Senate Ratifies Genocide Convention

Sen. William Proxmire (D. Wis.), who has urged Senate ratification of the Genocide Convention every day the Senate has been in session since January II, 1967, said Thursday he was “delighted” it had finally occurred. But he added, “it’s a great shame” that it took 37 years.

The Senate ratified the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide by an 83-II vote Wednesday. The vote came almost 37 years after President Truman, who signed the treaty on December II, 1948, submitted it to the Senate and after 97 other countries had ratified it. Proxmire said he hoped the United States will use the treaty to stop acts of genocide wherever they may occur in the world.

But he said he was disappointed that the effect of the treaty has been weakened by the inclusion of reservations maintaining the right of the U.S. not to submit certain matters covered by the Convention to the World Court and preventing the treaty from superseding the U.S. Constitution.

Proxmire said he hoped a future Administration would delete these provisions, because by including the reservations the U.S. has joined the Soviet Union in saying it is above international law.

The treaty, which declares genocide, whether in peacetime or wartime, a crime under international law, defines it as killing or harming national, ethnic, racial or religious groups or members of those groups.

CREDITS REAGAN’S SUPPORT

The Senate Wednesday rejected by a 62-31 vote an amendment by Steve Symms (R. Idaho) that would have added persecution for political reasons. But by a 93-I vote, the Senate directed President Reagan to seek such a change at the United Nations.

Proxmire credited Reagan’s support for the treaty for its ratification. Every President since Truman, except Eisenhower, has urged ratification, but conservative opposition has prevented approval.

Reagan did not vice support for ratification until the eve of his appearance before the B’nai B’rith International convention in Washington in September, 1984. He reaffirmed his support in a letter to the Senate last year.

Credit is also being given to Sen. Richard Lugar (R. Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Senate Majority leader Robert Dole (R. Kan.).

Dole pledged that the Senate would ratify the treaty last fall in appearances at the ground-breaking ceremony for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and before the General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations. Lugar helped work out the two reservations with the leading opponent of ratification, Sen. Jesse Helms (R. N. C.).

FILIBUSTER PLANS DROPPED

One Jewish source noted today that while Helms, Symms and other conservative Republicans voted against ratification, they dropped plans to filibuster against it, which would have prevented a vote. One conservative who voted for ratification Wednesday was Sen. Chic Hecht (R. Nev.), who had joined other conservatives last year in warning that ratification might endanger Israel since the Jewish State might be charged with genocide.

A spokesman for Hecht told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Thursday that Hecht changed his mind because of the reservations and by Israel’s support for ratification. Proxmire, who made more than 3,000 speeches for ratification, told the JTA that he began his efforts in 1967 because “I felt that genocide was the most hideous, vicious” crime in the world. He said he was old enough to remember the Holocaust and the murder of six million Jews. Proxmire added that he began speaking daily as “a way of keeping the public consciousness awake.”

Major Jewish organizations applauded the Senate action as a sign of America’s commitment to international human rights. The organizations were the B’nai B’rith International, American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles.

Proxmire paid tribute to Raphael Lemkin, a transplanted Polish-Jewish lawyer who gave the Nazi crime of mass slaughter the name genocide. The Convention adopted by the UN was largely his handiwork. Lemkin died on August 28, 1950 with his hope for U.S. ratification of the treaty unfulfilled. For Lemkin, the adoption of the Convention would have constituted “an epitaph on my mother’s grave.” She and 46 members of his family were killed in the Holocaust.