WAR CRIMINALS

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24368, 21 September 1944, Page 6

WAR CRIMINALS

♦ NEW ZEALAND’S ATTITUDE TO PUNISHMENT PRIME MINISTER’S REPLY TO QUESTION (From Our Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, September 20. Members on both sides of the House of Representatives seemed in agreement to-day on the general question that war criminals should be punished, but there was some difference of opinion whether an international tribunal was the best way of going about it. The subject was raised by a question to the Prime Minister (the Rt. Hon. P. Fraser) which asked what attitude the Government would take if the death penalty were imposed by a competent court, Mr Fraser replying that the criminal code of New Zealand had no bearing on the matter. Mr Fraser was replying to Mr D. C. Kidd (Opposition, Waitaki). and said the New Zealand Government would give full support to any special tribunal , that might be established by agreement between the United Nations to deal with the cases of war criminals. The Government, in common with the governments of the other United Nations, would do everything possible to see that the ends of justice were fully met, and that those who committed war crimes, and were responsible for the deaths of millions of people, were properly and adequately punished. The criminal code of New Zealand or any other nation had no bearing on the matter. The question had been asked what would the Government’s attitude be if the death penalty were imposed on Nazi war criminals, seeing that capital punishment for murder had been abolished in New Zealand. Mr R. M. Algie (Opposition, Remuera) said that if the principles of the British legal system applied, it was impossible to punish an individual for an offence committed before it was made illegal. A practical difficulty was that under existing international law there was no way of setting up such a tribunal. That difficulty after the last war had contributed largely to the escape of war criminals. He hoped that military commanders in the field would deal with war crimes as breaches of military law. Supporting Mr Algie, Mr T. C. Webb (Opposition, Kaipara) said it would solve an awkward problem if Russian or other forces took the law, or rather the situation since there was no law, into their own hands. Mr A. S. Richards (Government, Roskill) said he did not see how the question could have been answered better. Many of those who opposed the punishment of the Kaiser after the last war were not Germans. Imperialism knew no flags or frontiers. When the discussion on replies to the question was resumeu later in the sitting, the Prime Minister said that there would be obvious confusion in the classification of war criminals with ordinary murderers, because they were something infinitely worse than the worst murderer heard of. People who were guilty of homicide and manslaughter sometimes committed these terrible deeds under great mental strain. Capital punishment had been done away with and the experiment had to be watched, but when it came to people responsible for such a holocaust, and directly responsible for the deaths of millions and the untold sufferings of millions of others, he did not know even if a court of justice should be set up for them at all With people like that, with their cumulative crimes so great, the quicker they were got rid of in the most expeditious way, the better.