United States of America
Practice Related to Rule 94. Slavery and Slave Trade
The US Naval Handbook (1995) provides: “International law strictly prohibits the use of the seas for the purpose of transporting slaves.”
The US Regulations Governing the Trials of Accused War Criminals in the Pacific Region I (1945) established military commissions which had jurisdiction over offences such as enslavement of the civilian population.
The US Regulations Governing the Trials of Accused War Criminals in the Pacific Region II (1945) established military commissions which had jurisdiction over offences such as enslavement of the civilian population.
In its judgment in the Pohl case in 1947, the US Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, in considering charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, held:
Slavery may exist even without torture. Slaves may be well fed, well clothed, and comfortably housed, but they are still slaves if without lawful process they are deprived of their freedom by forceful restraint. We might eliminate all proof of ill-treatment, overlook the starvation, beatings, and other barbarous acts, but the admitted fact of slavery – compulsory uncompensated labour – would still remain. There is no such thing as benevolent slavery. Involuntary servitude, even if tempered by humane treatment, is still slavery.
In the List case (The Hostages Trial)
in 1948, the US Military Tribunal at Nuremberg found the defendants guilty of committing acts of “deportation to slave labour of prisoners of war and members of the civilian populations in territories occupied by the German Armed Forces”.
In the Milch case
in 1947, the US Military Tribunal at Nuremberg found the accused guilty of war crimes in that he was responsible for the slave labour and deportation to slave labour of the civilian populations of countries and territories occupied by the German armed forces, and in the enslavement, deportation, ill-treatment and terrorization of such persons. The Tribunal found the accused guilty of crimes against humanity for the same war crimes insofar as they related to foreign nationals. Judge Fitzroy D Phillips referred to the definition of crimes in the 1945 Allied Control Council Law No. 10 and stated in his concurring opinion that the law treats as separate crimes and different types of crime deportation to slave labour (as a war crime) and enslavement (as a crime against humanity).
In its judgment in the Krauch case (The I.G. Farben Trial) in 1948, the US Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, without attempting to define what constituted “work in direct relation to war operations” within the meaning of the 1929 Geneva POW Convention, held that the use of prisoners of war in coal mines under the existing conditions amounted to a violation of the Convention and, therefore, was a war crime. With regard to the deportation of the civilian inhabitants of occupied territories to slave labour, the Tribunal held:
The use of concentration camp labour and forced foreign workers at Auschwitz, with the initiative displayed by the officials of Farben in the procurement and utilization of such labour, is a crime against humanity and, to the extent that non-German nationals were involved, also a war crime, to which the slave labour programme of the Reich will not warrant the defence of necessity.
In its judgment in the Krupp case
in 1948, the US Military Tribunal at Nuremberg referred to the statement of the law applicable to the deportation to slave labour and enslavement made by Judge Phillips in the Milch case
and found the accused guilty of forcing French prisoners of war to work in the armament industry.
In a concurrent resolution adopted in 2000, the US Congress expressed its sense concerning the war crimes committed by the Japanese military during the Second World War, in particular the enslavement of millions of Koreans.
According to the Report on US Practice, “Articles 4, 5 and 6 [of the 1977 Additional Protocol II] reflect general US policy on treatment of persons in the power of an adverse party in armed conflicts governed by common Article 3” of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The report also notes: “It is the opinio juris
of the US that persons detained in connection with an internal armed conflict are entitled to humane treatment as specified in Articles 4, 5 and 6 [of the 1977 Additional Protocol II].”