Reprisal
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- Not to be confused with a reprise, or with a reappraisal.
In warfare, a reprisal is a limited and deliberate violation of the laws of war to punish an enemy who has already broken them. A legally executed reprisal is not an atrocity.
To be legally justified, a reprisal may be directed only against the party carrying out the original violation, may be carried out only as a last resort after formal notice of the planned reprisal having been given, must be proportionate to the original violation, must have the aim of persuading the original violator to comply with the legally accepted behavior in future, and must not continue after the illegal behavior ends.
Circumstances usually dictate that reprisals may be taken only against people guilty of the original violation. However, there is always a probability that the reprisals will themselves be viewed as war crimes, risking a vicious circle of violations by both sides.
All four Geneva Conventions prohibit reprisals against, respectively, battlefield casualties, shipwreck survivors, prisoners of war and civilians, as well as certain buildings and property. An additional 1977 protocol extends this to cover historic monuments, works of art, and places of worship.
In the United States military, the lowest ranked commander who may authorize a reprisal is a general in command of a theater.
[edit] Etymology
The word came from French, where it originally meant "act of taking back", for example, raiding back the equivalent of cattle lost to an enemy raid.
[edit] See also
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Look up reprisal in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
- Collective punishment
- Laws of war
- Letter of marque, (license to hunt enemy ships and retake lost ships from the enemy).
- War
