(RSF/IFEX) – On 1 April 2003, RSF called on the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission to investigate the United States (U.S.)-British coalition forces’ bombing of the Iraqi state television headquarters in Baghdad as a possible violation of international humanitarian law. It is the first time in its existence that the Commission is being petitioned. Set up […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 1 April 2003, RSF called on the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission to investigate the United States (U.S.)-British coalition forces’ bombing of the Iraqi state television headquarters in Baghdad as a possible violation of international humanitarian law.
It is the first time in its existence that the Commission is being petitioned. Set up in 1991 under the Geneva Conventions’ First Additional Protocol, it has the job of investigating alleged serious violations of international humanitarian law.
“A media outlet cannot be a military target under international law and its equipment and installations are civilian property protected as such under the Geneva Conventions,” noted RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard. “Only an objective and impartial inquiry can determine whether or not the Conventions have been violated.”
In order to have jurisdiction, the Commission has to be petitioned by one of the parties in a conflict or by one of the countries that have recognised its jurisdiction. To conduct an investigation, all belligerents must accept its authority. Among the countries involved in the Iraq war, only Australia and the United Kingdom have formally recognised the Commission’s authority, allowing an investigation to go ahead, as far as they are concerned. The U.S. and Iraq have not yet accepted the principle of such an inquiry.
RSF has called on the Commission, which is based in Berne, Switzerland, to seek consent from all the belligerents to investigate the bombing of the Iraqi television headquarters and the Iraqi Information Ministry building.
The television headquarters were badly damaged by U.S.-British coalition forces’ bombing on the evening of 25 March and the station’s broadcasts were cut off. Programmes resumed the next morning. The building also housed the Youth television station, run by President Saddam Hussein’s eldest son, Uday.
A missile hit the Information Ministry at dawn on 29 March and damaged the “tent city” built by the international media on the roof of a nearby building. Nobody was hurt but the press centre on the ground floor of the ministry building was badly damaged, with windows blown out and computers and other equipment scattered on the ground.
The Information Ministry was again bombed by coalition forces on the night of 30 to 31 March and the Iraqi government’s television station again went off the air, this time for more than 10 hours. Satellite dishes used by the station were on top of the building, and offices, studios and transmission antennae were just next door.
On 25 March, coalition spokespersons said the attack on the television building was a bid to knock out President Hussein’s means of communication with the Iraqi people and army. They referred to the film the station was showing of U.S. prisoners of war and bloody corpses said to be those of U.S. soldiers. These coalition statements indicate that Iraqi national television was deliberately attacked.
