Read the bottom of the Q post.
Then..............
Check out the page number in the Law of War Manual.
Coincidence?????
https://qagg.news/?read=111118.18 REPRISALS
Reprisals are extreme measures of coercion used to help enforce the law of war by
seeking to persuade an adversary to cease violations.
190 GC COMMENTARY 211 (“One other point should be made clear. The Convention does not give individual men
and women the right to claim compensation. The State is answerable to another contracting State and not to the
individual. On that point the recognized system was not in any way modified in 1949.”); GC COMMENTARY 603
(“As regards material compensation for breaches of the Convention, it is inconceivable, at least as the law stands
today, that claimants should be able to bring a direct action for damages against the State in whose service the
person committing the breach was working. Only a State can make such claims on another State, and they form
part, in general, of what is called ‘war reparations.’”).
191 See U.N. International Law Commission, Draft articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful
Acts, with commentaries, 128 (2001) (“Countermeasures are to be contrasted with retorsion, i.e. ‘unfriendly’ conduct
which is not inconsistent with any international obligation of the State engaging in it even though it may be a
response to an internationally wrongful act. Acts of retorsion may include the prohibition of or limitations upon
normal diplomatic relations or other contacts, embargoes of various kinds or withdrawal of voluntary aid
programmes.”); GWS COMMENTARY 342 (“A distinction is generally made between reprisals and retortion; the
latter is also a form of retaliation, but the measures taken do not break the law, and are in reply to acts which are
themselves generally admitted to be lawful. The acts in question on both sides are matters within the competence of
the States concerned. A case of retortion would, for example, be the withdrawal by one belligerent from retained
personnel of privileges accorded over and above those accorded under the convention, where the adverse Party had
withdrawn privileges, whether in the same or in another connection, from the corresponding personnel in his
hands.”).
192 Refer to § 18.18.1.2 (Acts That Would Otherwise Be Unlawful).
193 Refer to § 18.18.2 (Conditions for Lawful Reprisals).
18.18.1 Definition of Reprisal. Reprisals are acts taken against a party: (1) that would
otherwise be unlawful; (2) in order to persuade that party to cease violating the law.194
For example, during the Civil War, the United States authorized reprisals against
Confederate forces for murdering and enslaving captured Union soldiers.195 Reprisals against
POWs are now prohibited.196
18.18.1.1 Reprisal – Notes on Terminology. Some older sources used “reprisal”
in a narrower sense only to refer to taking possession of property of the enemy in response to
violations of the law of war.197 Some older sources used the term “retaliation” to describe what
is now commonly understood to be “reprisal.”198
The term “countermeasures” is sometimes used to cover that part of the subject of
reprisals not associated with armed conflict, with the term “reprisals” or “belligerent reprisals”
sometimes reserved for action taken during international armed conflict.199
194 See GC COMMENTARY 227 (“Reprisals are measures contrary to law, but which, when taken by one State with
regard to another State to ensure the cessation of certain acts or to obtain compensation for them, are considered as
lawful in the particular conditions under which they are carried out.”); United States v. Ohlendorf, et al.
(Einsatzgruppen Case), IV TRIALS OF WAR CRIMINALS BEFORE THE NMT 493 (“Reprisals in war are the
commission of acts which, although illegal in themselves, may, under the specific circumstances of the given case,
become justified because the guilty adversary has himself behaved illegally, and the action is taken in last resort, in
order to prevent the adversary from behaving illegally in the future.”).
195 Abraham Lincoln, General Order No. 252, Jul. 31, 1863, reprinted in Thos. M. O’Brien & Oliver Diefendorf,
UNITED STATES WAR DEPARTMENT, II GENERAL ORDERS OF THE WAR DEPARTMENT, EMBRACING THE YEARS 1861,
1862 & 1863, 323 (1864) (“It is the duty of every government to give protection to its citizens, of whatever class,
color, or condition, and especially to those who are duly organized as soldiers in the public service. The law of
nations and the usages and customs of war, as carried on by civilized powers, permit no distinction as to color in the
treatment of prisoners of war as public enemies. To sell or enslave any captured person on account of his color, and
for no offense against the laws of war, is a relapse into barbarism and a crime against the civilization of the age. The
Government of the United States will give the same protection to all its soldiers, and if the enemy shall sell or
enslave anyone because of his color the offense shall be punished by retaliation upon the enemy’s prisoners in our
possession. It is therefore ordered, That for every soldier of the United States killed in violation of the laws of war a
rebel soldier shall be executed, and for every one enslaved by the enemy or sold into slavery a rebel soldier shall be
placed at hard labor on the public works and continued at such labor until the other shall be released and receive the
treatment due to a prisoner of war.”).
196 Refer to § 18.18.3.2 (Reprisals Prohibited by the 1949 Geneva Conventions).
197 See, e.g., WINTHROP, MILITARY LAW & PRECEDENTS 798 (“Reprisal. This further method, above specified,
consists in the taking possession of property of the enemy or of his subjects, to be held as indemnity for injury
inflicted in violation of the laws of war, or as security till a pecuniary indemnity be duly rendered.”).
198 LIEBER CODE art. 27 (“The law of war can no more wholly dispense with retaliation than can the law of nations,
of which it is a branch. Yet civilized nations acknowledge retaliation as the sternest feature of war. A reckless
enemy often leaves to his opponent no other means of securing himself against the repetition of barbarous
outrage.”).
199 U.N. International Law Commission, Draft articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts,
with commentaries, 128 (2001) (“As to terminology, traditionally the term ‘reprisals’ was used to cover otherwise
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