From 摘自《经济学人》Mar¹ 9th 2006

HITHERTO, the world's worst tyrants² have usually managed to avoid being brought to court for their crimes. Some, of course, were killed. Hitler took his own life. But Stalin and Mao died in their beds. Pol Pot, responsible for the slaughter³ of 2m Cambodians in the 1970s, lived on in Cambodia until his death in 1998. Idi Amin, Uganda's brutal⁴ dictator, saw out his days in comfortable exile in Saudi Arabia; Ethiopia's Mengistu Haile Mariam continues to live in Zimbabwe. The list goes on. But with the spread of international justice over the past decade, the noose⁵ is tightening⁶. （1）It is now accepted that there can be no immunity⁷ for the worst violations⁸ of human rights, not even for heads of state.

Serbia's president, Slobodan Milosevic, was indicted⁹ for war crimes in 1999 and is likely to be sentenced to life imprisonment¹⁰ when his trial ends later this year. After ten years on the run, Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb army chief held responsible for the Srebrenica massacre¹¹, is expected to be arrested any day. In Chile, Augusto Pinochet is finally facing a real possibility of trial 17 years after the end of his dictatorship. Hissène Habré, a ruthless ex-president of Chad, exiled in Senegal for the past 16 years, could soon be extradited to Brussels to face trial for crimes against humanity under Belgium's “universal jurisdiction” law. Polish prosecutors¹² are preparing to bring charges against Wojciech Jaruzelski, their last communist leader. And Saddam Hussein, Iraq's former dictator, faces near-certain execution at the end of his trial before a special tribunal in Baghdad.

Debate has long raged about the best way to deal with gross violations of human rights. Is it more important to punish the perpetrators or to bring an end to the atrocities¹³? （2）Can one, in other words, secure both justice and peace, or are the two naturally antagonistic¹⁴?

new words

antagonistic     a. 对抗性的
1. He's always antagonistic towards new ideas.
他总是抗拒新思想.
2. Mutually exclusive or antagonistic qualities or things.
不相容，两相对立无法共存、彼此抵触的特性或事物
3. Something that separates potentially antagonistic entities¹⁵, as an area between two rival powers that serves to lessen¹⁶ the danger of conflict.
缓冲物，缓冲地带可用来隔离潜在的对抗性因来的东西，如面敌对势力用来减轻冲突危险的地带
4. His policy is antagonistic to our interests.
他的政策兴我们的利益相抵触。