“The time is right to remove nuclear weapons from Scotland”

Photo: Gareth Harper

 

Scotland could invoke international law to block the UK government’s desire to maintain a nuclear arsenal, one of the world’s leading legal experts has stated.

In the run-up to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’s 51st anniversary on February 17th, Judge Christopher Weeramantry, former vice-president of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), told an Edinburgh conference that while defence matters are reserved to the UK Parliament, the Scottish Parliament has international humanitarian and legal obligations that weapons of mass destruction violate.

Weeramantry said: “Gross violations of international obligations aren’t excluded from the purview of the Scottish Parliament. The absence of power in the former area cannot cancel out its responsibilities in the latter.”

John Burroughs, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, also addressed the conference on February 3rd, reviewing the developments in international law relating to the illegality of nuclear weapons since the ICJ delivered its advisory opinion that “the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law”.

Burroughs stated that use of nuclear weapons would be a crime against humanity, which the Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court defines as murder, extermination, and other inhumane acts of a similar nature, when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population. As crimes against humanity can be committed during times of peace, he explained couching nuclear weaponry in this language would allow for the case to be made that peacetime readiness to launch a nuclear attack is unlawful.

He continued: “What we sometimes lose sight of, is that doctrines of so-called ‘deterrence’ – even if they will indefinitely not result in use of the weapons – are wholly incompatible with achievement of the world governed by principles of peace, law and disarmament promised by the UN Charter.”

Judge Weeramantry sought to illuminate the dangers posed to Scotland by “a weapon that makes them targets and imperils their children and their children’s children, a weapon that endangers their environment, their fishing grounds, their food chain and their cultural heritage”.

He said: “Scotland will be a target for retaliation if the Trident missile should ever be used. The people of Scotland will be the sufferers. When the International Court heard the nuclear weapons case, the evidence placed before it in regard to the human sufferings caused by the nuclear weapon was so harrowing.

“A woman from the Marshall Islands said that Marshallese women after exposure to nuclear weapons testing ‘give birth, not to children as we like to think of them, but to things we could only describe as octopuses, apples, turtles and other things in our experience. We do not have Marshallese words for these kinds of babies because they were never born before the radiation came.

“‘The most common birth defects have been ‘jellyfish’ babies. These babies are born with no bones in their bodies and with transparent skin. We can see their brains and hearts beating. Many women die from abnormal pregnancies and those who survive give birth to what looks like purple grapes which we quickly hide away and bury.’

“The people of Scotland have every right to protest against the possibility of this experience being repeated in Scotland.”

Weeramantry served as vice-president of the ICJ at The Hague when it delivered its historic 1996 opinion on the illegality of nuclear weapons.

The UK government’s plan to replace the Trident missile system could breach the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Created in 1968 and ratified by 189 countries including Britain, the treaty has three ‘pillars’: non-proliferation, disarmament and the right to peacefully use nuclear technology.

A paper from Mohammed Bedjaoui, a former president of the ICJ, presented to the conference ‘Trident and International Law: Scotland’s Obligations’ said any “bolstering” of nuclear warheads would infringe the treaty’s disarmament stipulation.

This was echoed by British legal expert Phillipe Sands QC, author of a legal opinion for Greenpeace, which stated replacing Trident was likely to be against the law.

Westminster SNP leader and Foreign Affairs and Defence Spokesperson Angus Robertson opened the event.

“This conference underlines our commitment to a safer world by ridding ourselves of weapons of mass destruction. Majority opinion in Scotland is opposed to the Trident weapons system.

“The time is right to remove nuclear weapons from Scotland.”

The convention, organised by the Edinburgh Peace and Justice Resource Centre and the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy among others, sought to place Scotland’s nuclear responsibilities within a larger international legal framework.

Janet Fenton of the Edinburgh Peace and Justice Resource Centre said: “We are looking to encourage the Scottish government to look at the options of what can be done from an international law and ordinary Scots law perspective. At the present time Scotland is taking all its advice from Westminster.”

Weeramantry also asserted that non-violent resistance to nuclear weaponry could be justified in international law.

“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 of its prevention.”

John Ainslie, co-ordinator of the Scottish CND, said: “It’s reassuring for someone with that legal status to reaffirm his line. He has a strong legal argument stating that not only threat or use of nuclear weapons is contrary to international law, but also the possession and deployment.

“One of Weeramantry’s main points was the need to increase awareness amongst the public and the legal profession not only about the use of nuclear weapons being illegal, but the wider role that international law has.”

Trident, Britain’s nuclear weapons system, consists of four nuclear-armed submarines, one of which is on constant operational patrol. Each submarine is equipped with up to 48 nuclear warheads. A single warhead has the explosive power of up to 100 kilotons, equating to 100,000 tons of conventional high explosives. Each warhead contains eight times the explosive power of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, which killed an estimated 140,000 people.

The current Trident submarines will reach the end of their service life in 2024. While a 2006 White Paper ‘The Future of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Deterrent’ argued for an eminent replacement, 161 MPs voted against the government’s motion to continue with a replacement in March 2007.

In June 2007, the then-foreign secretary Margaret Beckett condemned the “sense of stagnation” engulfing disarmament efforts. She advocated further reductions in nuclear states’ warhead stockpiles in an allegedly Brown-endorsed speech.

Brown denounced the Trident system in a 1984 Commons debate, declaring it was “unacceptably expensive, economically wasteful and militarily unsound”. However, he supported the renewal of Trident in the March 2007 motion. 

Fenton said: “The Scottish government has a clear anti-nuclear stance. It is also a view shared by the majority of elected representatives in Scotland, including MPs in Westminster. The majority of Scottish MPs oppose the replacement of Trident.

“There was also a motion passed in the Scottish Parliament a year and a half ago that strongly recommended the UK government should not go ahead at this time with replacing Trident.”

Newly appointed Scottish Minister for the Environment Roseanna Cunningham said: “The Scottish Parliament has confirmed its opposition to plans for a new generation of nuclear weapons.

“Those around the world opposed to nuclear weapons are looking to Scotland to lead the way. That is a role we must fulfil.”

An opinion poll conducted in May 2007 by YouGov found that 58% of the Scottish public opposed Trident, a four to six point rise from four other opinion polls over the previous ten months.

These developments come as the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office publishes its Policy Information paper ‘Lifting the Nuclear Shadow: Creating the Conditions for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons’.

Robertson said: “Scotland can help lift the nuclear shadow by deciding to end the presence of Trident weapons.”