Quotes & Sayings About Crimes Against Humanity

True, the US Government does not have moral authority to ask for an independent investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity that occurred in final stages of the civil war in Sri Lanka. This is so not just because of what they have done in Sri Lanka, but what they do all around the world. Certainly, the US enhanced their assistance in many ways during last decades to fight against the Tamil Tiger rebels. But does the Government of Sri Lanka have moral authority to deny an international investigation? The answer is no. — Nilantha Ilangamuwa

In the name of certainty, the greatest crimes have been committed against humanity. — Carlos Fuentes

It is often said that mankind needs a faith if the world is to be improved. In fact, unless the faith is vigilantly and regularly checked by a sense of man's fallibility, it is likely to make the world worse. From Torquemada to Robespierre and Hitler the men who have made mankind suffer the most have been inspired to do so have been inspired to do so by a strong faith; so strong that it led them to think their crimes were acts of virtue necessary to help them achieve their aim, which was to build some sort of an ideal kingdom on earth. — David Cecil

Dressing down is a crime against humanity. — Simon Doonan

Chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to [should] be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature; [Hansen] accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer. — James Hansen

He is War. Divisiveness. Brutality. Heinous crimes against humanity. As an event on the battlefield, and the personification of it in a cage, he is all that and more. How many humans fell before the murderous hooves of this sly horseman of the apocalypse? Nearly half the world's population, by last count. — Karen Marie Moning

Of all the black crimes that humanity is committing against the great Creation, vivisection is the blackest. — Mahatma Gandhi

Whoever coined the phrase '"I can work well under pressure" should be put on trial for crimes against Humanity. — Adriano Bulla

Speak Up Humanity..Rise and Speak Up Against China's ABUSE & CRIMES Against Tibet! If Humanity Loses Tibet ... It Will Lose it's Heart. Unfortunately ... It Will Be A Lost that Humanity Will Never Recover From! — Timothy Pina

No small part in the new awareness of the horrors of genocide was a willingness of Holocaust survivors to tell their stories. Chalk and Jonassohn note that these memoirs are historically unusual.146 Survivors of earlier genocides had treated them as humiliating defeats and felt that talking about them would only rub in history's harsh verdict. With the new humanitarian sensibilities, genocides became crimes against humanity, and survivors were witnesses for the prosecution. — Steven Pinker

While photographs certainly attest to Nazi crimes, the magnitude of Nazi genocide demands that every trace of the regime be forever remembered. The various symbols devised by the Nazi image-makers for the most sophisticated visual identity of any nation are a vivid reminder of the systematic torture and murder engaged in by this totalitarian state. These pictures, signs, and emblems are not merely clip art for contemporary designers to toy with as they please, but evidence of crimes against humanity. — Steven Heller

[In response to atrocities against Armenians] the British government issued a joint memo with France and Russia on 24 May 1915. The first draft, proposed by Russia, contained the phrase "crimes against Christianity and civilization," but France and Britain feared this would offend their own colonial Muslim populations and succeeded in changing the phrase to "crimes against humanity." This paved the way for the concept to assume its place after the war as one of the most important categories in international law. — Taner Akcam

I went straight from shenanigans to crimes against humanity. — George Carlin

That comes to about one hundred million people in India alone from 1947 to 1980. But we don't call that a crime of democratic capitalism. If we were to carry out that calculation throughout the world ... I wont even talk about it. But Sen is correct; they're not intended, just like the Chinese famine wasn't intended. But they are ideological and institutional crimes, and capitalist democracy and its advocates are responsible for them, in whatever sense supporters of so-called Communism are responsible for the Chinese famine. We don't have the entire responsibility, but certainly a large part of it — Noam Chomsky

Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring. — Edward Snowden

When I started at Freedman's, during orientation, a speaker who was an alumna and board member talked of sitting in economics class next to a shy young man with a thick West African accent. They struck up a friendship, she said, pausing to wink and nod, which I took as an insinuation of a more intimate relationship. The woman ended the story with his name, and I recognized it as the name of the warlord-turned-dictator-for-life of a small African republic. We were supposed to be impressed by the prominence of our alums, and at the same time we were encouraged to wonder what sort of world-shaker sat beside us. One day the dictator will be overthrown and executed or tried in The Hague for crimes against humanity. — Rion Amilcar Scott

Before Katrina, you didn't see criticism of the Bush administration in the media. Here they are, stealing elections, enacting illegal wars, huge crimes against humanity and democracy, and you didn't even see criticism. It wasn't until Katrina that people started to come down on them. — Ani DiFranco

Before the First World War, in many places military officers who had not taken part directly in operations became liable one way or another under the jurisprudence and military law of their own countries. But the question of prosecuting the political authorities--the people who ran the country--had not yet been considered. Calls during the war to hold the Ottoman political elite and the German kaiser personally responsible for the Armenian massacres and to prosecute them on those grounds heralded a turning point. From that point on, personal responsibility and prosecution--even of those in the political sphere--became one of the most important principles of international law. — Taner Akcam

American special relationships with Israel and Saudi Arabia blind us to their dreadful encroachments on human rights, as well as confer impunity on their leaders with respect to accountability for crimes against humanity. — Richard A. Falk

Boko Haram represents the ultimate Fatwa of our time. The question is does the sect's Fatwa represent the articulated position of the majority of Muslims in this nation? My reading over the last few years is an unambiguous no. We are undergoing an affliction that many could not have imagined about a decade ago. Let us confront the ultimate horror now. To remain inactive at this moment is to betray our children and to consolidate the ongoing crimes against our humanity. We must take the battle to the enemy ... We sent our children to school; we must bring them back to school. — Wole Soyinka

We are going to file a suit to the Hague tribunal, which must investigate into these crimes against humanity, it is a test for humanity and moral dignity. Because turning a blind eye to such horrible and shameful crimes means indulging terrorists and aggressors and violating high European values for which Ukrainians are suffering and dying. — Petro Poroshenko

Saddam has committed many crimes against humanity and against his own people. — Tom Cruise

If evil geniuses are so rare, why do so many bad people get away with so many crimes against their fellow citizens, and, when they become leaders of nations, against humanity? — Dean Koontz

Now documentary evidence is acceptable. What does that mean? If you have documentary evidence that a person served as a guard in one of the death camps and the documents have been authenticated, that is grounds to charge the person with crimes against humanity. And that's why you see the spate of trials previously, for example, in the '70s and the '80s, even in the low '90s. That was not the case until the change in the law. — Marvin Hier

I think that in any argument about right or wrong in football, a reference to Don Revie's Leeds United is the nuclear option. There is, quite simply, nowhere to go after that. There has never been a more horrible football team. The Leeds of the Seventies were found guilty, week in, week out, of crimes against humanity. — Giles Smith

17 January The Man who Executed God In 1918, in the midst of the revolutionary upheaval in Moscow, Anatoly Lunacharsky presided over the court that judged God. A Bible sat in the chair of the accused. According to the prosecutor, throughout history God had committed many crimes against humanity. The defence lawyer assigned to the case argued that God was not fit to stand trial due to mental illness; but the tribunal sentenced Him to death. — Eduardo Galeano

My response to those who still try to justify Castro's tyranny with the excuse that he has built schools and hospitals is this: Stalin, Hitler and Pinochet also built schools and hospitals, and like Castro, they also tortured and assassinated opponents. They built concentration and extermination camps and eradicated all liberties, committing the worst crimes against humanity. — Armando Valladares

CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature. — James Hansen

Whatever the political injustices are that created an environment that brought this about, it was not Americans who flew those planes into those buildings. And we should remember that. The crimes against humanity were perpetrated by people who were Arab Muslims. — Robert Fisk

'The Reader' is about a young man's experience of falling in love with somebody who, it turns out, made some choices that were unavoidable in her life that resulted in horrific crimes against humanity. — Kate Winslet

The pursuit and preservation of purity can drive prejudice and hate. Many crimes against humanity have been committed in its name. Purity is best applied to water. — Jamie Le Fay

We routinely deport hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens every year whose sole offense is that they overstayed a visa or came without the right paperwork - but people who were involved in crimes against humanity get to stay? — Jodi Picoult

The collapse of good conscience and the absence of accountability and public scrutiny have led to crimes against humanity and violations of international law. — Nelson Mandela

We are currently facing many hurdles, BUT will never lose the sight of infinite hope. — Widad Akreyi

Crimes against humanity in Gaza: is it really a 'buffer zone' - or a bigger plan?
It's time to step back and ask if we want to support Israel if it wants to eject all Palestinians from their land. — Dennis Kucinich

I believe the United States should make the protection of Syrian civilians from war crimes and crimes against humanity a higher priority. — Bob Casey Jr.

In fact, the converse is true: At a time when the United States has been called on for a level of moral leadership, vision and inspiration not seen since World War II, we cannot afford to dissemble about crimes against humanity. — Adam Schiff

in June 2016, when the UN accused the Ertrean government of committing crimes against humanity, thousands of Eritrean protested outside the UN building in Geneva. The Swiss people had been told, like everyone else in Europe, that here were poeple who had come to Switzerland because they were fleeing a government they could not live under Yet, thousands of them turned out to support that same government when someone in Europe criticized them. — Douglas Murray

I'm sure I've had my phone tapped for years, I don't think it's a crime against humanity they just ought to quit doing it, god damn it. — Cornel West

If global warming is not contained, the West will face a choice of a refugee crisis of unimaginable proportions, or direct complicity in crimes against humanity. — George Monbiot

We should not give up and say that the situation is hopeless. There is still our conscience, there is still the memory of the victims of this war, there is still our duty to try and prevent further bloodshed. We have to prosecute all the perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity. — Lidia Yusupova

Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant. I am glad he is now on trial for crimes against humanity. But, opposition to a dictator is not the measure I use when deciding whether to send our men and women in uniform off to war and possible death. — Peter DeFazio

What has happened here [aftermath of 9/11] is not war in its traditional sense. This is clearly a crime against humanity. War crimes are crimes which happen in war time. There is a confusion there. This is a crime against humanity because it is deliberate and intentional killing of large numbers of civilians for political or other purposes. That is not tolerable under the international systems. And it should be prosecuted pursuant to the existing laws. — Benjamin B. Ferencz

Justice for crimes against humanity must have no limitations. — Simon Wiesenthal

Mr. Speaker, genocide is the most potent of all crimes against humanity because it is an effort to systematically wipe out a people and a culture as well as individual lives. — Jerry Costello

At Al Jazeera, the first story I did was to sit down with a former Haitian dictator, Jean-Claude Duvalier, and grill him about crimes against humanity. Al Jazeera is giving me the opportunity to tell important stories and stories that I want to tell. — Soledad O'Brien

Beheading, burying and burning humans alive are extreme acts of cruelty. Such crimes against humanity must be investigated and the guilty parties brought to justice. May ALL victims rest in peace! — Widad Akrawi