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Interview: Attempt to sue China for COVID-19 contrary to international law: former Pakistani minister

(Xinhua)    14:01, June 06, 2020

The abrupt move of the United States to sue China for COVID-19 is in violation of international law on sovereign immunity, Pakistan's former law minister Ahmer Bilal Soofi told Xinhua in an interview.

It is quite strange that neither the U.S. government nor the plaintiffs that filed the several class action suits have written to the World Health Organization (WHO) or any other expert body to first check the sequence of facts and make a scientific and forensic study on the movement of the virus in various jurisdictions including the United States, said Soofi, who is also the founding president of the Research Society of International Law in Pakistan.

"The case filed by attorney general of Missouri shockingly refers to very generalized allegations and is footnoted heavily with media reports only," he said. "The case comes nowhere close to making factually based attribution that is a prerequisite under international law of state responsibility."

Talking about the status of suing China in international law, the expert said a state should not be sued in the jurisdiction of another state as per the settled principles of international law that have been collectively honored, which has been the political and diplomatic understanding amongst states and a cornerstone of mutual respect for each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Soofi added that the same is reflected in Article 5 of the United Nations (UN) Convention on Jurisdictional Immunities of States and Their Property, which explicitly notes that 'a State enjoys immunity, in respect of itself and its property, from the jurisdiction of the courts of another State.'

"This provision is widely believed to have the status of customary law even if the convention has not been ratified," he said.

In this regard, Soofi said, even the enactment of a U.S. domestic law allowing very restrictive filing of suits against foreign states has been viewed as legislative deviation from the norm of respecting sovereign immunity under international law.

Terming the U.S. allegations against China for not timely sharing information about COVID-19 as politically motivated, Soofi said that there are no facts authoritatively put together to support these allegations so far.

"Even to formulate the allegation, the facts and sequence of events need to be established by a neutral and respected forum and not by a state which is documenting its bias in favor of these allegations so openly and visibly that its ability to undertake an impartial review of facts to support allegations against China is no longer trustworthy," he said.

"Right now, if the United States chooses to even levy an allegation pursuant to internal political compulsions, it will neither have any legal basis nor will they be of any legal value under international law," Soofi said.

Supporting the idea of a joint international effort to defeat the disease, the former minister said that under the UN Charter, the countries, especially the United States, have an obligation to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of the pandemic as it is a threat to international peace and security.

"Under Article 1 of the Charter, the United States is obliged to cooperate with China to solve this threat of international pandemic, which is a problem of a humanitarian character," he said.

"Apart from it, the United States, being party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, has an obligation to implement Article 12 of the Covenant to cooperate with countries, including China, for the control of epidemic and other diseases," he said.

"It is evident that by not extending cooperation with China to find a common solution to the pandemic, the U.S. government is failing in its responsibility under Article 1 of the UN Charter," the expert noted.

"The fight against COVID-19 requires a transnational effort and not transnational mistrust," he said.

(For the latest China news, Please follow People's Daily on Twitter and Facebook)(Web editor: Liu Ning, Bianji)

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