomats seemed to have behaved in these examples of abuse of these privileges.
And its not just the Americans really, the abuse of immunity privileges is so rampant every where in the world that you could rack up tons of examples (for a quick glimpse just wikipedia diplomatic immunity for a lengthy list of abuse cases). Although parking violations and car accidents are the most well documented form of immunity abuse, other diplomats have used immunity to get away without paying rents, for smoking in aircraft, domestic abuse against children, physical assault, rape and a host of other fairly serious crimes.
In theory such abuses are against both the letter and spirit of the Vienna Convention which quite explicitly states that "without prejudice to their privileges and immunities, it is the duty of all persons enjoying such privileges and immunities to respect the laws and regulations of the receiving State.". But in practicality it seems diplomat treat their immunity as more akin to impunity.
It is high time for some of these absurd and excessive privileges to be either be completely revoked or seriously re-assessed in the light of these abuses, especially as they seem to be applied only selectively by countries and nearly always result in situations where diplomatic back pressure is used to either completely bypass legal protocols and technicalities or overlook or even change the facts of any case. The victims of such crimes (where they exist) are left with very little hope.
No country, America or otherwise, should be in a position where it has to tolerate a criminal amongst its ranks and wait for the whim of the host country before it can persecute it (especially more so if it involved a crime they committed against a citizen of the host state). The idea in theory is that states do this on a reciprocity basis; i.e. you give diplomats of a country these privileges so that your diplomats can enjoy the same privileges in other countries (but the selective way countries, an in particular the Unites States, apply this law) is making a mockery of the whole notion of diplomatic immunity.
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