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San Francisco Conference is Asked to Provide for Outlawing of Racial Discrimination

April 10, 1945
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A three-point program suggesting that the San Francisco Conference takes steps to outlaw racial and religious discrimination after the war was submitted today to Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden by the National Committee for the Rescue of People from Nazi Terror, headed by Marquess Crew and the Archbishops of Canterbury, Westminster and York. The program urges:

1. Establishment of a multi-lateral convention regarding an international standard of rights securing the protection of life and liberty of the inhabitants of all countries, regardless of their origin, nationality, race, faith or language.

2. Promulgation of national laws and creation of appropriate international legal instruments providing that anti-racial activities and incitement against racial and religious groups, as well as discrimination against them, are to be considered violations of criminal law.

3. Negotiation of an international agreement for the elimination of statelessness. While statelessness exists, however, persons affected should be under protective jurisdiction of an international organization. Suitable identity documents which will be issued to them should be recognized as valid by all nations. No stateless person should be compelled to resume his former nationality.

J. L. Brierly, Oxford professor of International Law, whose opinion presumably determined the official attitute of the British Government towards the question of war crimes, published an article today expressing the view that German crimes against their own nationals, Jews and others, are not war crimes in the strict sense, and therefore “dealing with them under the forms of law would be mockery.”

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