Rape!by
Fr. Ranhilio Callangan AquinoMay 14th, 2012
Manila Standard Today
A Panamian diplomat, it has been alleged, raped a Filipina — and in the aftermath of that dastardly incident, international law has been “raped†by irate but hardly informed legislators, each with his or her own version of diplomatic immunity.
We did not invent diplomatic immunity. States, for centuries, have always recognized that immunities attend the representatives of other States and history records the fact that breach of these immunities has, in several cases, been “casus belli†—a cause of a war. The proposition advanced by one female senator was therefore not accurate: that diplomatic immunities only go so far as to allow a diplomat to perform his or her duties. The privilege of liberty from arrest, apprehension, prosecution and trial also have to do with the very dignity of the entity represented by a diplomat —an elite in the world-stage (where elite is a matter neither of wealth nor of size but of international juridical personality)!
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