What are the Earth Federation’s acts of misconduct in Gundam 0079?
In the opening scene of each episode of the anime and each instalment of the film trilogy Mobile Suit Gundam, the audience is shown the horrific, genocidal, and destructive massacre of a major city and people from a space colony. This action was done deliberately by the antagonist, fascist nation, the Principality of Zeon. While the Principality, headed by the Zabi family is based on the fascist governments of Italy and Nazi Germany, and some their genocidal actions based on Imperial Japan’s own terrorist acts in Manchuria, and many of their crimes against humanity and other war crimes are easy to point out, it’s not always the case when it comes to the Federation in my opinion. So what are the Federation’s own crimes against humanity and war crimes? That we shall see below and conclude how every morally gray UC Gundam is.
To begin with, what could be considered a real world war crime the Federation commits is the fact that Amuro Ray, Hiyato Kobayashi, Kai Shiden, Sayla Mass, and Fraw Bow are recruited as child soldiers to fight for the Federation. Now according to the Geneva Convention and the International Criminal Court, recruitment of child soldiers is indeed a war crime. This is but one war crime committed by the Federation. Another war crime committed by the Federation in concert with child soldiers is how Amuro Ray goes through physical and mental abuse by his commanding officer, Bright Noa, captain of the White Base. For instance, Bright Noa resorts to hitting the 15-year-old Amuro in the face in episode 12 when he refuses to fight, after going through shell shock, and the captain disregards his mental health as a result. Bright. Not to mention that, Bright also has Amuro and company are conditioned to hate the Zeon when watching dictator and fleet admiral Girhen Zabi’s broadcasted speech, and to serve the Federation’s “cause” to defend “democracy and individual rights”. We see later that Amuro considers the Zeons to be evil space invaders in episodes 13, 14 and 15 as per his conditioning by Bright. Ergo, Amuro is taught to see all Zeon as evil and thus is gas-lighted to seeing them as dehumanized beings.
Aside from being condited by Bright, Amuro and company have also been recruited unwillingly as human guinea pigs. What is meant by that is how Amuro and co. are made to test experimental weapons in battle. This also comes at the cost of the child soldiers in the Federation’s prototype mobile weapons, to suffer further from shell shock. Additionally, the kids are also being used as part of the Federation high command, especially General Revil, to be part of a eugenics program to breed newtype troops. Revil in specific, wants to breed a new race of super soldiers in order to help the Federation not only win the war, but to enforce its will over the colonies and defend the neoliberal order.
In addition, other war crimes and crimes against humanity are the use of human shields. This is not stated in the tv series and film trilogy, however, the Federation does have a habit of placing and intermingling military personnel and installations in civilian areas. To give an example, in the first episode of the tv series, the Federation has a base and testing ground for their prototype mobile weapons, which makes it a target for Zeon attack, and an endangerment of civilians. Not only that, but there was also a military installation in Belfest in the tv series, which was also in a civilian area. This can be assumed that the Federation is using civilian areas as human shields as the Federation assumes that their foes won’t attack an area full of non-combatants in them. However, it seems that they did not learn this lesson, especially as earlier in the war, they did the same thing. It can also be inferred that the Federation thought that the colonies of Sides 1, 2 and 4 would not be attacked by Zeon; yet this proved to be disastrous and entailed the deaths of 4 billion people. As such, it puts blood on the Federation’s hands. Plus, another instance of human shielding is when the refugees of Side 7 were left on board White Base. This happens in episode 4 of the tv series when the White Base arrives at Luna II, but are refused to leave the ship and settle on Luna II by order of the paranoid Admiral Watkins.
In another case, we see a pair of war crimes committed by Federal troops when Amuro visits his hometown. One is a squad of drunken federal soldiers in his mother’s home. In this instance, we see the Federal soldiers disregarding his personal property and possessions. Here it can be inferred that the Federation during the war has resorted to destruction, looting, and pilagging of civilian property, which is yet another war crime on their part. Then when Amuro goes to visit an apple vendor who is an old family friend, we see Federal troops harassing her over not paying the vendor for food. This shows the elitism and disregard for the poor on the part of the Federation. Not to mention the human rights abuse of economic harm in not allowing a poor vendor to have basic income.
One final war crime and crime against humanity that the Federation committed we shall explore is unlawful imprisonment and forced deportation. When attempting to leave the civilian population behind on Luna II, Admiral Watkins places the crew of the White Base and its civilian refugees under arrest, imprisonment, and accusses them of being spies. This is done on a pretense of suspicion, but without due process or evidence. Hence, Watkins causes willful harm to the civilians aboard White Base, unlawful arrest, detention without trial, disregard for human rights, willful harm to political groups (refugees notwithstanding), extrajugdicial punishment, and dehumanizes them through his suspions.
As for the act of forced deportation, this is an act committed by the Earth Federation before the One Year War. When it came to the planet’s environmental catastophy, the Federation began their massive colonization program by forcibly evicting, displacing, and relocating 7 billion people in the O’Neill space islands, under the guise of relieving the earth of its “excess population”. This is for the most part a crime against humanity, as the civilian populace had no say or consent to being coerced into deportation. Other crimes to consider is how this also means that the Federation used political repression in deporting hundreds of millions of people into space and how it also leads into curtailment of human rights, such as crushing demonstrations and assembly rights.This also entails that the Federation used climate change as an excuse for land grabs, in order to satisfy their capitalistic interests.
Overall, I just wanted to put this out as there isn’t a whole lot of talk on some of the Earth Federations’ own war crimes during the OYW. It’s pretty common to hear of their usual war crimes, human rights abuses, and crimes against humanity. Normally, common responses to abuses by the Federation are that it’s bascially the military and not the civil government of the Federation. My response to that is, the military is the government of the Federation. Other responses in defense of the Federation is one is reading too much into the lines. Although, there is no such thing and that is more like what we call interpretation. With all that, I hope this sheds some light as to how in Gundam UC, the Earth Federation is a totalitarian police state.
