FRANCAISComité International de la Croix Rouge - History
1950-1959
-1950-1985, Korea: while the United States attempt to repel the Chinese troops approaching Seoul, Pyongyang prevents the ICRC from intervening in the Communist North and refuses the assistance of Eastern European Red Cross societies. As a result, the Committee can only work in the Nationalist South to help prisoners of war detained with civilians suspected of Marxist sympathies, including women and children. One of the difficulties is to avoid supervising operations which, by changing the status of prisoners of war, would allow Seoul to grant citizenship to detainees, thereby enabling them to remain in the South instead of being repatriated to the North at the end of the conflict. In addition to issues of malnutrition and police repression, riots in prison camps oppose anti-communists and North-Korean combatants following an attempt to indoctrinate and reclassify 37,000 soldiers viewed by the authorities as South-Korean civilians recruited by force by Pyongyang. On Koje-do Island, where the majority of the prisoners of war held by American forces are jailed, violent incidents in February 1952 result in the death of 69 detainees and one guard. Unrest continues to affect the camps, resulting in further casualties among prisoners. When the commander of Koje-do is briefly taken hostage before being released the following May, the UN suspends all supplies in an attempt to bring the rebels into line and to isolate the trouble-makers. Until the dismantlement of the camp, when detainees are shared out between the South-Korean peninsula and the islands of Pongam-do, Yoncho-do and Cheju-do in July 1952, ICRC delegates are denied access on the grounds that the Blue Helmets are no longer able to ensure their safety. The case of civilian prisoners is no better. Having been granted access by the Ministry of Justice to prisons in Seoul in December 1950, ICRC delegates renounce their right of access in May 1952 on the grounds that the living conditions of detainees have not demonstrably improved. In the North, Pyongyang and Beijing argue that foreign soldiers on Korean territory are war criminals not covered by the Geneva Conventions. The Chinese Red Cross, indentured to the regime, is made to serve as an instrument of propaganda and accuses the United States of using bacteriological weapons. The ICRC is rejected because it agrees to probe the allegations and to set up an inquiry committee only requested by the Western member states of the United Nations Security Council. The target of a virulent campaign in the Communist press, the Committee is suspected of being an imperialist agent in the pay of the American government and of having suggested the idea of an investigation to inform Washington of the efficiency of its bacteriological weapons. Catherine Rey-Schyrr, the official historian of the ICRC, recognizes that the institution ought to have shown a greater willingness to assert its independence from the UN, i.e. the United States, and to publicly condemn all air raids on civilian populations. However, it is unlikely that such measures would have been enough to overcome the mistrust of the communists, who are unwilling to hear of any talk of neutral humanitarians. It is only with the outline of an armistice, eventually signed in July 1953, that Maoist China allows the ICRC to visit detention centers holding American prisoners of war. In exchange, Pyongyang and Beijing are keen to negotiate the repatriation of their soldiers held in the South, who are not always willing to return to the North and are sometimes expelled by force. Some 15,000 Chinese and 8,000 North Koreans who refuse to return home become stateless and are consigned to a camp managed by the Indian Red Cross near Panmunjom. The ICRC recognizes the South Korean and North Korean Red Cross Societies in 1955 and 1956 respectively. Because neither South Korea nor North Korea sign the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the two organizations, which had previously been treated as one entity, are admitted to the Red Cross movement because of the ratification of the 1864 Geneva Convention by Kojong Kwangmuje and his Taehan Empire in 1905. The two societies eventually meet in 1972 to discuss the issue of people separated by the war. The first family reunions occur in September 1985.
-1951-1973: Japan: by virtue of article 16 of the San Francisco peace treaty of 8 September 1951, which provides for the payment of war reparations, the ICRC is entrusted with the responsibility of paying compensation to prisoners of war ill-treated by the Japanese army. The institution is required to manage and redistribute Japanese assets abroad. Between 1959 and 1973, the ICRC also oversees the repatriation of 90,000 North Koreans enlisted by force in the army and the factories of the Empire of the Rising Sun during World War Two. Because of the treatment imposed by the Pyongyang dictatorship on its own citizens, the difficulty is to identify genuine ‘volunteers’ for departure. Despite being an ally of Japan, South Korea attempts to hinder the project, threatening to sink any boat transporting repatriates and escorted by Soviet warships. According to the press in Seoul, especially the Korean Herald of 10 May 1974, the Japanese wives of North Korean men are taken on board by force. Meanwhile, the JCRS (Japanese Red Cross Society) is re-formed in 1946 under the leadership of Prince Tadatsugu Shimazu with the help of a representative of the American Red Cross in Tokyo, Tom Metsker. Ruined by inflation and crippling debts, the organization is not immediately operational. Its hospitals are either destroyed or requisitioned by the occupying authorities, who only agree to restore them in 1956. The basic raison d’être of the JCRS is also undermined since the country no longer has the right to have an army and is prevented from attending international Red Cross conferences until 1950. The JCRS eventually returns to the forefront after Japan ratifies the 1949 Geneva Conventions. A law passed in August 1952 confirms its demilitarization and independence from government. The society returns to its original activities in the area of public health and natural disasters. Completely funded by the government during World War Two, the JCRS seeks to re-establish itself as a private association, eventually numbering some 4 million volunteers by 1977.
-1952, Canada: hosted by the chairman of the CRCS (Canadian Red Cross Society), John Macaulay, the eighteenth international Red Cross conference, attended by delegates from 63 countries and 50 national societies, is held in Toronto in September 1952. Article 6 of the ICRC statutes is revised to introduce a right to humanitarian intervention. The conference was originally due to be held in the United States. However, the American Red Cross was forced to withdraw from fear that the US immigration services would refuse to grant visas to delegates from the communist bloc. The Cold War has such a divisive effect on the movement that the ICRC is forced to shelve the idea of an international Red Cross conference to celebrate its centennial in Geneva eleven years later. In September 1963, it eventually settles for a Council of Delegates meeting, which does not require the attendance of the signatory states of the Geneva Conventions, thereby avoiding a dispute between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China.
-1953-1967, Kenya: despite growing political troubles in the British colony, the ICRC is not solicited by the Red Cross in London and as a result is slow to intervene after the declaration of a state of emergency at the outbreak of the Mau Mau Uprising in 1952. The institution, which had not provided assistance to any African populations since the Ethiopian war of 1936, had previously limited its involvement in the region to supplying aid to European refugees. For instance, in July 1948, the ICRC had facilitated the repatriation to Tel Aviv of Jews deported to Asmara in Eritrea in February 1945 and to the Gil Gil Camp in Kenya in March 1947 on suspicion of belonging to the Irgun and Stern terrorist groups fighting the British colonial authorities in Palestine. The hesitation of the Committee in dealing with the Mau Mau Uprising, viewed as a tribal insurrection rather than as an internal or international conflict, reflects a more general reluctance to widen its range of activities and to become involved in liberation struggles on a continent about which it knows next to nothing. Put off by the refusal of the British authorities to grant access to the communist prisoners held in Malaysia during the same period, the ICRC decides not to push the issue. After examining the Mau Mau crisis in October 1952, the first appeal to London is made in August 1955, with concrete results in January 1957, i.e. three years before the end of the troubles. According to Nicolas Lanza, the ICRC is keen not to go beyond its mandate to avoid being met with a firm rebuttal by the British authorities. In addition, the Committee is reluctant to support ‘primitive’ populations which, in its own terms, are ‘seemingly resistant to [the notions of] charity and solidarity’. Last but not least, the ICRC faces the hostility of a biased British Red Cross, funded by the colonial government in Kenya. As a result, the head of the Africa section of the Geneva Committee, Pierre Gaillard, exceptionally denounces the blockades imposed by the authorities in an interview given to the Reynolds News Reporter on 16 December 1956. Despite failing to open a delegation in Kenya, the institution is eventually granted access to Mau Mau prisoners on two separate occasions, in February-April 1947 and June-July 1959. However, the visits merely help the British to legitimize their policy of ‘pacification’ in the eyes of the international community. The authorities are careful to conceal the victims of ill-treatment and threaten any prisoners who are tempted to complain with severe reprisals. Written by Reverend Henri Philippe Junod, a priest delegate in South Africa and a personal friend of the Governor of Kenya Evelyn Baring, the first report published by the ICRC absolves the British and is rewritten in Geneva to remove any comments condemning the use of corporal punishment. Subsequently, abuse and ill-treatment are used increasingly to sanction prisoners who had complained to the Geneva delegates. According to Caroline Elkins, Henri Philippe Junod even advises the Governor of Kenya on repression issues. Following a scandal in the British parliament concerning the Hola camp, where eleven prisoners were beaten to death in February 1959, a second visit conducted by the ICRC absolves the authorities yet again. To quote Nicolas Lanza, the Committee’s ‘policy of courteous submission’ ultimately fails to improve the condition of the Mau Mau prisoners. While it is unlikely that a public denunciation would have been significantly more effective, the ICRC decides to withdraw from Kenya after independence. Between 1963 and 1967, Geneva does not intervene in the so-called Shifta war waged by Somali irredentists demanding the incorporation of the Northern Frontier District in a Greater Somalia. Almost no humanitarian organizations are present in the field to provide assistance to the villages protected by the army, the manyatta, where approximately 72,000 inhabitants are concentrated, i.e. almost a fifth of the population affected by the conflict.
-Since 1954, Algeria: following the outbreak of the fight for independence in November 1954 under the aegis of the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale), the ICRC decides to intervene in a typical war of decolonization. In February 1955, the Committee is given systematic access to French detention camps and interrogation centers. In June 1956, Paris even accepts to treat FLN freedom fighters as prisoners of war. According to directives given by General Raoul Salan in March 1958, the objective is to provide better protection to captured combatants to counter rebel propaganda aimed at pushing guerrillas to their limits by warning them that they will be massacred if they surrender. The position of France toward Algeria is in sharp contrast to other conflicts marking the collapse of the French colonial empire. In neighboring Tunisia in 1954, the authorities prevent the ICRC from providing aid to people detained after unrest in Sfax and Sousse in 1952. The authorities argue that it is an internal matter and claim to be holding just 112 administrative detainees, while the Tunisian branch of the French Red Cross fails to respond to the demands of the Committee in Geneva. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the ICRC is also denied the right to provide assistance to the freedom fighters of the UPC (Union des Populations du Cameroun), who appeal unsuccessfully for rescue aid in 1958. In Algeria, the use of torture disrupts the operations aimed at providing aid to political prisoners of the National Liberation Front. Geneva protests unofficially until 5 January 1960, when a leak results in the publication in Le Monde of a report dated 15 December 1959 describing 82 detention centers. As a result of the scandal, several members of the French government are forced to resign, the army is enjoined to avoid the use of ‘excessive’ interrogation techniques, and the ICRC’s right of access to prisoners is interrupted until January 1961. However, the Committee is able to continue other programs for civilians and it works on the adoption of a new penal code. In Tunisia and Morocco, the institution assists Algerian refugees and secures indemnities for the destruction of some of its trucks and equipment during a bombing of the Tunisian town of Sakiet Sidi Youssef by the French army in February 1958. In Algeria, the aid provided to people displaced by the conflict falls within the jurisdiction of the CRF (Croix-Rouge française), which had intervened in the aftermath of an earthquake in Orléansville in September 1954. By virtue of an agreement reached with the authorities in March 1959, this organisation sends food parcels to French soldiers and distributes supplies to Muslim populations grouped in camps by the army – one of its nurses IPSA (Infirmières Pilotes Secouristes de l’Air), Jaïc Domergue, thus died during the evacuation of injured soldiers by helicopter in the region of L’Arba on 29 November 1957. Following the peace accords signed in Evian on 18 March 1962, the CRF helps ‘Pieds Noirs’ settlers to leave the country and to immigrate to Marseille, Toulouse, Lyon and Bordeaux. Under the aegis of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the LCRS and other national Red Cross societies support the repatriation of Algerians who had fled to Morocco and Tunisia. However, the ICRC is unable to assist the ‘Harki’ auxiliaries of the French army, who are subject to retaliation since the FLN gained power in Algiers. For the entire duration of the war, the freedom fighters had steadfastly refused to grant access to their detainees. The only known exception, in January 1958, had merely served to demonstrate the capacity of the FLN to keep prisoners within Algeria rather than in its rear bases in Tunisia, where the French army was bombarding refugee camps. In all other cases, the freedom fighters failed to comply with the Geneva Conventions, executing three government soldiers held captive in May 1958. Through the medium of the Algerian Red Crescent and its chairman Ben Nahmed in Tunis and Rabat, the ICRC was forced to attract media attention and to negotiate on a case by case basis to secure the release of a small number of French prisoners held by the FLN, including Yvonne Genestoux, a nurse captured in December 1958. In July 1962, independence fails to remove obstacles that impede humanitarian operations. On this occasion, the problem comes from the new Algerian government – unlike in Tunisia, during the battle of Bizerte in July 1961, where the Geneva Committee was given access to war prisoners on both sides before overseeing their exchange in the no man’s land of Menzel Jemil the following September. Despite being mandated by the Evian Accords to locate and repatriate prisoners of war, the ICRC continues to face the ill will of the Algerian Red Crescent, which it officially recognizes in July 1963, and the FLN, which it publicly criticizes. By virtue of an agreement reached with the new government in February 1963, the Committee is only allowed to search for people who went missing during the war and to assist the Harkis detained in civilian prisons, but not in military camps. The ICRC withdraws seven months later. Except for visiting three barracks emptied of Harkis in January 1964, the Committee is no longer able to access any detention centers and is powerless in the face of the increasing intransigence of the revolutionary and socialist military regime introduced the following year. Created in late 1956 in Tangiers and chaired initially by Omar Boukli Hacène, the Algerian Red Crescent is of little assistance, merely serving as an instrument of the single-party state, particularly under the chairmanship of Dr. Mouloud Belaouane between 1969 and 1989. It is not until December 1991, after the cancellation of the elections and an Islamist insurrection, that Geneva is authorized to provide assistance to political prisoners as part of a state of emergency declared in February 1992, though only for a period of five months. The visits resume in October 1999, though access is denied to all other categories of detainees. According to Christian Toubé, the Algerian Red Crescent expels in 1989 the country representative of Médecins du Monde, Joseph Dato, for denouncing the government’s ill-treatment of illegal African immigrants left in the desert. The prisoners of war of the Polisario Front, supported by Algiers since 1975 in their fight for the independence of Western Sahara against the Moroccan occupying forces, remain inaccessible for almost twenty years. After a firm refusal during a mission in Tindouf refugee camps in 1978, the ICRC is forced to wait until a ceasefire in 1991 to secure the right to assist detainees held by the guerrilla. Geneva is eventually able to run a program of repatriation of Moroccan prisoners of war between 2000 and 2005.
-1955-1977, Cyprus: circumventing the British colonial authorities, the ICRC decides to intervene directly in Nicosia to visit and assist political detainees in December 1955, in March, August and November 1957, and again in December 1958. The Committee is allowed to conduct interviews with opponents before their trial in the central prison of Nicosia, as well as in camps in Kokkinotrimithia, Hayos Lucas, Mammari, Pyla and Dhekelia. However, the ICRC is denied access to police jails and is forced to suspend all visits in February 1959 during negotiations over independence, declared in August 1960. Under the aegis of its new delegate, Jacques Ruff, the ICRC subsequently continues its activities amid clashes between the Greek and Turkish communities. Accused of bias and spying, the British Red Cross is unable to deliver rescue supplies. Chaired by Minister of Justice Stella Soulioti, its Cypriot counterpart also struggles to provide assistance to victims since the Greeks are keen to enforce an embargo aimed at reducing the Turks’ military capabilities. Consequently, the Geneva Committee is alone in helping the Cypriot Turks who lost their jobs as a result of the de facto partition of the island. The ICRC, whose envoy Jean-Pierre Schoenholzer dies of a heart attack in 1964, is able to negotiate supervised distributions of supplies by the United Nations and the unloading of two cargo ships sent by the Turkish Red Crescent in 1965. But the institution is soon forced to make payments in cash because of restrictions on imports. The Greek Cypriot authorities argue that such a humanitarian aid funds their enemies, who stock supplies and penalize the economy by refusing to buy local production. As explained by Françoise Perret and François Bugnion, the problem is that the distinction between civilians and combatants in the Turkish zone is difficult to draw. After closing its delegation and handing over its activities to the United Nations in November 1965, the ICRC returns to Cyprus following the invasion of the northern part of the island by Ankara troops in July 1974. The following month, the Committee establishes a neutral zone in Nicosia and distributes supplies to displaced people, especially Turkish Cypriots seeking refuge in the British base of Episkopi near Limassol. Opened in July 1974, the ICRC delegation also visits prisoners of war on both sides before its closure in June 1977. Because of the partition of the country, Geneva no longer recognizes the Cypriot Red Cross, now divided between two separate organizations in the North and in the South.
-1956-1957, Hungary: while opponents to Soviet rule bring Imre Nagy to power, the ICRC organizes one of its largest humanitarian operations of the postwar period and the most important operation in a communist country before Vietnam in 1975, Cambodia in 1979 and Ethiopia in 1984. In October 1956, Geneva initially attempts to set up an airlift from Vienna, Austria, but is forced to abandon the project within a matter of days. Consequently, the institution has to send relief by land and water and agrees to transport United Nations supplies on the condition that the neutrality of the Committee is not compromised. In Hungary, ICRC envoys prevent executions of members of the political police by rebels, for example in Sopron and Györ, where the president of the Patriotic People’s Front, Attila Szigethy, makes a commitment to delegate Herbert-Georges Beckh to comply with the Geneva Conventions. However, the efforts of the Committee are soon undermined by the Red Army following the Soviet invasion of Budapest in early November. The communists impose high taxes on goods sent from the Austrian border and prevent the ICRC from importing relief by road after March 1957. Since it is unable to transport supplies by waterways because the Danube is frozen, the Committee is forced to resort to trains and refuses the offer of armed escorts by the authorities. Installed by Moscow, János Kádár’s government puts an end to the operations and continues to deny access to prisoners of conscience. It is not until October 1965, two years after an amnesty was granted to the insurgents, that an ICRC delegate is allowed to inspect a prison, Thökol, and to conduct supervised interviews with two political prisoners not detained in connection with the events of October 1956. Meanwhile, the Committee continues to assist refugees fleeing the repression, while the LCRS coordinates the activities of various Red Cross societies. By virtue of an agreement signed on 2 November 1956 and amended on 17 November, the League receives the shipments of national societies in Vienna while the ICRC transports the goods to Hungary or distributes them to asylum seekers. Reformed under the aegis of Doctor Adolf Pilz in 1945 and under the chairmanship of Karl Seitz from 1946, followed by Professor Burghard Breitner in 1950, the Austrian Red Cross (Osterreichisches Rotes Kreuz) is naturally at the forefront of the operations in the refugee camps of Vienna and Ried in Innkeis. Yet other societies also help Hungarian migrants who seek asylum in Western Europe, for instance France. In Switzerland, 7,000 of them are provided accommodation in local Red Cross centers, while a further 4,000 are housed in Swiss army barracks. The question of family reunification soon turns into a political issue. János Kádár’s government rejects the principle of reciprocity and seeks to repatriate all underage refugees without allowing parents to join their children on the other side of the border. According to a report published in the Geneva newspaper Le Temps on 18 August 2005, the ICRC opposes the forced return of unaccompanied minors, especially those involved in the uprising, who sometimes face prison or even a death sentence. The Committee therefore refuses to provide the authorities in Budapest with a list of all minors seeking refuge in Austria. As a result of failing to reach an agreement with the Hungarian Red Cross (comprehensively purged by the communists), the ICRC abandons the matter. Of the 200,000 refugees who migrated in 1956, only 45,000 return to Hungary within eight years. As explained by Isabelle Vonèche Cardia, the results are distinctly mixed, in spite (or because) of the hostility of the Soviet Union toward Geneva. Moscow only allowed the ICRC to intervene because the Hungarian regime needed the material support of the West. To avoid compromising the distribution of supplies, the Committee opted not to insist on access to political prisoners. The ICRC continued to handle the authorities with care in order to maintain good relations and to preserve the right to intervene in the communist sphere in the event of another crisis. As a result, the Committee paid little attention to the fate of the humanitarian staff of its partner in the field, the Hungarian Red Cross. Under Zoltán Zsebök, an official newly appointed by the government of Imre Nagy, the national society had little time to organize itself. Following the accession to power of János Kádár, it was led by a political commissar, Dr. György Killner, and chaired by a college of five doctors all relieved of their duties in May 1957 and replaced by an ambassador, Joseph Kárpáti, and a professor, Pal Gegesi Kiss. Accused of backing the counter-revolutionaries, of receiving ICRC funds and of encouraging strikers to extend their movement by appealing for Western support, some of the staff were jailed or placed under house arrest, while local first-aid workers were tortured for providing care to the insurgents, ‘misappropriating’ relief supplies and helping Hungarian nationals to escape.
-Since 1957, India: for the first time in its history, the nineteenth International Red Cross conference is chaired in New Delhi by a woman, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, in late October 1957. Reiterating an appeal made by the ICRC on 5 April 1950, delegates from 83 countries seek to prohibit the use of nuclear, bacteriological and chemical weapons because of their uncontrolled effects on civilian populations. However, the project fails because of the opposition of nuclear states, not least Western powers, which had already rejected a similar proposal by the USSR in July 1945 when Moscow had yet to acquire the atomic bomb. The broader context of the Cold War is not conducive to dialogue. Following a diplomatic incident between the governments of Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China, delegates begin to reconsider the idea of holding international Red Cross conferences with state representatives. They also reject an invitation by the USSR to hold their next meeting in Moscow in 1960. The Soviet authorities interpret the attitude of the ICRC as further evidence of its allegiance to the West. Chaired from 1950 until her death in 1964 by Health Minister Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, the IRCS (Indian Red Cross Society) proposes a third non-aligned way. Initially established by the British colonial authorities in 1920 and chaired by a governor of Punjab, William Malcolm Hailey, the organization was able to release itself from British supervision at the time of independence in 1947. However, it was unable to resist the partition of the Indian Empire, when the ICRC provided assistance to refugees on both sides before an agreement to protect minorities was reached by the Indian and Pakistani governments on 8 April 1950. On the border, Kashmir was a major hotspot, and the Committee was unable to prevent an Indian aerial raid on two hospitals of the Pakistani Red Cross in Kotli and Bagh, where patients were killed in October 1948. When the conflict resumes in 1965, the institution returns to visit prisoners of war and political detainees. On this occasion, it assists displaced people in the regions of Sialkot, Sheikhupura and Lahore on the Pakistani side and in the provinces of Jammu, Punjab and Rajasthan on the Indian side. It also facilitates the provision of aid to approximately 100,000 Muslim refugees crossing the ceasefire line to seek refuge in the area of Kashmir under Pakistani control. While it is able to organize an exchange of over 100 prisoners of war on both sides in Hussainiwala in 1966, the ICRC subsequently faces significant restrictions imposed by the Indian authorities and is denied access. After several decades of fruitless negotiations, the Committee finally secures the right to provide relief supplies to the victims of the Kashmir conflict in 1994. By virtue of an agreement reached in 1995, Geneva is allowed to visit the prisons of Jammu but fails to gain access to other states within the federation. The Indian Red Cross is more heavily involved in natural disasters, through not without incurring significant risks: on 12 May 2001, three of its volunteers, Rugnesh Uttakumar Geewala, Anand Shukla and Kalpesh Patel, are killed in a traffic collision while attempting to distribute relief supplies to victims of an earthquake in the province of Kutch in the state of Gujarat.
-Since 1958, Cuba: during a truce on 23 and 24 July 1958, Fidel Castro allows ICRC doctors to access the Sierra Maestra and to travel to Las Vegas de Jibacoa to release injured soldiers captured by his guerrillas. Other evacuations are organized on 12 and 13 August. After coming to power in Havana on 12 January 1959, Fidel Castro’s revolutionary and socialist government agrees to allow the ICRC to visit political prisoners and holds press conferences to present the findings of the Committee delegates. However, the new regime takes over the Cuban Red Cross, founded in 1909 by Dr. Diego Tamayo y Figueredo and chaired throughout the 1960s by a student in medicine turned guerrilla commander, Gilberto Cervantes Nuñez. As for the Geneva Committee, its members make no attempt to hide their distrust of the communists, and as a result the organization is soon prevented from accessing political prisoners. Tensions run high after an attempted landing by American mercenaries in the Bay of Pigs in April 1961. At the time of the missile crisis in October 1962, the ICRC is solicited by Moscow and Washington to inspect Soviet ships suspected by the United States of transporting nuclear warheads to Cuba. Blocked by the government in Havana, the project does not aim at checking potential missiles already installed in the island and is not followed up since the USSR eventually abandons the idea of sending other ships. The Geneva Committee is nevertheless heavily criticized by the Swiss Foreign Minister Friedrich Traugott Wahlen and the liberal democrat MP Willy Bretscher who, in an editorial published in Neue Zürcher Zeitung, opposes the extension of the organization’s mandate into political activities that could potentially compromise its neutrality. The position of the institution also provokes a heated response within the movement itself, causing a number of resignations among volunteers working for the French, Swedish, Dutch and Swiss Red Crosses. The project was deemed to be particularly dangerous since, according to the historian Thomas Fischer, it was on its own initiative that the Geneva Committee offered its services to the United Nations in New York. However, the institution was supported by the chair of the French Red Cross, André François-Poncet, and by his counterparts in Eastern Europe, who were keen to attract the ICRC to the politics of pacifist communist pressure groups. The Committee argued that its initiative was a response to an exceptional situation since international humanitarian law would have been made null and void in the event of a nuclear war. The purpose of the project was also to break a blockade to enable supplies to reach Cuba. Finally, the ICRC was able to use the missile crisis as an opportunity to seek a rapprochement with the USSR, which, for the first time in its history, recognized the value of an institution that it had repeatedly tried to suppress since the end of World War Two.
-From 1959, Zimbabwe: in a country known at the time as Southern Rhodesia, the British colonial authorities allow the ICRC to conduct interviews with suspects arrested by virtue of a state of emergency in 1959, most notably in the prisons of Salisbury, Hwa-Hwa and Enslinsdeel, then Chikurubi. However, until 1974, the humanitarian institution is prevented from visiting individuals charged with crimes against state security. As a result, the Committee cannot assist detainees undergoing interrogations or trials. The situation differs significantly from the restrictions imposed in South Africa, where the ICRC only has access to convicted political prisoners, and Portuguese Africa, where the institution is allowed to visit all individuals held by the Directorate-General for Security, irrespective of their legal status. Condemned by the international community, the unilateral declaration of independence of Rhodesia in 1965 then forces Geneva to deal with Ian Smith’s racist government. While the ICRC refuses to recognize the local Red Cross, it can no longer send its prison reports to the British Red Cross Society and the former colonial authorities. The situation also deteriorates because of the growing conflict between the white minority government and the black liberation movements, with both sides violating the Geneva Conventions. For example, guerrilla fighters of the Patriotic Front kill villagers, execute unarmed soldiers, use civilians as hostages, shoot down civilian airplanes and forbid access to prisoners. The authorities prevent supplies from reaching rebel-held areas, apply the death penalty to political opponents and attack defenseless peasants. The issue is that the ICRC unwittingly serves the government’s military interests by providing relief supplies to 80 of the 270 ‘protected villages’ where displaced populations have been gathered by the army to empty rural areas and isolate the guerrilla forces. The neutrality of the Committee is thus compromised. Despite bearing the Red Cross emblem, a local employee, Charles Chatora, and two ICRC delegates, Andre Tièche and Alain Bieri, are killed on 18 May 1978 in an ambush while driving to a clinic in Nyamaropa in the Nyanga district near the Mozambican border. The three men are presumed to be the victims of rebels who assumed they were collaborating with the Whites. The ICRC staff decides as a result to travel by air rather than by road, thereby reducing its potential for action. In addition, the Committee also refocuses its relief operations and works with the LWF (Lutheran World Federation) to assist refugees in the strongholds of the two main liberation movements: ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union) in Doroi in Mozambique, and ZAPU (Zimbabwe African People’s Union) in Francistown, Selebi-Phikwe and Dukwe in Botswana, and in Solwezi and the camps of Freedom, Moyo, Victory and Nampundwe (Shilenda) around Lusaka in Zambia. Once again the ICRC plays an ambivalent role. For example, in the Mozambican hospitals of Chimoio, Tete and Songo, the Committee provides care to injured combatants of ZANU, which comes to power when Zimbabwe secures independence in 1980.
