10 - International Humanitarian Law and the Asia-Pacific Struggles for National Liberation

Summary

This chapter will analyse the contribution of States in the Asia-Pacific region to the ‘freedom fighter’ resolutions of the 1960s and 1970s that paved the way for the conclusion of the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts of 8 June 1977 (AP I). It will question the relevance of Article 1(4) of AP I in the post-colonial landscape in which the independence wars against colonialism were largely over by 1977, leaving only delayed decolonization and foreign military occupation, as in East Timor, or non-international armed conflicts (NIACs) like those in Aceh and Mindanao, and ‘below-the-radar’ situations such as the one in West Papua. The meaning and importance of a ‘national liberation struggle’ in the post-colonial Asia-Pacific region will have to be considered in the context of the modern-day geopolitics in which these States distinguish between terrorists, insurgents, rebels and traitors taking up arms against them, on the one hand, and genuine freedom fighters, on the other hand.