WORSHIP WEDNESDAY WOAD 10/16/19 DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY!
RANDOM THOUGHT’S
The mere thought of losing a child is heart wrenching for a parent, and to suffer through such a tragedy is incomprehensible for most people. But not for the family of Harry Dunn, he’s the British teenager that was killed when an American diplomats wife crashed into his motocycle while driving on the wrong side of the road. She claimed diplomatic immunity and then left the country, which has not set well with anyone in the U.K. Dunns parents called on U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson for help. He has since reached out to President Trump who called the incident a “Terrible accident” but also acknowledged that this is a very complex issue because of Diplomatic Immunity. Trump said he understood the tremendous anger from the Dunn family and others. The Americn women involved in the accident has been identified as Anne Sacoolas, the president said White House officals wanted to speak with her in hopes of working something out so that there can be some healing. I learned that concept of Diplomatic Immunity dates back thousands of years, basically it’s a form of legal immunity that ensures diplomats are given safe passage and are considered not susceptible to lawsuit or prosecution under the host country’s laws, but they can still be expelled. Modern day diplomatic immunity was codified as international law in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and has been ratified by the U.K. an the U.S. only a handful have failed to sign off on this. No one expects the White House to revoke Mrs, Sacoolas’s immunity, but if she had only bothered to meet with the family and express her regrets instead of sneeking out the country like a thief in the night, this may not have evoled into an international incident that every parent can empathize with.