Taken from a communique by "Confronting Empire":
Henry Kissinger is scheduled to speak in Grand Rapids on Tuesday, March 8 at 8pm in the Ambassador ballroom of the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel. He was invited by the Gerald R. Ford Foundation, the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies, and Grand Valley State University.
The West Michigan based Confronting Empire group is calling on all area law enforcement agencies to arrest Mr. Kissinger for Crimes Against Humanity, as is dictated by International Law under the Geneva Convention. Article 6, clause 2 of the US Constitution says, "all treaties made under the authority of the United States shall be the supreme law of the land." The United Nations Charter and the Geneva Convention are both treaties signed by the US.
Both British human rights activists and a Spanish judge have attempted to arrest or question Kissinger in recent years on war crimes, and in the case of the Spanish Judge, to question Kissinger on his role in the CIA coup in Chile that put the dictator Augusto Pinochet in power.
What follows are the specific crimes that we are charging Mr. Kissinger with, along with source material, particularly US government declassified documents:
VIETNAM: Kissinger scuttled peace talks in 1968, paving the way for Richard Nixon's victory in the presidential race. Half the battle deaths in Vietnam took place between 1968 and 1972, not to mention the millions of civilians throughout Indochina who were killed.
CAMBODIA: Kissinger persuaded Nixon to widen the war with massive bombing of Cambodia and Laos. No one had suggested we go to war with either of these countries. By conservative estimates, the U.S. killed 600,000 civilians in Cambodia and another 350,000 in Laos.
BANGLADESH: Using weapons supplied by the U.S., General Yahya Khan overthrew the democratically elected government and murdered at least half a million civilians in 1971. In the White House, the National Security Council wanted to condemn these actions. Kissinger refused. Amid the killing, Kissinger thanked Khan for his "delicacy and tact."
CHILE: Kissinger helped to plan the 1973 U.S.-backed overthrow of the democratically elected Salvador Allende and the assassination of General Rene Schneider. Right-wing general Augusto Pinochet then took over. Moderates fled for their lives. Hit men' financed by the CIA, tracked down Allende supporters and killed them. These attacks included the car bombing of Allende's foreign minister, Orlando Letelier, and an aide, Ronni Moffitt, at Sheridan Circle in downtown Washington.
EAST TIMOR: In 1975 President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger met with Indonesia's corrupt strongman Suharto. Kissinger told reporters the U.S. wouldn't recognize the tiny country of East Timor, which had recently won independence from the Dutch. Within hours Suharto launched an invasion, killing, by some estimates, 200,000 civilians.
Source Documents:
- Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents relating to the Military Coup, 1970-1976
- The National Security Archive: Secret U.S. Documents on Chile
- National Security Archive: East Timor Revisited
- Wanted: Henry Kissinger
- Third World Traveler: Cambodia 1955 - 1973
- Right Web: Henry Kissinger Profile
- Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal, 1950 No. 82
For a "Wanted Poster" of Henry Kissinger, download PDF file here.
"It is an act of insanity and national humiliation to have a law prohibiting the President from ordering assassination."
- Henry Kissinger
In the minutes of a secret 1975 meeting of the National Security Council attended by President Ford reveal Henry Kissinger grumbling. The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby, by John Prados, Oxford University Press, 2003
