Italian Fascist War Crimes in Ethiopia - Societa italiana di storia ...

Italian Fascist War Crimes in Ethiopia 93
exclude Ethiopia, but did not relish explaining its reasons. Allen was obliged to
draw up a further lengthy Foreign Office memorandum, on 31 October.
He began by discussing the commission’s origins. “The proposal for the United
Nations Commission for War Crimes aro s e,” he noted, “from the initiative of the
Allied Governments of the occupied countries of Euro p e. It was decided from the
beginning,” he continued, “that our discussions should be limited to those
G overnments and to the three other major Powers [i.e., the United States, the
S oviet Union, and China] and the Dominion Governments.” Membership thus
consisted, besides Britain, of (1) exiled European Governments under Axis domination;
(2) the three other Great Powers; and (3) the British Dominions.
Ethiopia was not mentioned by name, but did not fall within any of these fairly
a r b i t rary categories.
Elaborating on the criteria chosen for membership he added: “Apart from
reasons of practical convenience we were influenced in maintaining this attitude
by the views of the Soviet Government, which informed us that they felt
that there were two necessary qualifications for membership of any country,
namely, that such country should be actively fighting the Axis Powers and
should have ‘suffered’ at the hands of the enemy.” Allen’s implication was that
Ethiopia, by then liberated, was no longer “a c t i vely fighting.” (The British
G overnment had re j e c t ed an Ethiopian offer of troops). 24 Whether the country
had “suffered” sufficiently was left unstated. Though using the Soviets to
justify Ethiopia’s exclusion, he explained that they had later also been excluded.
“Difficulties” over representation of their constituent Republics, he stated, had
caused the commission to be established “without the Soviet Government’s
participation.”
Coming finally to the question of Ethiopia’s exclusion, and to the commission’s
competence to consider crimes prior to 1939, he argued (a) that Ethiopia
should not be a commission member, and (b) that Italian crimes committed in
Ethiopia prior to Italy’s entry into the European war should not be considered.
He thus declared:
As far as Ethiopia is concerned there can I think be no question of her
being admitted to the Commission itself. Nor, according to our present
proposals, will the Commission be prepared to consider war crimes committed
in Abyssinia by the Italians before the outbreak of the present war.