General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: How can anyone not just defend, but cheer for the Marines in the video? [View all]EFerrari
(163,986 posts)The respect for corpses is so rooted that we even agree to deal gently with the bodies of our enemies. International rules about the treatment of the battlefield dead date back centuries. Witness Shakespeare's Henry V, in which a French herald pleads with King Henry: "I come to thee for charitable license/ That we may wander o'er this bloody field/ To book our dead, and then to bury them." The 1949 Geneva Conventions explicitly provide that prevailing forces must "search for the [enemy's] dead and prevent their being despoiled." The conventions further require that enemy "dead are honorably interred, if possible according to the rites of the religion to which they belonged, that their graves are respected, grouped if possible according to the nationality of the deceased, properly maintained and marked so that they may always be found." Violators have been convicted and imprisoned.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2002/03/habeas_corpses.html
Here it is (or here one ref is):
2) [(2) p.152] Although this Article speaks only of measures
to prevent the "despoiling" (French, ' dépouillement ' of
the dead, it incontestably involves a prohibition of
"pillage", (French, ' pillage ') of the dead. The 1906
Convention made mention (Article 28) of individual acts of
pillage as an example of offences which Governments ought
to stop. The reason why this passage did not reappear in
either 1929 or 1949 was that the 1906 wording, instancing
this particular offence as an example, was replaced by a
more general provision for the punishment of "any act
contrary to the provisions of the... Convention" (Article
29 of the 1929 Convention and the similar Article 49 of
the 1949 Convention). Most military or ordinary criminal
codes already penalize pillage on the battlefield, and
countries which have not yet any provisions to that effect
are obliged under Article 49 of the 1949 Convention to
enact the necessary legislation;
http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/COM/365-570019?OpenDocument