Duchman67:



Starvation of civilian populations as a method of warfare is prohibited in both international or in internal conflicts, a prohibition stated explicitly in the two 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions. It is there in black and white that Awo committed war crimes and denying the deaths of two million+ people is something for your conscience to ask you questions about. In Germany it is a crime to deny the Holocaust,guess you are not of the same breed as the rest of humanity.

Duchman67: War crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict (also known as international humanitarian law) giving rise to individual criminal responsibility. Examples of such conduct include "murder, the ill-treatment or deportation of civilian residents of an occupied territory to slave labor camps", "the murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war", the killing of prisoners, "the wanton destruction of cities, towns and villages, and any devastation not justified by military, or civilian necessity".

To fall under the Rome Statute, a crime against humanity which is defined in Article 7.1 must be "part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population". Article 7.2.a states "For the purpose of paragraph 1: "Attack directed against any civilian population means a course of conduct involving the multiple commission of acts referred to in paragraph 1 against any civilian population, pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organizational policy to commit such attack.

Starvation of civilian populations as a method of warfare is prohibited in both international or in internal conflicts, a prohibition stated explicitly in the two 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions.

Humanitarian aid for civilians, under Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, enjoys the right of free passage through battle lines if intended for “children under fifteen, expectant mothers and maternity cases,” and a broader exemption can be made when all or part of the civilian population in occupied territory is “inadequately supplied.

Article 54 of Additional Protocol I to destroy “objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population,” including foodstuffs and their production, drinking water, and irrigation works, or to undertake actions “which may be expected to leave the civilian population with such inadequate food or water as to cause starvation or force its movement.


Awo seems to have gone against all these statues.

kunlekunle: Achebe dey laugh to bank, you dey get head ache.

warrior01:
seems the truth is gradually staring you in the face and you're getting uncomfortable.

Duchman67: War crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict (also known as international humanitarian law) giving rise to individual criminal responsibility. Examples of such conduct include "murder, the ill-treatment or deportation of civilian residents of an occupied territory to slave labor camps", "the murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war", the killing of prisoners, "the wanton destruction of cities, towns and villages, and any devastation not justified by military, or civilian necessity".

To fall under the Rome Statute, a crime against humanity which is defined in Article 7.1 must be "part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population". Article 7.2.a states "For the purpose of paragraph 1: "Attack directed against any civilian population means a course of conduct involving the multiple commission of acts referred to in paragraph 1 against any civilian population, pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organizational policy to commit such attack.

Starvation of civilian populations as a method of warfare is prohibited in both international or in internal conflicts, a prohibition stated explicitly in the two 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions.

Humanitarian aid for civilians, under Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, enjoys the right of free passage through battle lines if intended for “children under fifteen, expectant mothers and maternity cases,” and a broader exemption can be made when all or part of the civilian population in occupied territory is “inadequately supplied.

Article 54 of Additional Protocol I to destroy “objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population,” including foodstuffs and their production, drinking water, and irrigation works, or to undertake actions “which may be expected to leave the civilian population with such inadequate food or water as to cause starvation or force its movement.


Awo seems to have gone against all these statues.

emmatok:

Senile fool.
Was AWO the head of States.
GOWON is still alive but you are busy chasing the dead.
If you fear dead AWO so much, how Will you deal with the living AWO.

cjrane:

Another Yoruba ediot.Who cares if Awolowo is alive or in hell with fellow demons?
The issue is that Yorobbers have suddenly equated speaking about the crimes of this war criminal Awolowo to mean insulting or hating yorobbers.But when he was living his miserable life,it was the same yorobbers that frustrated his immoral presidential ambition on the grounds that he had committed grievous crimes against humanity and on other Nigerians he now wants to rule.

Suddenly,after his death, he is now a saint and you guys don't care anymore if he murdered millions in cold blood even when the entire international community begged him to have mercy on even innocent babies and he callously refused.All you want to hear is that he established University of Ife, so those he murdered their children and mothers should just deal with it and shut up? Yeye ediots!

Gowon is a man of conscience. I hate that he let Awolowo get away with his murderous spree just to keep Awolowo and by extension the yorobbers in his fragile coalition government.But his stance as Head of State was clearly that he wanted to crush the rebellion and he never lost the opportunity to appeal to the Igbos that he had no quarrel with them.
Indeed, Gowon could be said to have ended the war quickly because many Biafran commanders started considering peaceful resolution of the conflict after Gowon made several assurances of amnesty to the foot soldiers. Which the blood thirsty demon Awolowo in his wickedness opposed.

emmatok:

Foolish Igbo MAN,

Didn't GOWON threaten your senile elders to sue him?
GOWON THE HEAD OF STATES, was ready to take responsibilities for the war.
But you Igbos kept shouting AWO,AWO,AWO
I am of the opinion you are all under remote control.

cjrane:

The problem with Yoruba people is that they love to live in lies and denial. Every Igbo man blame Gowon for allowing Awolowo to use the instrument of the Federal Government to pursue his wicked genocidal agenda. Gowon himself was more concerned how he could militarily win the war. He never showed he was bent on a situation to kill as many babies as possible through starvation in order to allow Yoruba take over Onitsha and Aba after the war.Gowon might be culpable for the extra judicial execution of captured Biafran soldiers by his troops where he did nothing to give Geneva convention rights to Biafran soldiers in captivity,that is for the International war crimes court to determine.But he did not really carry out genocide on the civilian population as Awolowo did and encouraged. Which is the most wicked aspect and worst war crime of that war. Killing innocent babies for the fun of it.

Awolowo was the one that went far beyond the the dictates of civilized men by not only ordering starvation of babies,but even after the war had ended, he expropriated all the Igbo money in Lagos banks. He advised the newly created Rivers State to confiscate Igbo properties so that Igbos can never recover their war loses.He tried the same thing in Lagos,but for Sir Adeniran Ogunsaya and Fani Kayode who resisted his wicked plot to confiscate Igbo properties in Lagos. He schemed out a strange way of paying Nigerian soldiers stationed in former Biafra areas to ensure they could not spend their money in Igboland.
He started this sytem of marginalization of the south east, where by any project approved for the south east was starved of funding.Promoted indigenization decree to rob other regions any stake in the Nigerian economy.

After all his wickedness, he still died like a dog and whether you guys like it or not, his evil ways must be examined to find out what led to such rabid hatred of Igbos. In that way, Nigeria shall prevent having another wicked criminal like Awolowo ever being in a position to ruin this country with his personal ethnic agenda.

emmatok:

Senile fool.
Was AWO the head of States.
GOWON is still alive but you are busy chasing the dead.
If you fear dead AWO so much, how Will you deal with the living AWO.

demmie1: if any justice is done Achebe should be hanged by international criminal court for participating in a government that allowed its people starved and ojukwu corpse should exhumed and hanged for leading his people to a war he could not win.

demmie1: if any justice is done Achebe should be hanged by international criminal court for participating in a government that allowed its people starved and ojukwu corpse should exhumed and hanged for leading his people to a war he could not win.

Katsumoto:

So you want to apply rules made in 1977 to a war that ended in 1970? I suppose you may as well go back 3000 years ans indict everyone who effected seige and blockade.

Second, you want to indict the finance minister when there was a head of state and other military strategists who formulated that policy. I suppose the finance ministry was in charge of the war.

Third, when are you folks going to hold your wartime leaders to account for not surrendering when they had no food?

cjrane:
....and what should happen to Mobolaji Johnson, Joseph Akinwale Wey, Oluṣẹgun Mathew Okikiọla Arẹmu Ọbasanjọ,Benjamin Adekunle,Adebayo Adedeji and so on who actually promoted the Awolowo starvation policy? The renowned Prof. Tam David West did not mince words in naming all Awolowo's accomplices in this heinous crime against humanity.

osunmakin: katsumoto. pls can u share me ur library; especially the electronic version (i.e. if possible). my email is ooige@oauife.edu.ng

cjrane:

The problem with Yoruba people is that they love to live in lies and denial. Every Igbo man blame Gowon for allowing Awolowo to use the instrument of the Federal Government to pursue his wicked genocidal agenda. Gowon himself was more concerned how he could militarily win the war. He never showed he was bent on a situation to kill as many babies as possible through starvation in order to allow Yoruba take over Onitsha and Aba after the war.Gowon might be culpable for the extra judicial execution of captured Biafran soldiers by his troops where he did nothing to give Geneva convention rights to Biafran soldiers in captivity,that is for the International war crimes court to determine.But he did not really carry out genocide on the civilian population as Awolowo did and encouraged. Which is the most wicked aspect and worst war crime of that war. Killing innocent babies for the fun of it.

Awolowo was the one that went far beyond the the dictates of civilized men by not only ordering starvation of babies,but even after the war had ended, he expropriated all the Igbo money in Lagos banks. He advised the newly created Rivers State to confiscate Igbo properties so that Igbos can never recover their war loses.He tried the same thing in Lagos,but for Sir Adeniran Ogunsaya and Fani Kayode who resisted his wicked plot to confiscate Igbo properties in Lagos. He schemed out a strange way of paying Nigerian soldiers stationed in former Biafra areas to ensure they could not spend their money in Igboland.
He started this sytem of marginalization of the south east, where by any project approved for the south east was starved of funding.Promoted indigenization decree to rob other regions any stake in the Nigerian economy.

After all his wickedness, he still died like a dog and whether you guys like it or not, his evil ways must be examined to find out what led to such rabid hatred of Igbos. In that way, Nigeria shall prevent having another wicked criminal like Awolowo ever being in a position to ruin this country with his personal ethnic agenda.

kingingkinging:

So poor in reasoning, so poor in analysis. Pls try to read any book on logic or philosophy. You have never read anything about theory of cause and effect in your life. Why should Nigeria feed Biafra? That is the only question that is begging for answer now. Why? If Biafra had known it could not feed herself then she should have surrendered. Or you expect Israel to feed Iran or vice versa? Very poor tribe in reasoning. Pls blame your forefathers-Ojukwu, Azikwe, Achebe for your 2m people that died, how many of their children died? Today Achebe has for PHD holder children, same for Ojukwu but wasted your sensless Igbo follwers who could not reason.

cjrane:

Another wasted ofenmanu generation claiming false "shophistication" with philosophy here.
Who told you Biafra wanted Nigeria to feed her? Biafra was blockaded by a warship provided by Britain which sank any merchant ship bringing in food supply purchased or donated to Biafra. Like in every blockade, such as the Israeli blockade of Gaza,they inspect the ships to ensure they had no weapons or chemicals that could be of military use.Have you heard the Isrealis saying they would sink any ship destined for Gaza? But in Nigeria's situation, Britain handed Nigeria an instrument to starve the civilian population ! In which murders like Awolowo simply murdered millions of children by threatening to bomb any shipment to Biafra, even those that were certified to have food. No country including the present day Nigeria can survive if a bigger power prevented everything from coming into Nigeria merely because it had a navy to do it.
So get your facts straight into your hard skull, Biafra was only asking for international laws to be respected nothing more,nothing less.Not for a single grain to come from Nigeria. In any case,Nigeria would have poisoned any food destined for Biafra as it did in a few occasions. So why would you cry for such a monster to feed you?

Biafra was defeated by Britain and the former USSR. The extent of these powers involvement was unprecedented and definitely unanticipated. Biafra was militarily superior until Britain literally opened its armory of heavy weapons to Nigeria after Biafran liberation of the midwest.Plane loads of weapons left Gatwick airport,London every night and flew directly into Lagos and Kano from that date until the war ended."Nigeria wasted more small arms fire in less than 15 months than all the Allied expeditionary forces in world war II". Go Figure!

Katsumoto:

And what does it say about smuggling in weapons with aid?

Does it mandate that aid must be flown in at night like ojukwu demanded so as to smuggle weapons?

What are the rules concerning inspection of aid?

Ojukwu was not in a position to dictate how and when aid is transported.

Biafra could have had food if it was flown in in the afternoon but ojukwu refused. So who is to blame?

What are your thoughts on the rest of my post? What about responsibilities of biafran high command.

kingingkinging:

So poor in reasoning, so poor in analysis. Pls try to read any book on logic or philosophy. You have never read anything about theory of cause and effect in your life. Why should Nigeria feed Biafra? That is the only question that is begging for answer now. Why? If Biafra had known it could not feed herself then she should have surrendered. Or you expect Israel to feed Iran or vice versa? Very poor tribe in reasoning. Pls blame your forefathers-Ojukwu, Azikwe, Achebe for your 2m people that died, how many of their children died? Today Achebe has for PHD holder children, same for Ojukwu but wasted your sensless Igbo follwers who could not reason.

Dede1:


There was no weapon smuggled into Biafra by the CARITAS or RED CROSS.

Again, you have written out of ignorance as usual. Ojukwu did not demand that aid flights into Biafra should be performed at night. At this juncture, exploratory research could have helped you but you are bent on “copy and paste”.

It is an eyewitness inspection and both CARITAS and RED CROSS presented such opportunity to Nigeria to send inspectors to Fernando Po, Equatorial Genuine which was neutral in the complicit and served as port of transshipment.

You simply can not eat your bloody cake and have it. In one stance, you wrote Ojukwu demanded that the shipment of foods and medicines be carried out at night while in another, you wrote Ojukwu was not in a position to dictate how and when aid is transported.

Ojukwu did not refuse the freighting foods and medicines into Biafra under the daylight. The night operation was called into action due to the inhuman nature of the total blockade on Biafra by Nigerian government. Again, I urge you to research a little on the subject matter and stop enjoying propaganda.

Only nonentities who knew nothing about warfare will blame Ojukwu on the rejection of the offer to allow foods and medicines into Biafra from Nigeria during the war.

Katsumoto:

You took my words too literally. The facts are that Biafra preferred night drops because it aided the supply of arms as well.


"It is an emotive accusation but, in Biafra at least, it turned out to be wide of the mark. The Nigerian government was actually remarkably forgiving when Biafra finally surrendered, integrating its army and civil service back into federal structures and compensating people for property lost during the war. International observers testified that they found no evidence of genocide, although the famine and war death had been considerable.

Oxfam subsequently admitted that it had fallen "hook line and sinker" for a propaganda campaign by Biafra's government who hired a PR firm to promote their cause. The image which was to become iconic was of starving children, which journalists, like the young Frederick Forsyth, realised "struck a nerve" because they reminded postwar Europe of the Nazi death camps.

The ICRC's silence during the Holocaust made it particularly vulnerable to Kouchner's accusation. But objective historical accounts shows that it its relief effort was at least as effective as that of the other agencies and its attempts to preserve its neutrality was a principled contrast to those who allowed themselves to be politically manipulated. The government of Biafra effectively taxed agencies bringing in supplies and used the money to keep the war going. It turned down the offer of a supervised "land corridor", realising how dramatic the night flights had become, and also used them as cover for bringing in weapons along the same route.

Most humanitarian agencies now accept that their intervention in Biafra was badly thought out and, by prolonging the war for an extra 18 months, exacerbated the suffering of those that they were trying to help. If the "business" of humanitarian aid is to reduce human suffering than actions which increase it should presumably be subject to some sort of sanction. Yet it is doubtful if anyone suffered any disciplinary action from Biafra. On the contrary, it proved a huge boost to the careers of a number of individuals and to a creed of "political humanitarianism" that became a prototype for future interventions."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/sep/20/humanitarianerrors


See link below for proof of Ojukwu not allowing relief agencies to drop aid at times different from arms drops.

http://books.google.gr/books?id=KxiKPeQyiakC&pg=PA43&lpg=PA43&dq=landing+fees+biafra+ojukwu&source=bl&ots=9b32DbMfDR&sig=xPMnD19K0czQY9pPkxa1WRXEBlI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Atl0UPmcKInOswbwmYBo&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=landing%20fees%20biafra%20ojukwu&f=false

Dede1:

Again, for umpteenth time, Biafra did not prefer night drops to day drops because it aided the supply of arms as well. You have already stated Biafran authorities did not have much say on the relief effort in the previous post. When the Relief Organizations wanted to smash the total blockade on Biafra by boldly attempting drops during the daylight, the DC4 ferrying foods and medicines was shot down in Calabar by Nigerian MIG fighter planes and no single cartridge was found among debris from the downed plane.

There was a reason for night drops and I shall let you figure it out. Please quit reading all these obscure printed junks.

Katsumoto:

I should quit reading published articles but I should accept your version of events? Because you are ..... ?

Dede1:


I am not into telling stories. However, I suggest you accept eyewitness account such as Achebe’s for once in your life.

Katsumoto:

Achebe the Biafran propagandist? You must be out of your damn mind.

Ngodigha1:
Shocking, at what time did he become Biafran propagandist, or is it part of the insults you rain on Prof Achebe?.

Katsumoto:

Please try to read some more; I can't keep educating you.

Ngodigha1:
What a silly comment above. You educate me, what an insult. Educate me on what?.
There was a propaganda team actually in the defunt Biafra and it was led by Okokon Edem.
Dude, you have never educated me in any way and I hardly read your copy and paste. So boring and full of lies. So you believe I read your lies, you must be joking.

Katsumoto:

If you don't read my posts, why are you commenting on them? Or are you doing so without reading?