Tribune. Since February 24, words and war images have invaded our lives, everyday. The whole world now knows not only where Ukraine is located, but also what happens to it by hour. Policies, journalists, specialists, everyone comments on the war that unfolds before our eyes. Words were dropped: crimes against humanity, genocide. Every day brings a lot of new convictions, official and unofficial.
In 2022, seventy-six years after the Nuremberg trial, which marks the birth of international criminal justice, it is a new era that opens, that of the images of war in real time and in continuous flow. These images are those of the effects of the war on populations, cities, campaigns, infrastructure, but also those calls for the help of the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, who uses all the channels made available. It is on all fronts, real and virtual.
Never has a war had also been the subject of an investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC), open on March 2, nor quickly raised the cooperation of so many states.
“live”
For the first time in history probably, on this scale and in real time, the world assists in spectator at a “live” war, marked by inflation of images showing all both the fate of civilians , the movements of the troops, the weapons used … The question arises from the scope of these images, the need to attest to their truth in an indisputable way and therefore of their value as evidence.
In Nuremberg in 1945-1946, first trial for crimes against humanity, there were no pictures of the shoah. And for good reason: these images did not exist. During the war in the former Yugoslavia (1991-2001), it is the images mediated by NGOs which trigger the indignation and implementation of justice with the creation, in 1993, of an ad hoc court (the court International Penal for the former Yugoslavia). But at that time these images are rare, broadcast by little media.
In Rwanda, during the Genocide of Tutsi (April-July 1994), the reporters present show mainly the chaos which reigns, the evacuation operations of expatriates and the clashes between the government army and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF ) Very few images document the genocide of Tutsi.
The services of the communication and audiovisual production of the Defense (ECPAD) which accompany the French military deployments successive (“Noroît”, “amaryllis”, “turquoise”) provide the French channels from the images of their operations . But these do not show the killings, except during the operation “amaryllis” (8-14 April 1994) where, on some pictures, turned in the kiGali suburbs and taken up by the newspapers of France 2 and TF1, five corpses are filmed in close-up.
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