The Blaatschapen wrote:With regards to the Red Cross, how do I distinguish between it and the English flag?
Or the Georgian flag?
I suspect Blaat is joking, but...
International Red Cross founder Henry Dunant chose the Red Cross emblem as the reverse of the Swiss flag; it has no religious connotations. The cross therefore has bars of equal length that do not reach the edges of the flag.
The earliest surviving British Red Cross flag, from the Franco-Prussian War, demonstrates the principle:
https://museumandarchives.redcross.org.uk/objects/26The Red Crescent emblem, which has equal status in international law as a neutral protective emblem under the Geneva Conventions, arose in the Ottoman Empire in the 1870s during one of the regular wars against Russia. While the Red Cross emblem has no association with Christianity, a red cross on a white background was nonetheless perceived as having an unfortunate similarity to Crusader imagery. Ottoman medical volunteers seem to have spontaneously adopted a white crescent on a red background - the reverse of the Ottoman flag - as an alternative.
While the red crescent also has no religious symbolism (except in its adoption as an alternative to a red cross), it's used by many national societies in Muslim-majority nations. However, several Muslim-majority nations (Indonesia and Mali, for example) continue to use a red cross.
The third active emblem recognised as equal to the above two in international law is the Red Crystal. In practice this is little used, except when the Israeli national society is operating outside Israel. When Israel was founded, the new national society Magen David Adom wanted to use a red 'Shield of David' as their emblem. The International Red Cross baulked at giving a national society its own emblem, especially one so closely associated with a specific religion and ethnicity (at around the same time Sudan was proposing a red rhinoceros). In 2006-2007 a compromise was reached. A Red Crystal (
a square resting on its point) would be adopted as a third symbol. National societies could choose to put another symbol inside the crystal, but it's the crystal - not the other symbol - that has a protected status under international law. The Israeli and Palestinian societies were then immediately accepted into the international Red Cross/Red Crescent movement, and the Israelis stick their unofficial Shield of David inside the Crystal when operating outside of Israel.
It's important to stress that the Cross, Crescent, and Crystal are all equal in status; if a war broke out in the UK tomorrow, any of the three could be used to indicate the presence of a medical facility or medical staff protected under the Geneva Conventions. However, in practice we would use the Red Cross, since the national society also uses the cross.
There is a fourth emblem that would have legal force if ever used, but it's been dormant since 1980. When the Iranian national society was founded, it objected to using a red crescent because this was seen as an exclusively Ottoman symbol (as it indeed was at the time; its widespread acceptance as an international Muslim symbol is comparatively recent, and post-dates the adoption of the crescent as a protective emblem). The Iranians therefore uniquely adopted the Red Lion and Sun - a red lion carrying a sword in front of a sun. As noted above, opposition to further emblem proliferation played a significant part in the refusal to let the Israelis use a Red Shield of David. The Iranian national society switched to the Red Crescent in 1980 following the 1979 revolution, but their government specifically reserves the right to use the symbol, and its formal status in international law as a protective emblem has never been revoked.
Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2020 5:19 pm
