JURIST’s Sarisha Harikrishna interviews Professor Dr. John D. Ciorciari, Dean of the Hamilton Lugar School at Indiana University Bloomington on the practical challenges of prosecuting genocide and war crimes in Asia.
While international courts have established legal frameworks for addressing mass atrocities, their application in Asia faces distinct obstacles shaped by regional politics and diplomatic relations.
The Asian context presents a critical test case for the global accountability project. Unlike in Europe, Africa, or the Americas, Asia lacks a regional human rights court or a cohesive intergovernmental body with a mandate to enforce international criminal law. This institutional gap, combined with a deeply entrenched commitment to state sovereignty and non-interference, creates a jurisdictional vacuum. The International Criminal Court (ICC) often finds its reach limited here, as key states are not parties to the Rome Statute and actively resist external judicial oversight, a resistance that stems from the complex interplay of post-colonial sovereignty norms and the prioritization of state stability over individual justice. Consequently, the region has become a laboratory for fragmented justice mechanisms, from the internationally-backed hybrid tribunal in Cambodia to domestic proceedings and non-judicial truth commissions.
These models reveal a central tension on how universal legal norms are adapted, and often diluted, when confronted with the uncompromising realities of Asian geopolitics. Professor Ciorciari’s research in international politics focuses on the Indo-Pacific region, where he has published different scholarly work, such as his 2010 book The Limits of Alignment, and his 2021 book The Courteous Power, in collaboration with Kiyoteru Tsutsui, which examines Japan’s approach in the region. His 2024 article on the politics of prosecuting genocide and war crimes in Asia, published in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics examines how major power competition and regional diplomatic norms create significant barriers to accountability in Asia.
JURIST: The legacy of the Tokyo Tribunal is often framed as “victor’s justice.” Some critics even describe it as “colonialist justice,” since Western powers prosecuted Asian aggression while maintaining their own imperial projects. In your view, does this history continue to shape perceptions of international criminal law in Asia today, and might it contribute to skepticism of tribunals as instruments of justice?
Professor John Ciorciari: Well, certainly back in the era in which the Tokyo Tribunal was occurring, many audiences around Asia were happy to see Japanese wartime leaders prosecuted for their atrocities in the region. But at the same time, as you are suggesting, many saw it as ironic, if not outright hypocritical, that some of the European or Western powers that were involved in setting up and managing the Tokyo trials and other trials around the Asia-Pacific region at the time were simultaneously in the process of trying to reestablish colonial rule in parts of East and Southeast and South Asia. Yes, at the time, there were many critiques that these tribunals were flawed and lacked legitimacy on the basis that only the Japanese were being tried and not the other participants in the hostilities.
Whether that continues to the present, I would say that contemporary history, especially younger Asian audiences, probably would not frame the problem as colonial and perhaps not even as imperial, but they would certainly still recognize the challenges of hypocrisy, double standards, and the principle of “victor’s justice” that you referenced. There certainly would be a skepticism around the region about Western-led international criminal processes taking place in Asian societies and possibly trampling on the sovereignty of the countries or the societies in question. And so, in brief, I think that, yes, there would be skepticism about international criminal justice to the extent that it was seen as primarily a Western project being directed at individuals or societies in other parts of the world, including Asia.
JURIST: Given this persistent skepticism, what alternative models of justice or accountability do you see as most viable in the Asian context? For instance, does the future lie more in hybrid tribunals like the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) or in non-judicial transitional justice mechanisms like truth commissions?
Ciorciari: Generally speaking, and it’s not just in Asia, it’s true all around the world, that governments would much prefer to have control over these types of processes than to outsource them or to see even a hybrid mechanism in which they had to share authorship and control. All of these international criminal processes are subject to politics at some level, and most Asian governments would certainly prefer to handle authorship of maters of this sort through domestic mechanisms, if indeed trials occur at all. Mind you, one of the options on the table, in addition to the things that you mentioned, is the option of not carrying out a tribunal or a truth commission or illustration process, and instead just engaging in some form of political deal-making between those who are accused of atrocities and those who are not.
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