“Economic coercive measures are crimes against humanity”
Reports from the “International People’s Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism” (Part 2)
(11 April 2023) (Edit.) The opening of the “International People’s Tri-bunal on U.S. Imperialism – Sanctions, Blockades and Economic Coercive Measures” took place in New York on 28 January 2023,1 (see Box on the right). The Tribunal will last about six months and end in July 2023 with a closing ceremony at the Simón Bolívar Institute in Caracas, Venezuela.
In a first article, "Swiss Standpoint" has already published the presentation of Alfred de Zayas, former independent UN expert on international order, in which he, among other things, clarified the term “sanctions”.2 (see Box on page 2)
In a second article on the topic, "Swiss Standpoint” now publishes excerpts from the speech of Sara Flounders,* a prominent organiser and speaker at the Tribunal. She is also the coordinator of the “Sanctions Kill” campaign.
* * *
Sara Flounders: The “Sanctions Kill” Campaign
Sara Flounders started her speech by linking the two words “sanctions” and “kill”, then she introduced the “Sanctions Kill” campaign.
“When you hear of sanctions, think ‘kill’ because sanctions kill as an actual. We wanted to make sanctions a word hated as the word napalm, where the very image is deadly. And it has succeeded pretty well. […]
The campaign began as an effort of many different solidarity organisations to come together and explain a common U.S. war tactic that’s silent and deadly and we focused on how to explain and establish a collaboration, an exchange among the countries and solidarity groups grappling separately with understanding these strangling measures. We began with a research project to gather a list of countries under U.S., European Union and UK sanctions as well as UN Security Agencies’ sanctions; 13 countries under UN sanctions, demanded by the U.S. […]
International People’s Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism – Sanctions, and Economic Coercive Measures
The aims are stated in the accompanying booklet: “We will use the tribunal as an organizing, political education, and legal tool. We have two legal objectives: to identify legal causes of action to deploy in international and U.S. courts, and to challenge both unilateral coercive measures (including targeted sanctions) and multilateral coercive measures brought under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter. […]
We view sanctions as one of the key tools of U.S. imperialism, we will determine the impact of sanctions on various aspects of life, with a focus on social, political, economic, and ecological issues.3
We will hold hearings on the impact of sanctions on 16 countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.4 During the country hearings, expert witnesses, victims and legal experts will present evidence against the U.S.”5
How are sanctions imposed and enforced?
There are sanctions on distinct pieces of legislation, there are ‘policy riders’ on miscellaneous bills that are rushed through U.S. Congress; others are passed by executive authority measures. Sanctions can be imposed by different UN agencies, the U.S. treasury department, the U.S. department of commerce, the U.S. department of State and then enforced by U.S. SWIFT banking codes that block every transaction.
Then the U.S. demands that every other country must comply or face sanctions or fines. It’s escalating, escalating, escalating. […]”
Testimonies on effects of sanctions
Sara Flounders can personally testify because she has visited many different countries over decades of imposing U.S. wars. Countries suffering from total dislocation of U.S. sanctions and so she has seen first-hand the crises that are always hitting the most vulnerable.
“Sanctions create millions of small personal crises. There’s no essential medicine for diabetes, high blood pressure, small infections. A broken bone is suddenly a death sentence. Polluted untreated water, because there is no chlorine, is deadly and so is a multi-story building that’s suddenly without elevators or water pumps.
When the U.S. government seizes funds in a national treasury, it’s impossible to pay medical staff, sanitation workers, or teachers. Sanctions shut down all financial transactions: imports and exports of medicine, food, preservatives, spare parts, batteries, chips, x-ray machines, syringes, fertilisers, pesticides. The lists are endless.
And sudden scarcity always creates wild hyper-inflation. It’s a brutal form of war. It’s an anti-personnel bomb going off in every home and it’s meant to divide people in frantic ways. It creates waves of refugees and desperate migrants. And that’s its intention. …
“Sanctions” versus “Unilateral coercive measures”
In the question-and-answer section of the event, Alfred de Zayas stresses that the term “sanction” is misleading, because this People's Tribunal is about illegal “Unilateral coercive measures” (UCM). The USA, Canada, Great Britain have absolutely no right to punish other States. The term “sanction” [= punishment] implies that the sanctioning State is morally entitled to do so because the sanctioned State is guilty of some wrongdoing. This is brazen propaganda. The only legal sanctions under international law are those approved by the UN Security Council – and even those were unjustifiable, for example in the case of Iraq from 1991-2003.
Crimes against humanity
When we speak of ‘crimes against humanity’ that really defines it. I’ve seen the impact of U.S. sanctions in Lebanon, in Sudan, in Syria with a third of the population displaced refugees. In Gaza in the refugee camps where every calorie is allocated by the Zyonists, meant as a starvation diet, intentionally. The helplessness, it stays with you. You remember it long after. […]
In Venezuela that had built a free health care system, small health clinics that were on almost every street in dense urban areas and in the barrios, dispensing free medication, monitoring blood pressure and diet. Suddenly, when the U.S. sanctions hit, the shelves were bare. There wasn’t a gauze pad, or an aspirin. They had to close. They had nothing, nothing they could offer people.
About Cuba: Cuba provides more medical staff than the World Health Organisation in Africa. They have incredible programmes of medical research. But Cuba couldn’t deliver to its own population. The Covid vaccines that they had developed, could not be distributed without an international campaign to send syringes. That’s sanctions. ...
Strategy: corporate media pronounce “National security threat”
The U.S. imposes sanctions by first using the corporate media to promote a historical campaign that the targeting country is a national security threat. Even Nicaragua was declared a national security threat. The U.S., a superpower! But let us be honest. Even Nicaragua is a threat to U.S. imperialist domination. It is. Why? Because they’re offering their people, their population free health care, free education and their success exposes what U.S. imperialism is not doing what it could be doing: solving real problems. And that’s why they’re threatened. […]
Reparations owed
Sanctions are racist. Overwhelmingly, sanctions target people of colour in the global south. …
And I want to say that all those sanctioned countries, they are owed reparations. Reparations for enforced underdevelopment. Just as the African people in the U.S. and indigenous people are also owed reparations. […]
U.S.. Many of them are former colonies of European countries.
(Picture ma)
Economic warfare
Intensifying U.S. sanctions imposed on a third of humanity send shock waves to the whole world economy. But now, people of the world are contesting this brutal from of economic warfare. Dollar dominance is being challenged as a currency of global trade.
Sanctions have boomeranged back on the U.S. and the European Union countries with inflation, supply chain shortages, a looming recession causing hardship at home. And the U.S. response is doubling down on harsher sanctions and expanding war. […]
So, what are the implications of this?
The EU has cut themselves off at the U.S. demand from the cheap gas traded with Russia. There’s a threat really of famine on a global scale. The increasing sanctions on China have a destructive impact on science, on technology on a global scale. And it’s breaking decades of trade.
The global south – the countries of Africa, Latin America and most countries of Asia, the formerly colonise world, are no longer complying with the thousands of U.S. and European nations’ sanctions that were imposed. […]
“Sanctions: A wrecking ball in a global economy”
Sara Flounders has co-authored the book “Sanctions: A wrecking ball in a global economy” which has just released the 2nd edition.
This book has been translated into 15 languages. It is accompanied by power point toolkits for teaching the topic “sanctions” in schools. There are additional webinars with representatives giving testimony from many sanctioned countries, graphics and more.
An important part is the first page with a list of the 40 (now 41) sanctioned countries and some of the agencies and their websites that do the imposing of sanctions.
No longer a unipolar world
And that is a new day. This is a big change. It’s happening especially with the sanctions on Russia and China. But you can see it with the trade with Iran and Venezuela, with the constant exchanges now with Syria, with whole new arrangements.
The ability of the U.S. to create economic chaos, it’s just not succeeding. The ability of many countries to find ways to connect with each other to use new currencies despite the power of the U.S. dollar. You can see it now in all the different countries. And the Tribunal is part of this new period.
The sanctioned countries have not collapsed. There are new trade agreements, new levels of cooperation. BRICS, Belt and Road, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. This is no longer a unipolar world.
The huge contradictions are clashing. But this we know that the sanctioned countries are determined to resist U.S. domination. Even with few resources they are demanding respect for sovereignty and independence. Respect for each other’s development paths.
So, it’s multi-polarity versus U.S. hegemony. But we should be confident that now everyone knows U.S. imperialism is not all-powerful. They create great pain in Syria, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Ukraine – but they’re not winning.
And our role is to defend the resistance and be part of it.
| * Sara Flounders is an American political writer active in progressive and anti-war organizing since the 1960s. She is a member of the Secretariat of Workers World Party, as well as a principal leader of the International Action Center. Sara can be reached at flounders.sara16@gmail.com. |
(Text compiled by Ursula Cross)
“We don’t deserve this!” – The impact and Consequences of US SanctionsThis report – authored by Rick Sterling, John Philpot and David Paul with the support of other members of the “Sanctions Kill” Coalition and numerous individual persons from sanctioned countries – has been published under the title “We don’t deserve this!” – The Impact and Consequences of US Sanctions on https://sanctionskill.org/impact. |
1 https://sanctionstribunal.org/opening-event/
2 https://swiss-standpoint.ch/news-detailansicht-en-recht/the-united-nations-and-unilateral-coercive-measures.html, 7 February 2023
3 https://sanctionstribunal.org/ booklet
4 ibid. Ethiopia, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Palestine, Nicaragua, North Korea, Sudan, Cuba, Venezuela, Yemen, and Zimbabwe, pg. 3
5 ibid Country Hearings Schedule, pg. 5