of the horrors that occurred in the past and the horrors that we can help prevent in the future.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator BOSCHWITZ.

Senator Dodd.

Senator DODD. Mr. Chairman, this hearing opens another opportunity to erase a blemish on our Nation's otherwise excellent record as a defender of the dignity and the integrity of the human race.

I am a newcomer to this debate in the Senate and first I'd like to pay respect to the outstanding-though so far unfortunately unsuccessful-efforts you, Mr. Chairman, of Senators Proxmire, Pell, Javits, and others for the ratification of the Genocide Convention. Reviewing the 32-year-old record of the convention, I was deeply impressed by their dedication and their mastery of the issues involved,

A much less positive impression I gathered from the record was about the quality of the objections to the convention. True, every treaty has to be carefully examined to determine whether it serves our national interest, and whether it conforms to our Constitution and our national policies. I certainly do not question the motives of Senators who had reservations about one provision or another and wanted to probe carefully the prospective consequences of ratification. This was their duty as Senators. As a result, however, during these 32 years every single word in the convention has been examined and reexamined, and every serious objection to the convention has been answered over and over again. I have not seen a single factual, wellreasoned paper lately in opposition to the convention.

This hearing will provide another opportunity for a point-by-point rebuttal of any ill-founded opposition. At this stage, let me just emphasize one very important point that has not been made quite clear during the previous hearings. It is the following: We are not talking about what will happen with innocent or guilty Americans abroad. The international community does not need our permission for the setting up of a process for the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. The Genocide Convention is existing international law for most of the world community and that includes all states of any significance with the exception of Communist China and the United States.

If an American is arrested anywhere in the 90 states that are parties to the convention for committing genocide he can be tried and punished perfectly legally in terms of international law, regardless of our ratification or nonratification. Whether he is charged lawfully or falsely, his situation would not be any worse in case of our ratification. Quite the contrary, only by virtue of our ratification would we gain any legal standing to intervene on his behalf and to try to gain his extradition to American jurisdiction. Our ratification has no bearing whatsoever on what happens abroad on the basis of the Genocide Convention, who is charged, who is convicted. By refusing to ratify, however, we deprive ourselves of the legal claim we would have for the extradition of an indicted American to the parallel American jurisdiction. Opponents of the ratification, therefore, are not helping but worsening the situation of an American who would be charged abroad, rightfully or falsely.

Mr. Chairman, I thought it very important to bring this out at the outset because one can easily get lost in the maze of the absurd claims

against the Genocide Convention. This convention would not obligate us to do almost anything that we would not do otherwise. It would add the weight of our international prestige and authority to the condemnation of those who regard mass murder as a legitimate or, at least, convenient means of settling internal or international disputes. It would gain us access to what happens to this convention in the future, how it is implemented, an important development where presently we have no word at all, as we are not a party to the convention itself. The convention is not self-executing, so it would be valid domestically only through carefully crafted implementing legislation by the U.S. Congress. Every kind of behavior included in the convention's definition of genocide is already punishable under American domestic law.

By not ratifying, we exclude ourselves from the community of civilized nations who declared unanimously that genocide is a crime under international law and that states are obligated to prevent and punish it. Such a determination is not alien to our Constitution, in fact, it was envisaged by the framers when they provided in article 1, section 8, clause 10, that: "The Congress shall have power*** to define and punish*** offenses against the law of nations." What more essential "law of nations" could they have had in mind but the one protecting the bare existence of nations, racial, ethnic, and religious groups? What strikes me the most in the arguments of those opponents of the convention who choose the role of protectors of our Constitution is how little faith they have in the strength of the Constitution and the soundness of our constitutional system. How ironic for them to assume our system would collapse under the burden of an obligation already assumed by 90 states around the globe, including all of our democratic allied friends.

Mr. Chairman, it is time for the Senate to end this procrastination. The very spirit and text of our Constitution and our profound belief in it mandates that we ratify the Genocide Convention.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Dodd.

The lines are drawn. I can only say, as chairman, that though Senator Helms and I disagree as to what the outcome ultimately will be in the Senate on this issue, we do not disagree, nor do I think our distinguished first and second witnesses will disagree, on the fact that once the chairman and ranking member of a committee decide to set a course, so far as the committee is concerned, there will be deliberation, due deliberation within this committee, and no member, I feel, will hold up this committee's acting and reporting on this treaty, up or down, for favorable or unfavorable action on the floor of the Senate.

I have decided that we should move ahead. I have the full concurrence of the ranking minority member and the majority of the committee. We intend to move ahead with this. The lines will be drawn in the committee as they will be drawn on the floor. I will do the best that I can see that this is not an exercise in futility. It is a very important issue, and I think its importance is evidenced by our distinguished first witness.

We are very pleased to have Senator Strom Thurmond with us. today.

Senator Thurmond, we are pleased to receive your statement.

STATEMENT OF HON. STROM THURMOND, A U.S. SENATOR FROM SOUTH CAROLINA

Senator THURMOND. Thank you very much.

Mr. Chairman, it appears that a majority of the Foreign Relations Committee probably will favor this treaty, as it has in past years. But I predict that the Senate will do as it has in past years, too, and not ratify the treaty.

There is good reason for this, and I want to present those reasons to you this morning.

Vietnam, over the past several years, reportedly has used poison gas in a large-scale attempt to exterminate several anticommunist tribal groups. On June 9, 1981, Vietnam became party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocidethe Genocide Treaty.

The point is this: The Genocide Treaty, where it should restrain atrocity, is not observed; and where it would be observed, it is unnecessary. In the barbaric nations of the world, the treaty is given lip service. In our civilized free republic, the treaty would be followed to the letter and thus could harm irreparably the fabric of our constitutional system.

I welcome the opportunity to testify against the Genocide Treaty because, in my view, the time has come for the President to request the return of the treaty so that the Senate will not year after year face needlessly an issue which already has been effectively resolved and which is wasting the time of this institution to no good purpose whatsoever.

I have today written to the President to express that opinion, and I am hopeful that he will request the return of the treaty without further delay. Thirty-two years of Senate consideration is long enough.

In my view, the individuals who seek Senate consent to ratification of the Genocide Treaty do not understand the legal effect of such action in terms of the domestic law of the United States.

Unlike many other nations of the world, our Constitution provides that an international treaty shall become "the supreme law of the land" and shall have the status of supreme law for all purposes of domestic law-I repeat, domestic law-in binding the conduct of American citizens and the States.

In our federal system, a treaty does much more than simply to bind the international conduct of the Federal Government as a contracting state.

In the United States, the Genocide Treaty would become both an international contract between the United States and the other contracting states, and it would become binding domestic law, which immediately would supersede all law and practice inconsistent with the treaty.

The treaty, being later in time, would nullify all provisions of acts of Congress and of all prior treaties of the United States which were inconsistent with the provisions of the Genocide Convention.

Mr. Chairman, I am confident that virtually all Americans abhor even the thought of genocide. Every thoughtful American should, however, analyze the actual effect that the Convention would have

within the United States, if the Senate makes the error of consenting to its ratification and if the President thereafter proceeds to ratify the treaty and thus causes it to become law.

Controversy surrounds almost all of the 19 separate articles of the convention. I will deal here with a few major points.

Article I states, and I quote:

"The contracting parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish."

Article IV provides, and I quote:

"Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials, or private individuals."

I especially call your attention to the words "private individuals." Article III specifies:

"The following acts shall be punishable: (a) genocide; (b) conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) direct and public incitement to commit genocide; (d) attempt to commit genocide; (e) complicity in genocide."

Mr. Chairman, questions concerning fundamental concepts naturally arise as a first issue.

The 1973 Senate Foreign Relations Committee report states that genocide would simply be added to a list of other agreements such as "the protection of submarine cables *** and antisocial conduct like slave trading." That statement is a dangerous and erroneous oversimplification.

The Convention would create a series of new crimes as the supreme law of the United States. Under the Constitution, these new crimes would "be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding."

Matters concerning fundamental criminal conduct involving murder or conspiracy to commit murder should be primarily a matter of State domestic jurisdiction-I repeat, State domestic jurisdiction. The use of the treatymaking power in this area is inappropriate. In effect, the Convention would continue the policy made possible by the Supreme Court in its decision in Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S. 416, in which the court held that State powers could be transferred to the Federal Government through the treatymaking process as a de facto method of amending the Constitution.

Mr. Chairman, moreover, the Convention, if ratified, would nullify article II, paragraph 7, of the Charter of the United Nations, which expressly prohibits that organization from intervening in matters within the domestic jurisdiction of a country by the method of making treaties on domestic subjects within the jurisdiction of member countries and, in the case of the United States, within the jurisdiction of either the Federal Government or of individual sovereign States.

The treaty defines "genocide" as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such."

Insofar as the specified acts are already prohibited by law when done against individuals, it is novel to contend that the nature of

the crime changes when committed against the same individuals ́as a group.

In other words, under our common law tradition and, indeed, as part of our religious heritage, to murder one man, for whatever reason, is as inherently evil as to murder a group. That concept has done more in America to prevent genocide than any treaty ever could do. Ironically, the Genocide Treaty would erode that concept by implying that the life of a group, or of a group member, is somehow more valued than the life of an individual.

We should not wonder, then, that the term "genocide" is loosely thrown at the United States by Communist and Third World countries in the United Nations when those very countries have, by their own conduct, ignored the sacredness of individual life. Our society is built on respect for the individual, a respect which makes genocide impossible.

There are other less philosophical and more technical objections to the treaty. For example, article VI of the Convention would permit persons charged with genocide to be tried by "such international penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction with respect to those contracting parties which shall have accepted its jurisdiction."

Admittedly, there is now no international penal tribunal of that type in existence, and it is unlikely that the United States would accept the jurisdiction of such an international tribunal, should one be established. However, the fact remains that, if the Convention were ratified, a future administration could agree to accept the jurisdiction of an international penal tribunal and American citizens could be called before that tribunal to answer for an international crime without any-I repeat, without any of the guarantees given a criminal defendant by the Constitution of the United States.

Presumably, our courts would hold unconstitutional any proposal to send a person charged with a crime committed within the United States outside the country for trial; but that is a risk we ought to not take.

I am concerned, too, that article VII provides as follows:

Genocide and the other acts enumerated in Article III shall not be considered as political crimes for the purpose of extradition.

The Contracting Parties pledge themselves in such cases to grant extradition in accordance with their laws and treaties in force.

Mr. Chairman, that article would void the provisions found in most extradition treaties which allow the United States to refuse extradition for offenses determined to be of a political or military nature.

For example, a serviceman could be charged with the crime of genocide for fighting enemy soldiers in a country which had contracted with the United States for the extradition of American nationals. The extraditing state would assert that the soldier was guilty of genocide, and under the terms of the Genocide Convention, the United States would not be in a position to refuse extradition on grounds that the crime charged was a political or military offense.

Mr. Chairman, there also is great potential for abuse of the terms. of article IX of the Convention. That article provides that disputes between the contracting parties, "including those relating to the responsibility of a state for genocide or for any of the other acts enu