CYIL vol. 11 (2020)

CYIL 11 (2020) CULTURAL PROPERTY IN THE LAWS OF WAR educational academies, observatories are concerned with education, advance human knowledge or cultivate science. Churches and prayer houses, in turn, manifest religious freedom, tolerance, and are also an indivisible component of the forum externum . 18 Museums of the fine arts, or of a scientific character, among other things, mediate the participation of members of society in the knowledge of the cultural life of the community and contribute to the formation of individual and collective identity. Within the Lieber Instructions, Article 34 occupies an atypical place. Beyond doubt rule creates a legal fiction. 19 This rule presumes a different legal fact than the one that exists, it means the real one. The normative proposition does not articulate it positively, but in a negative manner. Within the meaning of the rule not all protected objects shall be taken as public property during the occupation. 20 If the objects were private property such as a school, museum or gallery, their legal status would not modify. If the Instructions does not consider these items to be public property, they should be private property. Sometimes, the distinction between public and private property is not entirely clear or comprehensible or easy to implement. Certainly, the rule has a quite different legal consequence than that provided for in Article 31. 21 According to this provision, the occupying force appropriate all public money, seize all public movable property and sequester all public property income belonging to a hostile government or nation for their own benefit. Article 34 prescribes nature of the written rule as well. According to the Instructions, the rule serves as a general standard of war conduct whereas Article 35 has a specific objects and purpose. This rule protects any movable property against all avoidable injury. It requires the preservation of artefacts for future generations, as well as to allow hospitals to provide health 18 DE VATTEL, E., op. cit. 7, p. 55: “It must be concluded, that liberty of conscience is natural and inviolable right.” See Article XXXV of the Treaty between Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Great Britain and Ireland, Italy, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire for the Settlement of Affairs in the East signed on 13 July 1878: „In Serbia the difference of religious creeds and confessions shall not be alleged against any person as a ground for exclusion or incapacity in matters relating to the enjoyment of civil or political rights, admission to public employments, functions, and honours, or the exercise of the various professions and industries, in any locality whatsoever. The freedom and outward exercise of all forms of worship shall be assured to all persons belonging to Serbia, as well as to foreigners, and no hindrance shall be offered either to the hierarchical organization of the different communions, or to their relations with their spiritual chiefs.” 19 Article 34 states: “As a general rule, the property belonging to churches, to hospitals, or other establishments of an exclusively charitable character, to establishments of education, or foundations for the promotion of knowledge, whether public schools, universities, academies of learning or observatories, museums of the fine arts, or of a scientific character – such property is not to be considered public property in the sense of paragraph 31; but it may be taxed or used when the public service may require it.” 20 Article 31 states: “A victorious army appropriates all public money, seizes all public movable property until further direction by its government, and sequesters for its own benefit or of that of its government all the revenues of real property belonging to the hostile government or nation. The title to such real property remains in abeyance during military occupation, and until the conquest is made complete.” 21 Article 16 states: “Military necessity admits of all direct destruction of life or limb of ‘armed’ enemies, and of other persons whose destruction is incidentally ‘unavoidable’ in the armed contests of the war; it allows of the capturing of every armed enemy, and every enemy of importance to the hostile government, or of peculiar danger to the captor; it allows of all destruction of property, and obstruction of the ways and channels of traffic, travel, or communication, and of all withholding of sustenance or means of life from the enemy; of the appropriation of whatever an enemy’s country affords necessary for the subsistence and safety of the army, and of such deception as does not involve the breaking of good faith either positively pledged, regarding agreements entered into during the war, or supposed by the modern law of war to exist. Men who take up arms against one another in public war do not cease on this account to be moral beings, responsible to one another and to God.”

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