Legal expert backs attempt to block Trident renewal
Protesting ‘is the right of every citizen’, says judge

1st February 2009
By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor
Sunday Herald
 

THE UK government's plan to maintain nuclear weapons on the Clyde will this week be condemned as cruel, criminal and barbaric by one of the world's leading legal experts.

At a major conference discussing Trident on Tuesday, the former vice-president of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), judge Christopher Weeramantry [...] will back attempts by the Scottish government to remove nuclear warheads from Scottish soil.

He will also argue that non-violent resistance to nuclear weapons can be justified in international law. Trying to protect humanity from the ultimate catastrophe of a nuclear war is every citizen's right, he will say.

Judge Weeramantry presided at the international court at The Hague when it issued a historic opinion on the legal status of nuclear weapons in 1996. Before that he was a justice at the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka.

On Tuesday, he will be in Edinburgh to deliver one of the main addresses at a conference on international law and Trident organised by the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy and others. The Sunday Herald has seen an advance copy of his presentation.

Its 16 pages offer a devastating and eloquent indictment of the possession, development and threatened use of nuclear weapons. States such as the UK which found their defence on such weapons are guilty of a callous brutality far worse than ancient tyrants such as Genghis Khan, Weeramantry argues.

"The self-appointed nuclear policemen of the world need to realise how their actions totally destroy their credibility there cannot be one law for some and another law for others."

The right of nations such as Scotland to challenge the deployment of weapons which threaten their people, their environment and future generations is undeniable, Weeramantry insists. "These are all areas which must necessarily be concerns of the parliament of Scotland," he says.

Scotland's fishing grounds, its food chain and its cultural heritage are all at risk, he maintains. "Scotland will be a target for retaliation if the Trident missile should ever be used."

Weeramantry recounts a series of deformities claimed to be suffered by people on the Marshall Islands, in the Pacific Ocean, and elsewhere where nuclear bombs have been exploded.

"Anti-nuclear civil resistance is the right of every citizen of this planet. For the nuclear threat, attacking as it does every core concept of human rights, calls for urgent and universal action for its prevention."

The UK government may also be in breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by planning to replace the Trident missile system, according to another legal expert. Any "bolstering" of nuclear weapons would undermine the treaty's disarmament provisions, says a paper from Mohammed Bedjaoui, a former president of the ICJ.

Similar views are likely to be voiced by British legal experts, including Phillipe Sands QC from the Matrix chambers in London. He authored a legal opinion for Greenpeace in 2006 which concluded that replacing Trident was likely to be against the law.

Dr Rebecca Johnson, one of the organisers of Tuesday's event, said: "As a country where nuclear warheads are stored and nuclear-armed submarines are deployed, Scotland has many responsibilities. We hope that this conference will explore the legal situation regarding the deployment, use and renewal of Trident and look at what international law requires governments and citizens to do about nuclear weapons."

Last April, the Scottish government set up a Trident Working Group to investigate ways of getting rid of nuclear weapons using devolved powers. The group is due to report in the spring.

In June last year, the Scottish parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of a motion calling on the UK government not to go ahead with the planned replacement of Trident.

 
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