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

104 Richard Pankhurst
international point of view. Crimes committed by the Italians during that
period could not properly be re g a rded as ‘war crimes.’ An additional arg u-
ment against Ethiopian re p resentation is that the Governments concerned,
and in particular the Soviet Government, have always attached importance
to limiting discussions on war crimes to the Allied Governments most
d i rectly concerned with the question. If Ethiopia we re admitted, it might
be difficult to refuse requests for admission from other members of the
United Nations. Finally, there is the consideration that an Ethiopian re p-
re s e n t a t i ve would probably not be able to contribute much to the
Commission’s proceedings, although this might be got over by the appointment
of a non-Ethiopian international law yer to re p resent them, as wa s
done in the Abyssinian case that came before the League of Nations in
1 9 3 5 / 6 .
He then came down firmly in favour of the option of maintaining exclusion,
without either saying so, or explaining why:
It is I think clear that no advantage and considerable embarrassment
would result from including Ethiopia on the Commission and that we
should certainly experience considerable difficulty in persuading many
other members of the Commission to accept her. It is quite logical to rule
out from consideration war crimes committed in the Italian conquest. As
regards the Ethiopian campaign of 1940–41, I have not seen any suggestion
that war crimes were committed by the Italians. In fact, probably the
Italians were the victims more often than the perpetrators of atrocities
during this campaign. In any case the position in regard to this is set out
by the first sentence of Mr Hall’s statement of November 2nd.
Hall observed that the commission might be prepared to consider information
submitted by the Ethiopian Government “regarding crimes committed against
their nationals by our common enemies during the course of the present war.”
Roberts accordingly recommended that the Government should state, “in
reply to inquiries, that ‘all questions relating to the constitution and functions of
the United Nations Commission are matters for all the Allied Governments re p-
resented thereon, and not for H[is] M[ajesy’s] G[overnment] alone to decide.’ ”