In the normal course of things, diplomats and consular
officials are agents of the state they represent. They get their marching
orders from the government in power. Sometimes however, diplomats rightly disobey
the orders that they are given. These moments of resistance can be crucial,
particularly when it is in service of saving lives. A crucial form of
resistance performed by various diplomats, for example, took place during World
War Two with the granting of thousands of visas to those fleeing the Nazis or
their collaborators' persecution (Holbrooke, 2007). The numbers of people saved
were substantial (totalling over a hundred thousand).
The significance of diplomats saving lives through the
granting of visas was recently highlighted in an NPR story
written by Eleanor Beardsley about Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes do Amaral e
Abranches. Through Beardsley's reporting (and other academic writing) we learn
several things about Sousa Mendes. Stationed in Bordeaux, France, as the Nazi
victory over France was nearing rapidly, Sousa Mendes granted visas to some
30,000 Jewish and other stateless refugees during the early years of World War
Two. He worked tirelessly and to the point of exhaustion, particularly in June
1940. The decision to grant visas was not only a humanitarian act but also in
flagrant violation of official state policy. Though Portugal was formally
neutral, its fascist dictator, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar decreed that Jews,
Russians and others were to be denied entry into Portugal. Sousa Mendes defied
Salazar's exclusionary directives. His defiance was not without a personal
cost. As Rui Afonso and Fabio Koifman (2015, 28) assert: "For a man with
twelve children and debts, such an act of open disobedience to Portuguese
dictator Salazar spelled professional and financial suicide."[2] According
to Afonso and Koifman, after Sousa Mendes was recalled to Lisbon (presumably in
1940 itself), he was subjected to a disciplinary hearing, and permanently
suspended from active service. He was forced to live his remaining years in
poverty until his death in 1954.
Beardsley's reporting also highlights the legacy of
such brave acts and the lives that were able to be saved and continue because
of his decision to resist his government's orders. As noted on the Sousa Mendes
Foundation website,
Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer observed that by granting some 30,000 visas,
Sousa Mendes' acts constituted “the largest rescue action by a single
individual during the Holocaust.”
Though disgraced in the years following his
disciplinary hearing and removal from his position, his conduct was legitimized
many years later. In 1966, the government of Israel recognized him as a "Righteous
Among the Nations" while the United States Congress issued a
proclamation in 1986 to honour his acts. In 1988, the Portuguese government
formally apologized for its treatment of Sousa Mendes.
It is worth noting as well that while Sousa Mendes'
acts of resistance were political (in that they were in defiance of his own
government's orders and its policies), it was also combined with a firm
religious belief. As reported on the Foundation's website, Sousa Mendes
asserted: “I would rather stand with God against Man than with Man against
God.” Afonso and Koifman (2015, 28) posit: "Sousa Mendes was a devout
Catholic, and he felt that he had a duty to try and save these people from
falling into the hands of the Nazis." Accordingly, one might rightly say
that Sousa Mendes' resistance was both political and religious.
Sousa Mendes' resistance was not solely based on his
sense of Christian morality. As someone trained in the law, as Sousa Mendes
was, it was based on a legal determination of the legality of the order not to
grant visas to Jews on the basis of religion or other considerations. It is
said that Mendes Sousa asserted to a crowd outside his residence in Bordeaux
(Wheeler, 1989, 129):
My government has denied all applications for visas to any refugee. But I cannot allow these people to die. Many are Jews and our Constitution says that the religion or the politics of a foreigner shall not be used to deny him refuge in Portugal. I have decided to follow this principle. I am going to issue a visa to anyone who asks for it--regardless of whether or not he can pay ... .
Drawing from the legal scholarship of the late
Professor Rod Macdonald as well my co-contributor to this blog site, Dr.
Frédéric Mégret, resistance may be intimately connected to law. Macdonald
(1998, 79) observed: "non-conforming behaviour in any particular regime is
not simply a failure of enforcement or civil disobedience. It may be the
reflexion of an alternative conception of legal normativity." Mégret
(2010, 212) similarly argues that resistance (particularly in the context of
confronting genocidal law) is "often inspired by an alternative vision of
what law is or should be."
Linking back to Sousa Mendes, his decision to
defy his government's orders to deny visas was not an a-legal act. It sprang
from an alternative idea that the Portuguese constitution (as positive law) prohibited
the denial of refuge on the basis of religion or ethnicity. As such, the
Salazar government’s order to deny visas on the basis of religion and/or
ethnicity was in violation of the constitution.
For many, the notion of resistance can often take the
form of a rather public confrontation against some formal power, whether such
defiance involves violence or not. But resistance does not stop being
resistance because it may be more hidden from the public view (see James C.
Scott's work on this) (or waged against some non-state power). Though an
official act, the signing and granting of visas takes place outside the
public’s view. While the granting and signing of visas is typically
uncontroversial and tends to be less dramatic in most circumstances, it takes
on an immense significance as we see here.
Sousa Mendes' conduct and the acts of many other diplomatic and consular officials saved thousands of lives. It is important to recognize their efforts and their legacy. However, it is also useful to remember that the models they provide are not obsolete today. Many others are seeking protection and, at least in some cases, diplomats may be able to provide assistance even if their governments refuse to or show limited willingness to help.
More information about Sousa Mendes, his activities
and legacy can be found on the Sousa Mendes Foundation's website and some of the sources listed below.
Sources
Rui Afonso & Fabio Koifman, "Sousa
Mendes, Souza Dantas, and the Flight of Polish Refugees from France"
(2015) 60:3 The Polish Review 21.
Eleanor Beardsley, "'Portugal's Schindler' Is
Remembered, Decades After His Lifesaving Deeds" National Public Radio
(4 August 2016), online: http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/08/04/486735086/remembering-portugals-schindler
Richard Holbrooke, "Defying Orders, Saving Lives:
Heroic Diplomats of the Holocaust" Foreign Affairs (May/June 2007),
online: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/review-essay/2007-05-01/defying-orders-saving-lives-heroic-diplomats-holocaust
Roderick A MacDonald, "Metaphors of Multiplicity:
Civil Society, Regimes and Legal Pluralism" (1998) 15 Ariz J Intl
& Comp L 69 at 79.
Frédéric Mégret, “Not ‘Lambs to the Slaughter’: A
Program for Resistance to ‘Genocidal Law’”, in René Provost & Payam
Akhavan, eds, Confronting Genocide (New York: Springer, 2010) at
212.
Mark Pygas, "10 Valiant Diplomats Of World War
II" Listverse (7 October 2013), online: http://listverse.com/2013/10/07/10-valiant-diplomats-of-world-war-ii/
James C Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).
Sousa Mendes Foundation website, online:
http://sousamendesfoundation.org/
JT, "10 People Who Saved Jews During World War
Two" Listverse (6 November 2008), online:
http://listverse.com/2008/11/06/10-people-who-saved-jews-during-world-war-two/
Douglas Wheeler, "And Who Is My Neighbor? A World
War II Hero of Conscience for Portugal" (1989) 26:1 Luso-Brazilian Review
119.
Cross-posted at the Resistance and the Law blog site - http://resistanceandthelaw.blogspot.ca/2016/08/diplomatic-resistance-and-saving-of.html
