Advocating truth in international relations

I would like to share with you a story related to the theme of our gathering, which is being human and humanity and our future in a multipolar world order.
  Before doing so, however, I must first say something about being in-human and the inhumanity in the current world disorder, which unfortunately also pertains to this topic:
  It is about weapons of mass destruction in Syria and the obligation of multilateral organisations to work for the well-being of humanity and to protect it against war, poverty and exploitation.
  On 7 April 2018, Duma, a suburb of Damascus, was bombed, killing 43 people. A few days later, US, UK and French air forces attacked Syrian targets in retaliation for the Syrian government’s alleged use of poison gas. Inhumane great power politics has led to a serious crisis with worldwide consequences. Scientific investigations of the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) have been manipulated and politicised to justify an air strike.
  After two years of work, a research report has now been published in July 2023, which you can consult, that sets out what happened and what needs to happen to enable a responsible review of the Duma incident and to restore the trust in the impartial work of international organisations like the OPCW and the UN. Without a doubt an ambitious undertaking.
  Now my story:
  There are four people who miraculously came together, two professors, one from the US and another from the UK, a Brazilian and former Director General of the OPCW, and a German, a former UN staff member. The four of us have one thing in common: we want to work unreservedly for the truth in international relations, which we consider to be seriously endangered in the Duma case. More importantly, we are concerned with protecting people who are victims of a proxy war, a war they do not want.
  The statements of two OPCW scientists in leading OPCW positions in the Duma investigations, who had become whistleblowers in protest at untruths, convinced us that the OPCW management in The Hague, under pressure from powerful member states, has repeatedly played with the truth about Duma and continues to do so …
  Therefore, after a confidential conversation in Brussels with one of the whistleblowers in Brussels in 2019, we decided to form a small citizens’ group that would further investigate this serious Duma issue. We gave ourselves the name ‘BerlinGroup 21’ because we first met in Berlin in 2021.

Geopolitics at the expense of people

The more we delved into the topic of chemical weapons and the Duma, the clearer it became what a terrible geopolitical game was and is still being played in The Hague at the expense of the people. For this reason, we contacted former OPCW employees and other experts to get more information. These included chemists, toxicologists, ballistics scientists, and individuals with military, intelligence, political, and Syria-related experience. This resulted in a ‘Statement of Concern’ in spring 2021, for which we invited 24 internationally known people to sign this statement, including four OPCW employees.
  The Presidents of the UN General Assembly, the Security Council and the Human Rights Commission, as well as the UN Secretary-General, have been the first to receive personal letters asking them to share the concerns expressed in the statement with the signatories. The UN response was silence. Those responsible for the world organisation, who are supposed to represent us – the citizens – had no understanding for our concerns and also did not have the courage to intervene in the interests of peace.
  It was also important for us to convey the statement of concern to the OPCW Director General, along with a personal letter requesting that all OPCW staff who had dealings with Duma be invited to review the published reports. His response was to return the envelope with the letter to us unopened. We really didn’t expect so much cold-bloodedness.
  No, we weren’t discouraged, just disappointed. However, the dismissive attitude of the two world organisations made it clear to us that an expression of concern could only be the beginning of a citizens’ initiative. The next step should therefore be to prepare a detailed report on OPCW manipulation, misanalysis and censorship. For this we needed appropriate experts and political support.
  We already had access to experts. Contacts with Members of the European Parliament were established and two Irish MEPs gave us their support and commissioned us to provide this report. This was an important step, which also provided the means to secure funding and distribution of the report. Up to that point, we had personally borne all previous expenses for the administration of our website, translations and material expenses. Until the report was published in July, after two years of difficult work in a complex environment, the cooperation with the two MEPs had to remain a secret for obvious reasons.
  During this time it was not easy to make everyone involved to understand that the Duma case was a very serious individual case, but that it was far more important to classify this individual case as symptomatic of a global conflict between the great powers and to act accordingly. While we were working on the report, opportunities arose again and again to present the causes of the Duma case in public discussions and, in a deliberately limited way, to also write corresponding articles. The big media in America and Europe had no interest in expressing themselves in our spirit. On the contrary, a witch hunt was set in motion, or rather we were hounded and accused of defending the dictator of Syria and submitting to Russian propaganda.

Attacking ad personam
instead of factual discussion

Each of us has been personally attacked and vilified. One was blocked from speaking at the UN Security Council, another was certified by two ambassadors from the P5 group as unworthy of their hearing by not even attending the hearing. Elsewhere, referring to our group, an ambassador said: “Yes, and there are people throwing mud hoping it will stick.” A well-known and respected European academic institution drew an invitation to a congress on chemical weapons Convention back at the time our report was published, arguing “there has to be a balance between the political and academic dimensions” – a statement that frightens me. Another of us was attested as having destroyed his life’s work by participating in our group.
  A well-known Central European public television station last year ran a lengthy documentary on the subject of chemical weapons and the Duma, which concluded that chemical weapons had been used there – a finding that in no way corresponded to what we heard from the documents available to us. We contacted the head of the department and asked him to give us the same amount of time to present our findings. In his reply, he meant that we first had to prove that we could comply with his institution’s reporting standard.
  The head of the department received our report a few days ago. We are curious to see whether we will pass the television standard test and whether a conversation will take place. Incidentally, there were also false statements on the BBC and in the English print media, which – and this is a small ray of hope – then had to be retracted.
  Our report has now been sent to all 193 UN & OPCW member states, both digitally and in print format. The General Director of the OPCW and his Technical Advisory Board also received the report with a renewed request to the organisation to fulfil its obligations and to convene a new Duma investigation. In any case, the envelopes have not yet been returned.
  The new-old Brazilian government of President Lula da Silva reacted quickly to the report, instructing Brazil’s embassies in New York and The Hague to insist that the report be discussed at the UN Security Council and the OPCW. We expect other governments and the Secretary-General of the United Nations to do the same. Of course, we very much hope that civil society organisations will raise their voices and remind governments that organisations like the UN and the OPCW have an ultimate duty to citizens to protect the truth and uphold international law.  •

(Translation Current Concerns)

* Hans-Christof von Sponeck, born in Bremen in 1939, studied demography and physical anthropology at the universities of Bonn, Tübingen and Washington and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Marburg in 2010. He served with the United Nations from 1968 to 2000. During this time he worked in New York, Ghana, Pakistan, Botswana, India and was Director of UNDP’s European Office in Geneva. From 1998 to 2000, he was UN Coordinator and Assistant UN Secretary-General responsible for the Oil for Food Programme in Iraq. In February 2000, he resigned in protest against the sanctions policy against Iraq. Various awards and publications. He is currently working on a book on UN reform together with Richard Falk.