Kriegsverbrecherprozesse im Schatten von Dekolonisierung und Kaltem Krieg: Asien 1945-1954/ Decolonization, Cold War and War Crimes trials in Asia after 1945

Kriegsverbrechertribunale in Asien nach 1945; War crimes in Asia after 1945

War Crimes trials after 1945 in East Asia can be understood as sites of construction of international law in a landscape of weakening European empires and the emergence of Asian powers, where the politics of Cold War and decolonization became sharply intertwined. The war crimes trials played an important role in determining the moral cast of the independence struggles. During the trials it became evident that the whole western state construction project was fundamentally in conflict with the basis of colonialism in international law. Through these contestations between colonizers and colonized, non-European societies offered important spaces for framing international law. Second, non-European individuals and communities constructed transcultural norms of international law by hybridizing European and non-European concepts. These hybridized norms ultimately played an important role in forming the conceptual genealogies of decolonization, which in Asia took place simultaneously with the War Crimes Trials against the defeated Japanese.

Thus, in this conference particular focus is played on the setting of War Crimes Trials in East, South-East, and South Asia, their impact on global politics, and on the movements of legal personnel and concepts associated with the trials between Europe and Asia. The circulations of judges produced paradigmatic shifts in ways of legitimating colonial rule or justifying new power relations, as well as in producing new discourses of decolonization and political alliances within the Cold War.

Pressemitteilung: http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/presse/news2014/pm20141022_kriegsverbrechertribunale-in-asien.html

Webseite: http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/research/conferences/rethinking-justice.html

Dr. Kerstin von Lingen