International and Transnational Crime

Final Paper: International and Transnational Crime
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International and Transnational Crimes
International crimes are of concern globally and are punishable despite where they take place in the world. These crimes include genocide, humanitarian crimes, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. These crimes relate directly to humanitarian crises as they occur during conflicts. The International Criminal Law (ICL) governs the procedures in the international courts and tribunals. The goal of ICL is to punish acts that affect human rights concerning security, life, and liberty. The International Criminal Court (ICC) investigates and tries people charged with international crimes. The ICC ensures that people who may enjoy legal immunity in their states face the law for international crimes.
Definition of Neutralization Theory
The neutralization theory states that individuals develop techniques to enable them to engage in unlawful deeds. People are conscious about their moral obligation to do what is right; therefore, engaging in crime requires silencing the urge to do right (Maruna & Copes, 2017). David Matza and Gresham Sykes developed this theory in 1957 to explain delinquency. Criminals try to neutralize their acts by using justifications to support their behavior. A person planning to commit a crime feels guilty in normal circumstances, which stops them from going ahead. For delinquents to participate in immoral acts and then switch back to conventionally acceptable behavior, they apply neutralization techniques. Some of the techniques delinquents and criminals use to justify their unlawful actions involve negation of responsibility, refutation of the victim, negation of injury, rebuking of condemners, and referral to highly placed loyalties (Sykes & Matza, 1957).
The denial of injury approach involves the offender insisting that their deeds did not cause trauma to the victim. They may also deny responsibility by posing as victims and proposing that the situations were beyond their control, forcing them to commit crimes. In this case, the victim may argue that it was not their fault that they engaged in the crime. Another neutralization technique is the refutation of the victim, where the accused insists that the offended deserved the unlawful acts done unto them. The offender may condemn the condemners by insisting that those who blame them do it out of malice to shift the blame from themselves. In the appeal to higher loyalties, the accused maintains that their offense is for the benefit of others, and they were indebted to commit the crime. Sykes and Matza further wrote that most delinquents experienced a sense of shame or remorse about their crimes.
International Crime: Genocide
Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin came up with the term genocide following, to some extent, the Nazi directives to exterminate Jewish people during the Holocaust. 'Genos-' means race, and '-cide' means killing. In 1946, the United Nations General Assembly acknowledged genocide as a criminal offense under International law. Genocide was codified as an independent crime in 1948, during the Genocide Convention. Many countries around the world have criminalized genocide in their domestic laws. 
The Genocide Convention described genocide as killing members of an ethnic or religious group, causing severe physical or mental harm to individuals belonging to the group, enacting plans to prevent reproduction among them, putting children of the group in the custody of another group by force, or creating an environment aimed to bring physical annihilation of the group (Weiss-Wendt, 2017). For the crime to come off as genocide, the court must first establish the crime. The perpetrators of genocides target specific groups such as religious and racial groups. The target group should be easily identifiable, for instance, within certain geographical boundaries. 
An example of genocide is the Rwanda genocide which occurred in 1994, lasting one hundred days. Hutus made the majority of the population in Rwanda, but the Tutsi minority ruled the country. The labeling based on ethnic background caused conflict, as the Hutus believed that they should be the rulers. In 1959, the Hutus overthrew the Tutsis, who fled to neighboring Uganda. Hutu rulers discriminated against Tutsis, labeling them as rebels. The Tutsi exiles formed a Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) group, which went into war with the Rwandan government. The war broke out in 1990, leading to anti-Tutsi propaganda to label them as dangerous traitors. The battle continued until 1993, when they made peace. In 1994, an aircraft carrying two presidents from Rwanda and Burundi faced gunshot attacks, killing everyone. Hutus blamed RPF and organized a slaughter campaign. The RPF accused the Hutus of shooting down the plane as an excuse for the genocide.
The Hutus organized themselves in militias to kill government opponents and their families. By the end of the one hundred days of the killing spree, eight hundred thousand Tutsis and moderate Hutus had lost their lives. The RPF, backed by Uganda's military, invaded Rwanda and moved towards the capital, Kigali, forcing the Hutus to flee to the neighboring countries; the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, and Burundi. The RPF went after Hutus in DR Congo to pursue Interahamwe, the militia group responsible for killing Tutsis during the genocide. The RPF welcomed militias fighting against Hutus and the Congolese army, which supported the Hutus. The rebel groups took over Kinshasa, Congo's capital, and overthrew the government. The militia groups overthrew and replaced President Mobutu Sese Seko with Laurent Kabila. Six neighboring countries were dragged into the war, which lasted until 2003. An estimated five million people died during the war. Thousands of other people became refugees in neighboring countries.
  In Germany, around six million Jews faced death between 1933 and 1945 during the Nazi regime. The anti-Semitic Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, considered the Jews a lesser tribe and therefore persecuted them. Germans subjected the Jews to antisemitism based on the Christian faith that blamed them for killing Jesus. Later on, Hitler considered the Holocaust as the final solution to eliminating the Jews (Nick, 2019). The Nazi rulers constructed mass killing centers in concentration camps to kill Jews, political opponents, and those deemed undesirable. The German government started isolating Jews by boycotting their businesses and resettling them in informal settlements. With the help of local supporters, the German army conducted mass shootings on the Jews, killing 1.3 million (Nick, 2019). In 1942, Jews were being transported from the ghettos in sealed trains to extermination camps. Those who survived along the journey were beaten, worked, or gassed to death. Some inmates faced medical experiments involving research of new vaccines, chemical weapons, and sterilization of men and women. Physicians used twins for genetic experiments. They would be measured, killed, and dissected for their organs. The Nazi regime killed Jews approximately six million, and five million more people were murdered for political, religious, and racial reasons during the Holocaust. Among those who died, more than one million were children.
For many years, Germany denied their actions and involvement in the Holocaust. Several years later, a new generation of leaders acknowledged that Germany was involved in the genocide. Although they were born long after World War 11, history made them feel responsible for the Holocaust (Frie, 2017). The Germans apologized to the Jews for the persecutions and worked towards compensating the surviving victims. They also set up monuments to serve as a remembrance.
Application of Neutralization Theory to Genocide
In the two cases of Genocide (Rwanda Genocide and Nazi Holocaust), the perpetrators apply the techniques of neutralization theory. Neutralization theory can use before and after engaging in a crime to serve as justification. The method of denial of responsibility is applicable in the Nazu Holocaust, whereby the German government denied killing innocent Jews for several years. Many defendants brought before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) denied responsibility for impression management to protect their relatively high social status.
During the Rwanda Genocide, civilians had to neutralize their moral consciences to kill their neighbors who were well known to them. Husbands killed their wives as they claimed that fellow Hutus would have killed them if they failed to do so. Bryant et al. developed two neutralization techniques after listening to individuals accused as participants of the Rwanda genocide. One of the techniques is victimization, where the accused maintains that members of their ethnic group were under threat and therefore had to step up to protect their families (Bryant et al., 2018). The Hutus accused the Tutsis of shooting down the plane transporting the President (who was Hutu), killing him. The Hutus used this information to declare war against the Tutsis in the name of protecting their ethnic group.
Germans applied the technique of denial of the victim during the Nazi Holocaust. They subjected the Jews to antisemitism because they claimed that they killed Jesus from a Christian point of view, which implied that the Jews deserved punishment due to their actions. In Rwanda, the Hutus blamed the Tutsis and the RPF for starting the war by shooting down the President's plane and killing him. After the one hundred days killing spree, the Tutsis organized themselves and went after the Hutus who had fled into neighboring countries like DR Congo. The Tutsis were punishing Hutus for killing their household members and executing members of their ethnic group. 
The neutralization technique of appeal to higher loyalties can apply in both cases. In Rwanda, the Hutus believed they should be leaders because they formed the majority of the population in Rwanda. They overthrew the government led by Tutsis and took leadership by force, creating further enmity between the two ethnic groups, which formed the basis of the genocide. The Hutus believed that they should be the leaders based on their population. The Germans believed eliminating Jews and others based on political, religious, and racial differences would help breed a pure German culture. By doing this, they thought it was for the greater good of Germans.
Limitations
It is not clear whether the neutralization theory involved before or after the criminal acts. Most research manifests after the crime has already taken place, and therefore it is not clear whether researchers considered neutralization before the crime. For instance, perpetrators of genocide in Rwanda and Germany applied the techniques to neutralize the offense. However, there is no proof that the accused applied neutralization before engaging in the killings. 
The use of neutralization techniques differs depending on varying individual factors. The neutralization theory is limited because it can be used by both the accused and the party offended. For instance, in Rwanda, the Hutus carried out genocide against the Tutsis. The Tutsis, in revenge, went after th...